Dissent in Remix Digital Culture: Subversive Humour in the Memeification of Giorgia Meloni’s 2019 Discourse

This thesis investigates the role of internet memes in the reframing and subversion of Giorgia Meloni’s 2019 political speech held in Rome on November 19th, 2019. To analyse the corpus of memes that emerged from the viral #iosonogiorgia trend, a mixed-methodological framework was developed, combining Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis with both humour and subversive theories. The analysis investigates how humour functioned as a key mechanism in the memeification process that transformed Meloni’s speech from an authoritative and nationalistic discourse into an artifact of collective ridicule and cultural play. The analysis revealed that the memes employed five main subversive mechanisms, namely parodic roleplay and mimicry, juxtaposition and incongruity, personal denigration, fragmentation and repetition, and decontextualisation and trivialisation. Humour in the corpus thus operates not only as a source of amusement but as a vehicle for digital participatory dissent and as a...Show moreThis thesis investigates the role of internet memes in the reframing and subversion of Giorgia Meloni’s 2019 political speech held in Rome on November 19th, 2019. To analyse the corpus of memes that emerged from the viral #iosonogiorgia trend, a mixed-methodological framework was developed, combining Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis with both humour and subversive theories. The analysis investigates how humour functioned as a key mechanism in the memeification process that transformed Meloni’s speech from an authoritative and nationalistic discourse into an artifact of collective ridicule and cultural play. The analysis revealed that the memes employed five main subversive mechanisms, namely parodic roleplay and mimicry, juxtaposition and incongruity, personal denigration, fragmentation and repetition, and decontextualisation and trivialisation. Humour in the corpus thus operates not only as a source of amusement but as a vehicle for digital participatory dissent and as a means of diluting ideological weight. By highlighting how humour and meme culture operate in a digital political environment, this thesis contributes to broadening the understanding of political memes as rhetorical and subversive tools.Show less

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Dissent in Remix Digital Culture: Subversive Humour in the Memeification of Giorgia Meloni’s 2019 Discourse