Wenn Memes Politik machen : Eine Analyse von Memes der Operation Libero in Schweizer Abstimmungskampagnen
The following study aims to investigate how Internet Memes can manifest themselves in the political campaigns created by Swiss political group Operation Libero. For that purpose, a collection of 64 Internet Memes that were published on Operation Libero's Facebook page in referendum campaigns between February 2016 and February 2020 was gathered. A close reading based on both multimodality theory and the discourse historical approach addresses the questions of how arguments are created within Internet Memes with regards to both images and text and how they interact with the broader political discourse. The overarching purpose of this study is to shed light on how this specific phenomenon within digital election campaigns functions and how it can be utilized as a tool for political persuasion.