Article In:
Journal of Language and Politics: Online-First Articles

Romania’s first female prime minister’s meme-ification

Humor and the trivialization of politics in satirical memes

ORCID logo | National University of Political Studies and Public Administration
ORCID logo | National University of Political Studies and Public Administration
ORCID logo | National University of Political Studies and Public Administration

Political memes are ubiquitous in social media. They are easy to make, alter and spread, and they are a funny way of sanctioning politicians. This paper seeks to analyze the satirical memes targeting Viorica Dăncilă and to explore the extent to which such memes could be considered a manifestation of political trivialization rather than of criticism. Drawing on qualitative methods of text and image analysis we ask: (1) how is humor constructed in political memes targeting Romania’s former prime minister, and (2) to what extent could the memes be considered either a form of political criticism or a matter of pure entertainment. Our findings show that the humor in the examined memes is largely offensive (including sexist and misogynistic), sometimes at the expense of humor display. We argue that such offensive content triggers a cancellation of the criticizing force of the memes and an amplification of their short-lived amusement value.

Keywords: satirical political memes, political humor, humor categories, Romanian politics, trivialization of politics
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction and context
  • 2.Humor: A key feature of successful memes
  • 3.Humor in satirical political memes
  • 4.Methodology
  • 5.Findings
    • 5.1Classification of humor techniques
    • 5.2Categories and topics of humor
  • 6.Discussion
  • 7.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • Author queries
  • References
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