While the days of strike and demonstration follow one another to fight against the pension reform project, on social networks too, we are also trying to mobilize. On Twitter, Instagram or Facebook, Internet users go there with their more or less secondary message to denounce government policy, call to join the strikers or make fun, at random, of the route of the Parisian demonstration (located on the right bank).
For Albin Wagener, a researcher affiliated with Rennes 2, a specialist in discourse analysis and memes, “this proves that the meme is a political object: whatever the communities, they are used to talk about society, this makes it possible to to generate debate, to comment on a political aspect”. If we find a lot of memes before rallies, we also find them in demonstrations, on signs or posters. “It’s an object out of the digital sphere alone”, according to the researcher.
“I love the strikers, it’s so romantic”
A paradigm shift: as political and trade union structures are getting younger, the modes of political communication are changing. Make way for memes, real stories on Instagram or Tik Tok videos. “Memes fill the role of vignettes, posters, press cartoons, they are all terrain! It is a widespread format in pop culture and which is used for everything, because it is easy to understand and identify” analyzes Albin Wagener.
On the collective side inverts, LGBTI collective fighting against pension reform, the memes are colorful, and take up the slogans shouted in demonstration. “When the pension reform was proposed, we did a column published in Têtu and Mediapartto explain how concerned we were, and to highlight the unique issues that LGBTI people can experience,” explains Tarik, member of inverti.es and creator of memes on their Instagram page.
For political organisations, it is also a question of playing it strategic: “We continue to distribute leaflets and address people directly, but how do we manage to mobilize with small means, with not much other than social networks? asks Tarik. For Albin Wagener, the use of memes in this space of protest is a “quite logical and political” continuation. And which captures the media’s attention: on the evening of January 19, Yann Barthès Quotidien’s program received Paloma, winner of Drag Race France… And figure of one of the protest memes.
“Hijacking the codes, it sends messages”
What is striking in all these memes when approaching the social movements against the pension reform is their humor and their joyful side. “The LGBTI movement has in its very essence festive, second-degree issues. But that does not mean depoliticization: diverting the codes, it sends messages” underlines Tarik of the collective les inverti.es
Especially since online, on feminist or anti-racist issues, collectives and activists have been using innovative forms of political communication for several years. “On LGBTI issues, we try to make links between the general social movement and the specific issues of our community, without entering into competition,” adds Tarik.
For researcher Albin Wagener, memes will “crystallize protest, support or radicalization. It’s a way of counter-power! “. “Once again, memes are in reaction to current events, pop culture is reclaiming this to be heard, and to be shared,” he adds. Tarik also pleads for the reappropriation, through humorous messages, of the codes of pop culture “which are perceived as hyper commercial and capitalist”. “And to show that humor is not necessarily oppressive,” he says.
Gather or convince?
With memes, it is also a question of bringing together and convincing the most skeptical, inviting them to demonstrate or go on strike. “In the same way that Nuit Debout or the Gilets Jaunes emerged out of the unions, the whole of society must strike. The great social movements make it possible to change the vapor” indicates Tarik.
Especially since “memes have a force of argument: they transmit a lot of implicit but important things. It is a compression of arguments which has the force of an argumentative punchline” explains Albin Wagener. In the same way that advertising conveys a sales pitch, political memes can be used to persuade or raise awareness.
“But above all, anyone can take it, because it is an object of entertainment” adds the researcher. This is precisely the objective of Tarik and the inverts: to create dialogue: “This allows our community, our class to be discussed. It’s not off topic.” In this demonstration of January 31, we should therefore see memes on the signs and banners, hand signs from Jul to Britney Spears inviting to “Strike bitch”.