Memetization of the president’s speeches to the nation in South Africa as popular rhetoric elements

Abstract

The proliferation of political memes in recent years allows us to assume that they are a new tool of political communication and that social networks increase the possibilities for civil society to express opinions and intervene in the debate on matters of public interest. This article aims to examine the memes that have been disseminated on Twitter since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in South Africa in the wake of the president’s speeches to the nation to discover whether one can speak of a political rhetoric in memes and their argumentation. To this end, the research uses a qualitative-quantitative approach to classify the taxonomy of memes according to their content, combining the thematic classification of memes and the typology of images in digital discourse to discover the existence of the use of popular political rhetoric. The final sample comprises 351 memes, and the analysis shows that they used humour as a means of escape rather than as an effective way of sending political messages. Thus, the results reflect the existence of a resignification of popular culture that transcends memes as persuasive elements based on the inertia of popular rhetoric in contemporary political communication.