Beyond Laughter: Unpacking Political Discourse in Pakistan through the Lens of Facebook Political Memes

Abstract

Political memes play a vital role in contributing to contemporary politics and in Pakistan; several political memes can be seen on social networking sites every day. In addition, the perception of public participation in politics has expanded in recent years and now, people especially youth prefer to use social media to share their political thoughts. Based on this observation, this research examines the recurring themes found within political memes and the role of memes in initiating political discourse. Thematic analysis has been conducted in this study and three Facebook pages having high and medium-range followers have been filtered out by applying keywords such as ‘political memes’, ‘political memes in Pakistan’, and ‘top political meme pages in Pakistan’. Over all 76 political memes have been extracted from these pages and analyzed based on their link to political leaders and political personalities. Memes related to the top three political parties and their leaders including Pakistan Muslim League (PMLN), Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), and Pakistan Peoples Party Parliamentarians (PPPP) have been examined. The study concludes that memes have the potential to propagate political ideologies among social media users. They are a vital source of political participation and depict the interest of people in different political and national issues. For future research, pictorial elements used in a meme such as the position of the texts, image, camera angle, and other aspects can be analyzed as well to study political memes more deeply.