The imitation game: The memefication of political discourse

Abstract

When you think of participatory democracy, do you visualise a town hall meeting or an Internet discussion thread full of political memes? Generations of political scientists have tried to innovate democracy by coming up with different participatory tools to moti-vate citizens to take a more active role. Oddly enough, memes, propelled by the ever-growing usage of social media and the Internet, have achieved a far more visible change in the political landscape than the aforementioned tools