Abstract
Satire has been present in various different media throughout the centuries. With the rise of television, satire has made its way onto TV screens via various outlets including news parodies. As these TV shows began using social media, new forms of satire have appeared, among them satirical Internet Memes commenting on political events. The objects of interest in this study are Memes published by two German news parodies Heute Show and Extra 3 on the platform Facebook that thematise the G-20 summit, which took place in Hamburg in 2017. My data set consists of 27 Memes from the platforms Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, as well as the public Facebook comments published alongside these Memes. Using an empirical, data-driven approach to my investigation, I broach questions regarding the way Memes make use of satire and how they interact with the Internet as a medium, and in particular, their affordances on the platform Facebook.
Highlights
Satire has been present in various different media throughout the centuries
With the rise of television, satire has made its way onto TV screens via various outlets including news parodies
As these TV shows began using social media, new forms of satire have appeared, among them satirical Internet Memes commenting on political events
Summary
Theoretische Untersuchungen zum Phänomen Internet Memes haben in den letzten Jahren an Aufwind gewonnen. Gemeint sind damit in erster Linie Image Macros, eine Subform der Memes, auf welche sich die Aufmerksamkeit in diesem Forschungsbeitrag fokussiert. Image Macros sind nach folgendem Schema aufgebaut: Abbildung 1: Aufbau eines Memes nach Osterroth 2015: 31 (Bülow/Merten/Johann 2018: 2). Bülow/Merten/Johann erklären Osterroths Schema folgendermassen: Das Setup befindet sich meistens im oberen Bereich des Bildes und dient vielfach der Eröffnung eines „bestimmten semantischen Frames“ [...]. Neben dem vor allem für Image Macros typischen Bild-Text-Format, ist auch die virale Verbreitung von Memes für deren Definition relevant, da wiederholtes Teilen auf dem Internet ein konstitutives Merkmal von Internet Memes darstellt Für die hier vorliegende Studie wird, in Anlehnung an Osterroths Definition der Anglizismus Meme verwendet, um Internet Memes wie etwa Image Macros zu beschreiben
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