Humour generation and multimodal framing of political actor in the 2015 Nigerian presidential election campaign memes

Abstract

Internet memes significantly constitute an outlet for extensive popular political participation in election contexts. They instantiate humour and represent political candidates so as to affect voters’ behaviour. Few studies on memes in political context exist (Shifman et al. 2007; Chen 2013; Tay 2014; Adegoju & Oyebode 2015; Huttington 2016; Dzanic & Berberovic 2017). These studies have not intensively examined the integrative deployment of visual and verbal resources afforded by internet memes to generate humour and to construct specific frames for election candidates in the campaign context of an emerging democracy. Therefore, this study investigates the use of language and visuals for humour generation and for the creation of definite frames for the two major presidential candidates in internet memes created in the course of the 2015 Nigerian presidential election campaigns. The theoretical insights for the study are derived from Attardo’s (1997) set-up-incongruity-resolution theory of humour, Kuypers’ (1997, 2002, 2009, 2010) model of rhetorical framing analysis, Bauman & Briggs’ (1990) concept of entextualisation, Kress & van Leeuwen’s (1996) socio-semiotic model for visual analysis and Sperber & Wilson’s (1986) relevance theory. The analysis indicates that meme producers generate humour and frame candidates through the entextualisation of verbal and visual texts, explicatures and implicatures. The memes construct seven individuated frames and one collective frame for the two major presidential candidates in the sampled memes using visual and linguistic resources. It concludes on the note that supporters of election candidates use humorous internet memes for negative portraying opponents and the positive representation of the favoured candidate. These negative other-representations serve the purpose of depreciating the electoral values of the opponents and indirectly increasing the electoral chances of their own candidates.

Every corona is not a virus

“…Nigerians also created and disseminated social media memes to protest against the political establishment. Tella (2018) avers that memes in this category are deployed as digital resources for political reasons. The visual semiotic resources that connote the situated sociopolitical experience of Nigerians are captured in Figures 6 and 7.…”

Memes y reacciones ciudadanas en las campañas electorales de Perú (2016) y Bolivia (2019)

“…Asimismo, en Bolivia, el segmento más joven y con menor nivel educativo de la lista opinó que se han utilizado memes para atacar al partido de su preferencia en las últimas elecciones. Se asume, como ocurrió en las presidenciales nigerianas de 2015, que estas representaciones negativas sirvieron para depreciar los valores electorales de los oponentes y aumentar indirectamente las posibilidades electorales de sus candidatos (Tella, 2018).…”

Between the Star Boy and the City Boy: Humour, Sarcasm and Rhetoric-Induced (De)Marketing in a Nigerian Presidential Primary Election

“…Consequently, Tella (2018) argued that political memes essentially are always deployed by political actors with a view to achieving some rhetorical effects such as political campaigning (Kulkarni, 2017). Coined by Richard Dawkins in 1976, memes are 'an integral part of the netizen vernacular' (Shifman, 2013:362) used to imitate a phenomenon that has one form of social/cultural information or the other when communicated implicitly or explicitly to others (Shifman, 2013).…”

“…Apart from being a semiotic enquiry about political humour and communication within current Nigerian politics, this study propels studies that had analysed the non-verbal communication and metaphoric elements in political memes. Some of these previous studies include Geise and Vigsø's (2017) investigation of election posters and Tella's (2018) exploration of the multi-modal framing of political actors in a Nigerian election. Others include examinations of political tweets (Shane, 2018;Osei Fordjour, 2021), political ideology in advertising (Briandana, 2019), political news (Mas'ud Muhammadiah & Hamsiah, 2020), editorial cartoons in newspapers (Nsungo, 2021), campaign videos (Habib, Ratnaningsih & Sinabutar, 2021;Schubert, 2021), Covid-19 socio-political narratives (Dewi, 2022) as well as elections (Qian, 2017;Bamgbose, 2021).…”