Meme Culture: A Study of Humor and Satire in Digital Media

Abstract

Meme culture is an interesting phenomenon in digital media that plays an important role in digital communication and culture that has become a popular tool for conveying information and ideas that spread rapidly on the internet and social media platforms. The purpose of this study is to examine more deeply how the satire discourse is contained in pictorial texts and purely texts in memes how the role of memes in digital media, and how their impact in digital media as well as knowing how the role of memes in shaping individual and group identity. This research is interesting because the satirical humor style contained in memes is an effective, practical, absurd response to entertainment, politics, education, culture, and others and can shift, exclude, and reverse discourse, because it can create new discourse. This research study uses critical discourse analysis by Norman Fairclough, which identifies that discourse can be a series of spoken and written words or a series of speech acts. With this analytical knife, it was found that satire in memes on social media is used in the form of satire and criticism of things that are going viral and how these issues affect social media in the real world. Memes are not seen as silent, passive, and ready-made texts when produced. Instead, memes are dynamic and mobile strategies through comedic satire.