Washington.- Whether it’s a smiling Joe Biden as “Dark Brandon” or Donald Trump’s face superimposed on a scene from HBO’s “Game of Thrones,” this year’s two presidential campaigns have embraced digital memes, the lingua franca of social networks.
The campaigns of the Democratic president and the former Republican president enthusiastically create and share content that attempts to shape the narratives around both men. The Biden campaign even recently posted an ad looking for a meme page manager.
With tens of millions of people using social media as their primary source of information, the meme battle could affect who wins in November. Many Americans say they’re not excited about a Biden-Trump rematch, and growing digital habits are making it harder to reach people through traditional political advertising spaces, such as print publications or television.
Memes can be a edgier and faster way to convey a political message than a block of text or a long video. But errors on the network have harmed candidates and created major controversies.
Let’s see how memes are influencing presidential politics.
First of all: What is a meme?
Memes have been around for longer than you think.
The term “meme” was coined in 1976 by the British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, who used it to refer to information that is imitated and shared, whether a slogan, a behavior or an idea.
With the rise of internet culture, the popularity of digital memes has skyrocketed. They usually take the form of visual content, such as an image or video with some type of message that reaches people who understand it due to some knowledge they have or because of their membership in a specific group. Memes don’t have to be funny or satirical, but that makes them more likely to be shared widely. And while today’s politicians work to create and share memes deliberately, some of the best-known ones emerged unintentionally.
One of the first memes of the modern era was former Vermont Governor Howard Dean’s enthusiastic scream on the night of the Iowa caucuses. Videos and images of the Democrat’s guttural scream were widely shared, drawing ridicule and damaging his already difficult presidential candidacy.
When President Barack Obama moved into the White House in 2009, photos of outgoing President George W. Bush with the caption “Do you miss me already?” were widely shared by Bush supporters.
A 2011 photo of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wearing sunglasses and staring at her phone became a popular meme the following year, “Hillary Texts,” which purported to show her sending sarcastic messages to politicians and celebrities.
“If you do it right, you’re tapping into something the group agrees on or is wary of; you’re tapping into something that connects with the audience,” says Rebecca Ortiz, an associate professor of advertising at Syracuse University who has researched influence. of memes around political identity.
How do the two candidates approach memes?
The Biden campaign has created its own stockpile of photos and videos to distribute to official Biden-related accounts. According to a Biden campaign official, advisers are also looking to partner with outside creators in the coming months, hoping to reach the followers of users who already seem aligned with a pro-Biden message.
By developing relationships with outside creators, campaign officials hope that some undecided or not-yet-persuaded voters will stick with Biden’s message if they receive it from another account they already follow.
“We tried very hard to run a digital program that is authentic to our candidate, who probably doesn’t spend all of his time on Twitter – in fact, he definitely doesn’t,” said Clarke Humphrey, senior digital persuasion advisor for the campaign. Biden. “So I think we’ve been really creative about how to take advantage of all the corners of the Internet so that you can be where you need to be without necessarily having to go to those places.”
Trump, a prolific user of social media even before running for president, has long embraced and shared memes, as have his online political aides and some of his adult children. His eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., shares them frequently and refers to himself on Instagram as a “meme war general.”
The campaign did not offer details about its digital team or its use of memes. Spokesman Steven Cheung issued a statement in which he denounced Biden’s gaffes in videotaped speeches and his moments of apparent confusion.
“Joe Biden is a walking, talking meme every time he appears in public,” Cheung said.
What are some examples of your content?
Biden’s team has embraced “Dark Brandon,” reappropriating a right-wing conspiracy meme that described the president as a menacing force and used a nickname, “Brandon,” that became a joke among conservatives to insult him.
Although “Dark Brandon” originally depicted Biden as a shadowy threat, Democrats adopted it, using the image as a meme to mock conspiracy theories about Biden’s supposed influence on events like the Super Bowl and presenting him as a powerful force to promote His achievements.
Now, the campaign is selling posters, mugs, baby onesies and even coffee bags depicting Biden as “Dark Brandon” with red laser eyes.
Trump and his team regularly share memes that exaggeratedly glorify him, such as depicting him leading a band of Bollywood dancing soldiers.
In April, just before the total solar eclipse swept through North America, Trump shared a meme video on his Truth Social account featuring images of people looking up at the sky with eclipse glasses and applauding as the sky darkened, before cut to an image of the sun with a large silhouette of Trump’s head covering it as people applauded.
And both the Biden and Trump campaigns quickly record potentially embarrassing videos of their opponent and post them online within minutes, injecting those moments into the social media bloodstream and often boosting traditional news coverage.
When have memes gone wrong?
Trump and his campaign often share content created by outside meme creators, often directed at their followers, and sometimes debunk content that later sparks outrage.
In 2016, he shared a meme about Clinton in which the Star of David appeared on a pile of money, evoking an anti-Semitic trope. Trump deleted the image but called it a “basic star, often used by sheriffs.”
Last month, Trump sparked backlash for sharing a video meme on Truth Social that included references to a “unified Reich” among hypothetical news headlines if he won the election in November.
The “unified Reich” meme was created by an outside group of meme creators who, according to The New York Times, have collaborated with the Trump campaign. The Dilley Meme Team describes itself as “America’s biggest MAGA members” and “Trump’s online war machine,” and its creations are sometimes shared by Trump himself.
The campaign said the video was shared by a staff member who saw it online and didn’t see the reference. Trump’s campaign denied that he coordinates with the group, but said he appreciates the efforts of outside creators.
Brenden Dilley, who leads the Dilley Meme Team, did not respond to emailed questions about the group’s work, but posted a response on X saying he would give an interview in January 2025, after the next presidential inauguration.
Whose memes go the furthest?
It’s hard to know. Both candidates have tens of millions of followers on social media, as do their campaign accounts, but it’s difficult to track the number of times a given meme is shared, or remixed and reshared.
Trump has more social media followers than Biden on Instagram, TikTok, Truth Social (Trump’s social network) and X, although the former president has only used X once since his account on the site, then known as Twitter, It was blocked after the January 6 insurrection.
Trump’s only post since then was a mugshot. It has also become a meme.
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