After seeing Donald Trump’s AI-generated meme of Trump portraying himself as Jesus, I knew I had to ask Dr. Leslie Hahner, a professor of Communication Studies, to ask her opinion on it. I met Hahner last semester in her class entitled, “Theories and Methods of Visual Communication.” I took her class because I needed another rhetoric class for my major; little did I know I would come away with so much more knowledge about how people communicate with digital media positively and negatively.
I met with Hahner during her office hours last semester to have her assign my honors contract. As I told her about my potential research topic, she encouraged me to pursue it even though there was little research on it. I could tell from the start she wanted students to push themselves to be the best they could be.
As it turns out, Hahner is a well-known visual rhetorician who studies misinformation, disinformation, and propaganda. She specifically studies memes to understand how memes influence people to believe one way or another.
After a semester and a half and one research project later, I sat in Hahner’s office in Morrison. Her office is a quiet, relaxing, and welcoming space with a window that overlooks students walking to class. Hahner sat across from me, enthusiastic to talk about her field of study – memes.
Her interest in memes first began in 2011, after she had completed her PhD in visual rhetoric. Shortly after, Hahner saw LeBron James memes following his announcement of leaving the Cleveland Cavaliers. Additionally, there were riots that year in Canada over the Stanley Cup, and a meme emerged of a couple kissing amid the riots. So, she began to write about memes and the public arguments they make, and how memes work off people’s emotions.
After her daughter’s birth, Hahner became even more intrigued by memes. “My daughter was born in the end of 2012, and I was home a bunch for her early days. I started to look more into how memes were working, and that’s when I started to notice that there were entire collectives, testing memes in a political sense. And that really drew me in quickly,” Hahner said.
When thinking about memes, many people imagine the typical funny picture with the bold text making a joke about something. However, Hahner uses a two-pronged definition of a meme:
“One, a meme is any replicable unit in society–that is brought to us by behavioral biologists who study human behavior, which will argue that memes are any repetitive behavior. So, if you wore a snap bracelet in elementary school, and then all of your friends wore a snap bracelet, that would be a meme. But an internet meme is a replicable unit typically done in a visual unit … that seems iterative, right? It’s taking something that already exists and playing with it. And that tries to simplify messages to a great degree. So, I usually say a meme is a visual commonplace that is a replicable unit.”
“A meme is a visual commonplace that is a replicable unit.”
With this definition, it seems memes arise when something happens. According to Hahner, for a meme to go viral, it must be timely, in line with a cultural or social trend, and have a humorous or some sort of emotional resonance in a way that aligns with our day-to-day experiences as humans.
“An internet meme is a replicable unit, but it is typically done in a visual style. It is taking something that already exists and playing with it,” said Hahner.
For example, a famous meme that is often replicated features a little girl giving the stink eye in her car seat. People often reuse this image to make fun of a situation or get a point across.
In the years to come, memes will evolve, especially with the rise of AI-generated content. They may look a little different, and humans may have a harder time sensing what is AI and what is not AI.
“Most of the meme culture that is developing right now is going to rely heavily on AI-generated content. We’ll be used to seeing children’s toys mashed up with politics, we’ll be used to seeing our contemporary culture sent back to us through this uncanny image of AI. And that can be more effective or less effective depending on how people manage that. Some people think that AI-generated mimetic propaganda will become overwhelming, such that humans won’t be able to resist it. There’s also a school of thought that suggests that AI-generated propaganda is merely ‘slopaganda,’ and it will be ineffective, and people will hate it over time,” Hahner said.
Hahner feels that AI-generated propaganda will “present a new obstacle,” and this new tactic could be more or less successful, but it will also make propagandists’ jobs much easier in the long run as well.
This new tactic could be more or less successful, but it will also make propagandists’ jobs much easier in the long run as well.
“Right now, we’re really poised to learn a lot about what humans are attracted to, and what types of persuasive messages will actually work. Mimetic propaganda has operated in a long time through the vein of authenticity. This is an actual human expression,” Hahner said.
When using the word authenticity, it refers to how “real” or “memorable” a meme appears. Right now, people are constantly confusing AI-generated memes with factual evidence. This presents a new obstacle insofar as older people may not be able to decipher real news from fake news if AI-generated memes continue to be circulated. This raises the concern as to what is ethical to post as a meme and what is not. The answer to this remains somewhat unclear, though it may be argued that any AI-generated meme is unethical to post. A basic piece of advice Hahner recommends in all of her classes is to post things that promote human flourishing instead of posting something that could be problematic.
For those of you still wondering if the AI-generated image of Trump as Jesus that I referred to at the beginning of this article is a meme, according to Hahner, yes, it is a meme.
