LONG ISLAND, NY — The 2016 election was novel in many ways, among them the online campaign waged by Donald Trump and his army of followers. Memes were an integral part of Trump's campaign, and it was something his staff didn't have to do: loyal and enthusiastic fans of his created the messaging for him.
Memes are even more powerful today than they were four years ago. But the way they are created, and the ways they influence people, have changed.
Jamie Cohen, the founder of the Molloy College New Media program and a former professor at the school, has dedicated his life to studying memes. He is what is called a memeticist, or an expert on memes and how they affect culture.
Memes are an idea that are spread among a culture, being imitated and repurposed along the way. Cohen defines them as "the creative output of surplus culture," meaning that they take time to create. With people locked up during the coronavirus shutdowns with lots of time suddenly on their hands — and people now spending more time online — memes have begun to proliferate even more.
But the memes are different. In 2016, memes were reductionist. They took a complex idea and simplified it to a few words, usually with a funny and possibly related picture to go with it. But the memes of 2020 are metatextual, Cohen said.
"They act as a sub-message that you have to gain the meaning from," he said. "The upside is that it takes more thinking to analyze a meme. The downside is that we're not great at critical thinking."
Cohen said he sees this most in alt-right spaces online. In recent months, social media companies have cracked down on pages dedicated to racism, hate and violent conspiracies. But the ideas haven't gone away. Since white supremacists can't direct people straight to a page anymore, they create memes with dog whistles and hidden terms, which people then have to investigate for themselves.
"They're trying to refer to that metatext that requires you to look further," said Cohen. "I personally believe that's an onboarding technique."
Memes become more obtuse has created worries for Cohen, because people could share a meme without knowing its deeper meaning, and spread dangerous information or ideas without realizing it.
Cohen is trying to get people to be more meme literate. It's like media literacy, but for memes. It would help people recognize potentially dangerous memes, just as they are taught to recognize trustworthy sources online.
"I think we need to create literal meme literacy for people who aren't very online," he said. "For people who come to the internet as a more creative or open-minded space, that can be more dangerous than if they come in with more cynicism."
According to Cohen, the memes of the 2020 elections have also changed. In 2016, Trump's supporters were making tons of memes about him. This year, both Biden and Trump have teams of people in their campaigns churning out memes for them. It was something that Michael Bloomberg started in his primary run for president earlier this year.
Many of the new political memes, especially on the right, are designed to keep up energy with followers that are already there, Cohen said, and not spread ideas to engage with new followers.
"They all have a meme team," Cohen said. "But does it do what 2016 does? No. In 2016, no one got paid to make their memes. Which makes them more organic."
With the coronavirus and the general state of the world, Cohen said that many popular non-political memes of the last few months have focused on the anxiety that everyone is feeling.
"Any time these memes that play both sides, where they're funny and not funny, are the memes that are great right now," he said. "Memes represent the surplus of culture. Think about what anxiety is. Anxiety is the surplus of your emotions. And memes are acting out what we're feeling."
Going forward beyond 2020, Cohen believes that learning meme literacy is something everyone has to do. He gives talks at schools and at TED Talks on this topic, and is trying to spread the word.
"I think we're going to be moving more into this digital savvy, dangerous space for the next few years," Cohen said. "We have to keep informing people and we have to keep illuminating people no matter what."
October 29, 2020 at 02:56AM
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