In the world of fast information, facilitated, and accessible content production for social media and digital entertainment, memes have become a universal language that connects millions of people around the planet.
A meme is an amusing or interesting item (such as a captioned picture or video) or genre of items that is spread widely online especially through social media, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary.
Whether the goal of memes is to entertain and make the audience laugh or they seek to stimulate discussion and reflection, this form of visual expression has become an unavoidable phenomenon in the digital world. Through images, photos, gifs, short videos, and creative text captions, young people from Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) find a way to express themselves, connect, and make each other laugh.
As long as there is BiH, there will also be memes
“We have been annoying right-wingers and haters since 2017,” it is written in the description of the profile on social media of CAT (Citizens Against Terrorism), an initiative in BiH, whose goal is the fight against radicalism that leads to extremism and terrorism.
Slobodan Blagovcanin, who is part of the initiative, said that from the beginning they saw social media as a field of their activity and that memes were a smart way to express themselves. Moreover, memes are free and all that is needed is an idea, inspiration, and goodwill.
Young people from all parts of BiH, who are gathered around the CAT BiH initiative, were annoyed by radicalism and nationalism, Blagovcanin emphasized. He points out that BiH society is “not only a corrupt society, but we are also a very hypocritical society”, referring to both politicians and citizens.
“The form of memes is ideal for criticizing some hypocritical behavior and statements. People, unfortunately, very often do not know how to read between the lines, but we feel that we encourage critical thinking,” Blagovcanin explained.
“Memes are a global Esperanto”
For Vuk Vucetic, Doctor of Communication Sciences, memes are a reflection of the contemporary mediatization of a society in which more and more communication is done through images. He also confirms that memes serve as a kind of new language that is primarily used by young people, but also by different generations of people.
“Memes are often a reflection of some internal communication. Frequently, small groups of people create their own, authentic, original memes that actually have meaning within those groups. But also, memes tend to spread globally, so I would say that some well-known meme sites on the Internet serve as a kind of training ground for the creation of some kind of global language, that is, global culture, whereby people connect more through memes, regardless of cultural, language, time and space barriers,” explains Vucetic.
He adds that it can also be noticed that memes are also used in political-propaganda messages, in order for different political actors to express their views and promote political ideas. He believes that memes can have a positive democratizing effect because they influence the connection of people, can provoke public debate, and be a bridge between young people and various social and political topics that are not so widely represented.
Vucetic also believes that there is no definitive answer as to whether memes are good or bad.
“Depending on how we use them, they can be a great tool for the creative expression of young people, for some kind of connection, homogenization of society, but of course, at the same time, they can have a negative political and propaganda dimension. It’s like dynamite, depending on how you use it, you’ll get exactly those results,” Vucetic concluded, Radio Slobodna Evropa reports.
E.Dz.
