Memes imagéticos sobre as eleições de 2014: uma análise de discursos e representação política no Facebook

Abstract

The insistent and repetitive use of visual images on the Internet as its main media language, promotes the circulation of meanings between users and their connections, especially at virtual communication environments. In this new dynamics of cyberculture, we find the meme to be a phenomenon and a language used on this type of medium, an image-based discourse that is capable of replication and resignification through the interactions between users and contents, a phenomenon that holds implications that must be explored. We perceive in the meme, new forms of expression, part of the experience of a new generation with new medias of communication, that brings new possibilities of discussion on diverse subjects. Our study aims to problematize the way in which the discourses spread by the political imagetic meme contributes to the representation of political participation on Facebook. Our analysis focuses on the period that corresponds to the first round of debates in 2014 Presidential Elections in Brazil and understands that the sharing of political memes during this period, corroborated to evidence public opinion about these events. The study relies on the concepts of meme, by Limor Shifman, and of Sociotechnical Network (from the Actor Network Theory-ANT) by Bruno Latour, to understand its meaning in the digital medium. As a methodological procedure of discursive analysis, the studies of the french school (DA) led us to realize that the rhetoric of the memes disqualifies the traditional political discourse, mainly through humor, and constitutes another form of political participation supported also by the dynamics of valorization and social-capital of sociotechnical networks. As main theoretical reference in (DA), we use Dominique Maingueneau and the premise of the exploring interdiscourses, which favors a qualitative and interpretative analysis of the discursive facts in the meme.