Visual Resources and the Rhetoric of Humor in Political Memes: A case Study of the 2024 U.S Presidential Election
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Date
2025
Authors
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Journal ISSN
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Publisher
Université Mouloud Mammeri Tizi Ouzou
Abstract
This research examines and explores how political visuals were shared in the 2024 United
States presidential election to share political messages, ideas and content and influence
people’s views on the internet. It is based on three main theories: Multimodal Critical
Discourse Analysis (MCDA) to study how words and images combine to make sense;
humor theory to learn about how humor is used in political speech; and the Grammar of
Visual Design to examine how visuals are arranged to show ideas. The results show that
memes use different images and words methods, like jokes, signs, caricatures, and design to
help or mock politicians such as Donald Trump, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris. These
methods help show deep ideas, like populism , patriotism, anti-elitism, liberalism, and
conservatism. In general, the present research shows that political memes act as useful tools
to convince, to shape self image and to criticize politics. They let people to share thoughts,
strengthen views, and take part in internet political talk in funny and easy ways.
Description
79p. : Ill. en coul. (+CD-Rom)
Keywords
political memes, humor theory, visual communication, MCDA, ideology, online discourse
Citation
LANGUAGE AND COMMUNICATION