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Article published In: Journal of Language and Politics
Vol. 24:5 (2025) ► pp.802–823

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Romania’s first female prime minister’s meme-ification

Humor and the trivialization of politics in satirical memes

ORCiD logo with link | National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest
ORCiD logo with link | National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest
ORCiD logo with link | National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest
Published online: 13 September 2024
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.22010.neg
Abstract
Political memes are ubiquitous in social media. They are easy to make, alter and spread, and they are a funny way of sanctioning politicians. This paper seeks to analyze the satirical memes targeting Viorica Dăncilă and to explore the extent to which such memes could be considered a manifestation of political trivialization rather than of criticism. Drawing on qualitative methods of text and image analysis we ask: (1) how is humor constructed in political memes targeting Romania’s former prime minister, and (2) to what extent could the memes be considered either a form of political criticism or a matter of pure entertainment. Our findings show that the humor in the examined memes is largely offensive (including sexist and misogynistic), sometimes at the expense of humor display. We argue that such offensive content triggers a cancellation of the criticizing force of the memes and an amplification of their short-lived amusement value.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction and context
  • 2.Humor: A key feature of successful memes
  • 3.Humor in satirical political memes
  • 4.Methodology
  • 5.Findings
    • 5.1Classification of humor techniques
    • 5.2Categories and topics of humor
  • 6.Discussion
  • 7.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
References (43)
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