Sorted for Memes and Gifs: Visual Media and Everyday Digital Politics

This article identifies an unease, or even squeamishness, in the way in which political science addresses social media and digital politics, and argues that we urgently need to avoid such squeamishness if we are to adequately grasp the texture and character of contemporary digitally mediated politics. The first section highlights some of the methodological assumptions that underpin this squeamishness. Section ‘Visual Culture and the “Memeification” of Politics’, drawing on a recent research project on the changing shape of the British left, highlights a number of key trends in digital politics which deserve more attention from political scientists. In particular, I stress the ways in which politics is enacted in and through visual media such as gifs, memes and other forms of shareable visual content. Section ‘Re-Orienting the Study of Digital Politics’ then mines recent literature in media and communication studies to highlight a range of conceptual and methodological approaches that might be better able to capture the contours of these emergent forms of digitally mediated politics. In the section ‘The Pleasures and Passions of Socially Mediated Politics: Towards a Research Agenda’, I articulate a possible research agenda. Overall, I encourage political scientists to see the production and exchange of digital visual media not as some frivolous activity on the margins of politics, but as increasingly central to the everyday practices of politically engaged citizens.