Internet Memes and Hate Speech 

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Abstract

This project seeks to look at how hate speech is carried by internet memes, especially within the context of internet culture, and the implications for policy and regulation. It will look at how public reacts and responds to internet memes and the hate speech contained in it, and suggest useful additions to studies of internet memes and hate speech content beyond textual identification of hate speech.

Introduction to General Topic

Hate crimes are unfortunately nothing new in society. They have been given a boost and a new lease of life by social media and other means of online communication.

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For instance, suspects in several recent hate-related terror attacks and shootings have had an extensive social media history of hate-related posts, suggesting that social media contributed immensely to their radicalization (MacAvaney et al, 2019). In some cases, social media played an even more direct role as evidenced in the Halle synagogue anti-Semitic attack in October 2019, in which the suspect was on lie broadcast on Twitch during the attack.

Meanwhile, the global proliferation of new media and its application in mass and uncontrolled communication has had significant impact on all aspects of life and how information is transmitted. The internet, and with it, new media and its apparent integration with the old media on many levels, have been seen to have brought with it a huge impact and transformation of popular culture.

Although popular culture has never been static, this transformation has shown no signs of slowing down, but rather brought with it, certain significant characteristics, including a dark and often sadistic traits (often referred to as savage in Internet culture parlance), anonymous lifestyle which is either virtual or real for some thereby allowing them to live their alter-egos and alternative lifestyles as well as serving as a rallying and mobilization point for some.

In the past decade, the world has seen changes in political leadership when the citizens mobilized though the internet to protest and successfully caused the resignation of governments and leaders. Hong Kong has for almost a year, seen non-stop protests also mobilized online in a manner that the authorities are unable to determine the leaders and conveners of the protests. Yet they have successfully stopped the government from passing some laws they did not agree with.

Problem Statement and Justification

Internet memes have in recent years become extremely popular tools of communication among the global online community. They are a combination of funny texts and images that employ humor to communicate messages and discourse on a range of topics from simple, ordinary, day-to-day situations to issues concerning public policies, political events, crisis and other major happenings all over the world. (Marende, 2014).

Coined by Richard Dawkins in 1976 to describe the flow and flux of culture, memes have become a striking element of the culture on participatory media networks. Shifman (2013), described Internet memes “units of popular culture that are circulated, imitated, and transformed by Internet users, creating a shared cultural experience”. They are multimodal symbolic artifacts created, circulated, and transformed by countless meditated cultural participants, becoming more vibrant and prominent in mediated public discourse.

Monitoring of internet memes is critical to understanding modern social participation and popular culture, as rallying points for communication in a global context and borderless platforms which transcend local cultures, and yet serve as the basis of bonding in the global contexts.

What is significant about hate speech carried as a meme is that when you consider the thought that goes into designing the perfect meme, to make it funny, interesting, viral and yet carry the theme or message it was intended to carry, you are left with no doubt about the intent with which such a communication is created.

Almagor (2011) described hate speech as “bias-motivated, hostile, malicious speech aimed at a person or a group of people because of some of their actual or perceived innate characteristics”. The European Court of Human Rights, adopted a definition on hate speech as “all forms of expression which spread, incite, promote or justify racial hatred, xenophobia, anti-Semitism or other forms of hatred based on intolerance, including intolerance expressed by aggressive nationalism and ethnocentrism, discrimination and hostility towards minorities, migrants and people of immigrant origin” (Council of Europe, 1997).

Thus hate speech is any speech in any communicative form, which attacks an individual or a group with an intention to cause disfavor, hurt or disrespect based on their identity or characteristic(s). Once such speech is expressed, the feeling of hurt or disrespect can depend on the perception of the victim. For some victims, it may or may not affect them; therefore, an effect of hate speech depends on the originator, content and the target. (Chetty & Alathur, 2018).

For example, if a hate speech does not incite to discriminate and neither hurts the target, then is that speech of hatred or not even if it contained adjectives and other components that otherwise should hurt the target? The definition of such rides on intention and content.

Ghana in 2016 saw a dramatic upsurge in the use of social and other online media towards the general elections. With the upsurge came a lot of memes with dark humour and trolling, targeting various actors within the elections space, including the then Electoral Commissioner, Charlotte Osei. In some such meme (Figure 1), she was depicted in a typical Ghanaian style movie poster her face adorned with fangs and other religious-spiritual evil characteristics, and the title: Charlotte Asuoden, Part 1 & 2. The cultural significance of this meme was how it portrayed Madam Osei as a witch or evil spiritual being, inciting hate and resentment against her.

Other significant memes include one that used the religious sect, Jehovah’s Witnesses to explain why the then ruling government lost the elections with a huge margin despite having massive crowds at their rallies (Figure 2).In the case of the second meme, the creator was bold enough to use his Twitter handle as a watermark, thereby displaying an attitude that shows that he/she saw it as just fun, or did not bother about the consequences  thereof. As hate crimes are increasing, there is the need to observe the elements that lend themselves as vehicles and tools through which such hate crimes are mobilized and given life and credence.

Meanwhile, across the world, the internet has become very important as more countries are experiencing what can be likened to the revolution of the Arab Spring of 2011. In Hong Kong, Egypt, Sudan, Tunisia, Pakistan, Iraq, Bolivia, Mexico, Spain, Ecuador, Lebanon, Chile, etc are all experiencing unprecedented political and civil upheavals, protests and demonstrations as part of citizens’ reactions to political issues and personalities. Europe is also inundated with political debate on migration related issues.

Mobilisation and rallying for the protests and demonstrations are being done online, and with certain content and themes that are synonymous to certain popular culture among the protesting demographic brackets. In Hong Kong, for example, businesses belonging to and related to citizens from the mainland have become targets for vandalism, although in all such cases, no theft or destruction of the goods and products were reported. This appears to highlight a latent communication and mobilization, which the rest of the society may not be privy to, nor understand, however, there is strict enforcement and compliance with the directives coming through.

But all of the above cases and events are as a result of public reaction to politics, political actions and policies, and their implications for the society, for the economy and everyday life. In certain places, such reaction are targeted at other citizens and socially identifiable groups, such as migrants in Europe, anti-Semitic attacks and religious attacks in some parts of Africa such as Northern Nigeria.

Research Questions and Objectives of Study

The purpose of this project is two-fold, first to study and bring to the fore, how hate speech carried by memes and other visual content on the internet as part of the internet culture. Secondly, to look at the implications for policy and regulation. It will also highlight evasive hate speech content hidden in memes and other visual formats found on digital media and also contribute to understanding to digital communication and participation using graphic content.

Ultimately, this project will move away from the other works that concentrated on textual identification to graphic and visual identification of hate speech, and how it causes people to react.

Therefore the project will attempt to answer the following question: Are internet memes used to carry hate speech, and what action does it cause people to take within the context of internet culture?

Other questions that the project will seek to answer are:

a. How is hate speech captured/couched in internet memes?
b. Which people are posting internet memes, and deploying hate speech through them?
c. How strong are people’s reaction(s) to these memes, and hate speech therein?
d. What kind of reaction is observed towards memes on sensitive global issues like migration, race and gender, etc?

This project therefore may suggest useful additions to studies of content and creation of internet memes and hate speech content beyond textual identification of hate speech.

Research Method

The primary aim of the project is to develop an understanding of internet memes and how they can be used to carry hate speech and its attendant trolling and comments that are elicited, extending to public reaction to the memes. The focus on memes is to shift attention from the prevailing textual highlight analysis to examine visuals that are made or deployed with the aim of drawing a certain reaction from the audience.

Memes are part of a media ecosystem that inspires hope for broader public discussion. Empirical assessment, however, is necessary to understand how these populist discourses are being employed and to what ends.

In fact, existing cultural and critical studies on similar media content that combine graphics and text such as advertising suggests that researchers should draw on the most advanced work from semiotics, post-structuralism, hermeneutics, and other methods of interpretation and ideology critique, such as discourse analysis. This kind of close examination should combine microanalyses of the content with macroanalyses of the broader social functions.

One of the major aims of discourse analysis is to understand and interpret socially constructed meanings. According to Phillips and Hardy (2002), discourse analysis examines the processes through which the social world is constructed and maintained. Within the framework of discourse analysis, researchers seek to highlight the “historically specific rules and conventions that structure the production of meanings in particular historical contexts” (Howarth, 2000). Given the specific focus, a discourse analysis approach appears to be the most appropriate methodology.

Using Van Dijk’s (1997) definition of discourse studies as the study of “talk and text in context” as a starting point, this diversity of meanings can be structured—and the specificity of discourse analysis explained—by distinguishing between micro and macro-approaches toward both text and context.

Internet memes are more graphical in nature, thus departing this study from the usual textual analysis carried out for hate speech. It often contains the image and the text to accompany it as the interpretation or the complimentary message with it. Both are crucial to the meaning of the meme, and both make up the language representation of the intent and reaction(s) sought. Therefore, as the essential part of communication in meme culture, the image goes beyond the transmission of simple information. It goes on to represent natural objects or social realities (Wetherell, 2001), as well as construct meanings. Since all communication content, and in this case, the internet meme is socially constructed and its use is shaped by cultural, economic, historical, political and social contexts, the construction of meaning is never neutral.

The study will employ content analysis to collect and analyse the data, looking at the internet memes that have been shared on various online portals and social media pages. The meaning and message behind these internet memes will be analysed to draw out symbols and meanings bordering on hate speech.

Originators, both the creators and posters, and the target of the internet memes will also be sampled, beginning with the classification of official political persons and units, para-political elements both individual and corporate, as well as ordinary citizens. All of them will be clearly defined, and their roles and expected value and impact spelled out. The geographic origin and target of the internet memes will also be classified for sampling.

The manifest and latent contents of the memes will be analysed carefully, taking into consideration, various cultural, social and political undertones of the constructs of the internet memes.

Coding and analyzing the manifest content, which Babbie (2007) described as the visible surface content has the advantage of ease and reliability of coding, whereas the latent content, being the underlying meaning, has the advantage of validity.

Research Theories

The project will be situated within certain critical communication and social theories and contexts, primarily discourse analysis, internet culture and reception studies.

Discourse Theory

Discourse analysis is the study of social life, understood through an analysis of language (spoken and text and other artifacts) in its widest sense (including face-to-face talk, non-verbal interaction, images, symbols, and documents). It offers ways of examining meaning, be it in conversation or in culture. Discourse analysis embraces a broad range of theories, topics, and analytic approaches for explaining language in use.

Further, discourse is seen as the main instrument of production and reproduction of shared social knowledge, and it is studied not just as ‘form, meaning and mental process, but also as a complex, hierarchical structure of interaction, as social practice’ (Van Dijk 1997).

Through a better understanding of how media texts work, and are received, it can be argued that media texts activate discourses; they operate as platforms for the struggle over meaning and the (attempted) construction of social imaginaries and contexts.

Semiotics

Many critical theorists shifted their focus to language and “texts” as a way that groups battle over meaning and social status. Texts can be speeches, words, symbols, anything with social meaning, and in the case of this project, internet memes. A ‘text’ can be a raised, clenched fist; it can be a flag; it can be the image of a political or civil actor; it can be a concept such as ‘race’ or ‘gender’; it can be the clothes, body piercings, and tattoos (Baldwin J. R. 2014). Semiotics looks specifically at the relationship between texts and their underlying meanings (specifically, at social structures which they represent) (Baldwin, 2014).

Jaime Barber
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