TY - JOUR
T1 - Lenin, Putin, and Rage Guy
T2 - Internet memes in the discourse of a Russian far-right community
AU - Oskolkov, Petr
AU - Lissitsa, Sabina
AU - Lewin, Eyal
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.
PY - 2024
Y1 - 2024
N2 - The article addresses Internet memes’ usage in Russian far-right discourse, seeking to evaluate how it corresponds with the basic roles of memes in political communication and the extent to which the Russian far-right memetic vernacular is universally translatable. The article uses qualitative content analysis and multimodal discourse analysis of the “Right-Wing Memes” community on the Russian social networking site Vkontakte. The Russian far-right builds its social identity by filling the floating signifiers of the “left-wing,” “migrants,” and “Russian national state” with relevant meanings through the memetic means of visual humor, bitter irony, and parallel comparison. These construct the in- and out-groups, convey the ideological message, and give voice to the groups excluded from the mainstream. However, although the Russian far-right employs globalized memetic tropes, the content is mainly country-specific, which, together with the language barrier, hinders the formation of a universal far-right memetic discourse.
AB - The article addresses Internet memes’ usage in Russian far-right discourse, seeking to evaluate how it corresponds with the basic roles of memes in political communication and the extent to which the Russian far-right memetic vernacular is universally translatable. The article uses qualitative content analysis and multimodal discourse analysis of the “Right-Wing Memes” community on the Russian social networking site Vkontakte. The Russian far-right builds its social identity by filling the floating signifiers of the “left-wing,” “migrants,” and “Russian national state” with relevant meanings through the memetic means of visual humor, bitter irony, and parallel comparison. These construct the in- and out-groups, convey the ideological message, and give voice to the groups excluded from the mainstream. However, although the Russian far-right employs globalized memetic tropes, the content is mainly country-specific, which, together with the language barrier, hinders the formation of a universal far-right memetic discourse.
KW - far-right
KW - floating signifier
KW - Internet memes
KW - Russian nationalism
KW - Vkontakte
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85207501180&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/19331681.2024.2420671
DO - 10.1080/19331681.2024.2420671
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AN - SCOPUS:85207501180
SN - 1933-1681
JO - Journal of Information Technology and Politics
JF - Journal of Information Technology and Politics
ER -