‘Meme-ing’ political violence in post-war Northern Ireland

‘Meme-ing’ political violence in post-war Northern Ireland: exploring the everyday politics of internet memes about Belfast rioting

This talk discusses the role of internet memes in everyday communication around political violence in post-war societies. It takes as its primary case study memes on politically motivated riots in Belfast, Northern Ireland, as it seeks to elucidate the politics of such digital discourses. During the talk Martin will showcase examples of memes that are used in his study, and discuss potential ways to understand them discursively. The talk is not intended to convey a finished analysis, but rather, it should be understood as a work-in-progress endeavor. Thus, the participants are invited to engage actively in the discussion. The theoretical framework of the study draws from humor research as well as meme research, while methodologically it employs digital ethnography and digital discourse analysis. The tentative conclusion of the study is that memes on political violence in Belfast on the one hand poke fun at the riots in question, while on the other hand they appear to normalize them. Overall, then, memes about political violence in post-war Belfast seem ambiguously situated politically and may fill various (sometimes contradictory) political functions.

Martin Lundqvist is a post-doctoral fellow at the Department of Communication and Media, Lund University.
 

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