How “the left” meme

Analyzing taboo in the Internet memes of r/DankLeft

Bibliographic Data

ID6443432
AuthorsSamuel Merrill (0000-0002-9572-5922, Umeå University, corresponding author), Mattias Gardell (Uppsala University), Stefan Lindgren (0000-0001-6289-9427, Umeå University)
Year2024
Volume27
Issue7
Pages3950-3972
Publication date2024-02-26
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueNew Media & Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1461-4448 • E-ISSN: 1461-7315
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/14614448241232144
OpenAlexW4392168868
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited33

This article explores how “the left” meme and the character and emotional reception of taboo-breaking therein via the case of r/DankLeft—a USA-centric Marxist, Anarchist, and Democratic Socialist Internet meme community. It asks: what themes do popular r/DankLeft Internet memes relate to, how does taboo feature within popular r/DankLeft Internet memes, and can any differences in the ways in which taboo-related r/DankLeft Internet memes are received be discerned. In turn, it carries out a thematic analysis of 366 popular memes, a multimodal critical discourse analysis of 41 taboo-related popular memes, and a comparative sentiment analysis of the comments these and other memes have received in r/DankLeft. The article finds that popular memes in r/DankLeft primarily relate to perceived threats to its community of users. It also shows that taboo-breaking does feature in r/DankLeft memes and that when it does correlative patterns emerge in terms of popularity and emotional reception

Media studies · Popularity · Sociology · Taboo · The Internet · World Wide Web · Anthropology · Computer Science · Discourse Analysis in Language Studies · Hate Speech and Cyberbullying Detection · Humor Studies and Applications · Psychology · Social Psychology

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