Partisan cues and internet memes: early evidence for motivated skepticism in audience message processing of spreadable political media

Abstract

ABSTRACT Internet memes represent fundamental practices underlying much of digitally mediated conversation in the current participatory media environment, increasingly playing a prominent role in political contexts online. At the same time, memes’ fleeting nature makes them easily dismissed as insignificant media. To date, there is little published research that focuses on memes from the audience perspective. This study responds to calls to establish effects of political internet memes by examining the role of partisan cues in audience assessment of political internet memes’ message quality. An online quasi-experiment (N = 633) was conducted to assess perceptions of political memes’ message effectiveness and argument quality. The results reveal that internet memes are subject to biased cognitive processing, specifically selective judgment or motivated skepticism. These findings suggest that despite their fleeting nature, political internet memes might be a vehicle for political messages that contribute to a polarized media environment. Suggestions for future research are presented.