+1 862 207 3288 Introduction: Politics and political campaigns don’t function the way they used to years before. With the penetration of new media, political operations have transformed into a new level. Social media has become the new platform for these forms of communication. (Boulianne, 2009; Rueda Ortiz, 2009; Jenkins, 2008) The benefit of using social-media for political communication can be understood by the various features of this new media tool, first, it is cost-effective, convenient, quick and most importantly it offers a large audience. It facilitates a platform that enables political parties to build relationship with the public. (Yoo & Gil de Zúñiga, 2014)
Politically aware citizens, especially the tech savvy youths can now take an active part and reach the political parties quicker and can clarify any queries they may have for the latter. (Sánchez Martínez & Ibar Alonso, 2015: 88).
Another very interesting phenomena that has surfaced in social-media is the use of visual-messages, a.k.a. “memes.” As defined by Richard Dawkins, meme is “an idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture”. In social media, memes are those images (both still or moving), with catchy phrases usually with an essence of humor, that are shared and re-shared under constant alteration by users, with the ability to travel as fast as the Internet can move them” (Coleman 2012: 109, Martínez-Rolán, X., & Piñeiro-Otero, T. 2016). “Memes” has gained a lot of popularity in the recent years. Internet users use them to share jokes, rumors, videos among their social group. (Shifman 2013: 2). Thus, in an era of convergent media, memes are mediums through which complex ideas are presented in smaller packets, and can grab both public attention and political engagement. In addition, the community add value to a meme by consuming it, editing and re-sharing it, and even adapting it to other context or using it for other communicative needs (Vickery, 2014)
Objective of the study: Considering the increasing use of social-media for political communication and the ability of memes to quickly diffuse a message on social-media and have a viral effect, this study seeks to bridge the gap between the two and explore the use of memes for political communication on social-media. The 2014 Indian elections will be used as an example to comprehend the role of memes in political communication on social-media.
Why this topic: The paper intends to explore the power of memes, to go viral and trigger an otherwise passive audience. The study takes the example of the 2014 general elections in India and the use of the popular meme carrying the political slogan “acche din” meaning “good times” by the winning Bharatya Janata Party (BJP) during the elections. It was interesting to see a country that merely had an 8.5 % of internet usage by its citizens during 2010 (World Internet Stats), witnessed the 2014 general elections in the light of extensive use of social media by the winning political party and being extremely successful at it. This paper seeks to investigate the role of memes in making the BJP campaign a success.
Method: Content analysis will be used as the preferred research method. The literature review would be based on topics like “the use of social-media for politics”, “visual messages in social-media”, “Indian Politics”, “the use of memes for communication”, “use of humor in political campaign”, and other related areas.
****Note- I want to use two different concepts 1) The use of social media for political communication and 2) The use of memes for political communication. Then I want to connect both the above concepts and discuss about the use of memes for political communication. I want to say that because memes are generally humorous so it becomes viral instantly. And I also want to use the 2014 Indian general elections as an example to show that although India is a country wit not much Internet usage by its citizens , yet the 2014 elections in India witnessed a lot of political promotion on social media ( mostly memes). so I want to suggest that because memes are filled with humor and also sometimes with inspiration, they have the power to go viral even in a less tech savy country like India.
