Super Tuesday: the victory of the American "memes"

Text by: Dominique Desaunay Follow

With thousands of influencers on social networks, a profusion of political tweets and fake videos in shambles, the "Super Tuesday" of the Democratic primaries in the United States will have been one of excess on the Web.

Publicity

This riot of resources has already cost the trifle of several hundred million dollars. Among the digital arsenal available to candidates running in this race for the White House, there is a profusion of "memes". These humorous images which caricatured candidates on social networks at each election, whether for good or for bad, have long established themselves in online political messages.

The "meme" was imagined by the British biologist Richard Dawkins in 1976 in one of his works. It is the contraction of the word “ mimesis ” which means “ imitation ” in ancient Greek, and of the word “ gene ”, these fragments and sequences of DNA allowing our cells to replicate.

By analogy, it has been widely used on the Web. It designates all the replications of an idea or concept, such as a tweet published " in the manner of ", a video parody or an image diverted from its context about a situation experienced by an emblematic or famous character.

" The only cool candidate "

From Bernie Sanders to Michael Bloomberg via Joe Biden, all the candidates for "Super Tuesday" staged their own caricature "memes" in order to attract the votes of young voters.

Former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg called on Meme 2020, a company created by influencers on Instagram, to gain support from fans of a famous rapper for a fee. " Can you post a meme that lets everyone know that I'm the only cool candidate?" », He asked them with a photo of him in shorts and polo shirt.

michael bloomberg has been paying meme-sharing accounts on instagram to post sponsored bloomberg memes that look like chats with bloomberg. here is an example of one of the sponsored posts. pic.twitter.com/8CH6dqzozx

The Facebook group " Bernie Sanders Dank Meme Stash " uses Giphy, the largest Gif site on the Web, to feed its pages with small humorous animations . Joe Biden is content to let Internet users do it. Her long political career has allowed her to become the muse of memes creators for many years.

Trump in Rocky

But the palm of gold of the process goes to the current tenant of the White House. Donald Trump is a fan of the method. For example, the photomontage of his face on the body of Rocky Balboa, the boxer embodied on the screen by Sylvester Stallone, has toured the world of the press and networks. This image, which he published in 2019 in order to deny rumors regarding his poor health, has been shared illico 200,000 times. It's a lot more than his untimely tweets.

pic.twitter.com/11nzKwOCtU

The American presidential election in November will she play caricatures on the web? Parodies against parodies! Memes against memes and voters in nations around the world will never take their political representatives seriously again, Gandhi would comment today on social media.

► Read also: Democratic primary: "resurrected", Biden wins Texas, California to Sanders

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• United States
• Bernie Sanders
• Donald trump

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