Election-Cycle Memes: The Good and the Bad

“Kamala is Brat,” Dark Brandon, childless cat ladies—they’re almost as well known as this year’s presidential candidates themselves. While these and other examples of memes are a source of entertainment, one can’t help but wonder how else they’ll impact the upcoming presidential election and peoples’ thoughts about the candidates.

During a panel discussion on “Media and Elections” held on campus last month, panelists agreed that more and more political candidates, from local officials to well-known national figures, are embracing social media, including memes, because they can bypass traditional media gatekeepers, control their own messages, and give viewers a glimpse at their (albeit, curated) personalities. Lisa Williams, audience engagement editor at GBH News in Boston, noted that social media provides an opportunity for viewers to get a fuller picture of a candidate and their stance on issues. “The average person doesn’t just want to see cats on the internet. They appreciate richer, deeper coverage,” Williams said. “But also, let’s not fool ourselves; they also appreciate and get a kick out of the explainer on Kamala Harris and the coconut emoji.”

What Makes a Meme

Although it may seem like memes just fall out of coconut trees, they’ve got deep roots that extend well beyond the internet. “Prior to the internet, the term ‘meme’ referred to a unit of culture that spread through the act of imitation,” explains Associate Professor of Sociology Timothy Recuber. “And that’s more or less what a meme is today too, only memes as we know them aren’t merely imitated—each time they’re shared in a new context or captioned in a different manner, they get sort of roughed up; they lose a little of their original meaning and gain new meanings.”

Although political memes and scathing social media posts may seem like a newfound phenomenon of the last couple election cycles—who can forget “thanks, Obama” or Mitt Romney’s notorious binders full of women—it’s really the internet and users’ ability to make things go viral that’s new, not the memes themselves.

“We’ve only had mass video in the last few elections,” points out Eszter Hargittai ’96, Chaired Professor of Internet Use & Society at the University of Zurich and the Fall 2024 Neilson Professor at Smith. “I can very much imagine that prior elections would’ve been just as good fodder for memes and short-form video.”

Take, for example, former vice president Al Gore’s supposed comments about having invented the internet. “That had been taken out of context and wrongly attributed,” Hargittai says. “That was obviously pre-viral video, pre-social media, and it still went pretty far; I can only imagine what it would’ve looked like for a viral video. [Now] it’s the everyday person, not just the media, who can take comments pretty far.”

“[The humor of memes] is also a coping strategy,” Recuber adds, explaining that in a world where writing a blog or op-ed could be seen as too risky, memes are a quicker, easier, more surefire way to get a point across for a target audience. “These elections have had, and continue to have, many dark and unsettling possible outcomes, and memes encourage us to deal with them in a more lighthearted way—even if it’s sort of gallows humor at times.”

From the Comment Section to the Voting Booth

With the prevalence of memes in the election cycle, it’s only natural to wonder whether the reactions and conversations they spark will make the leap from the comments section to the voting booth.

“I don’t think so,” Recuber says, pointing out that memes are generally meant to have the greatest impact on those who already share similar sentiments rather than change the minds of others. Using memes for potential political gain doesn’t have the best track record, either, points out Recuber. Senator John Fetterman, for example, had a strong meme-based online campaign to appeal to younger, more progressive voters, only to become much more conservative once he was elected. “Maybe politicians can inject a little energy into their campaigns with memes, but I think people like policy too. They can’t really be won over by clever Twitter or TikTok content,” Recuber says.

Hargittai agrees in part, but comes at the question from a different angle, pointing out that there’s a reason campaigns continue to invest funding in more traditional ways of getting out the vote, like postcard mailings. “I think it’s better to focus on more tangible outcomes we can more easily measure—are people more likely to make financial donations to campaigns? Will they register to vote? Are people more likely to encourage those around them to do the same?”

Still, Recuber isn’t sure that memes will have an impact on those aspects, either. “Assuming again that memes are meant to appeal to a younger audience, I think there are a bunch of issues that young people would like addressed—climate change, student loans, Gaza—in ways that neither candidate is discussing,” he adds. “Memes won’t help with that.”