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Society. Document. Communication

Article

Political memes as a communicative tool for shaping public opinion in election campaigns: A comparative analysis

Klementin Mile, Besian Zogaj
Retrieved from Volume 11, No. 2, 2026 Pages 166–178
Received
05.01.2026
Revised
16.04.2026
Accepted
12.05.2026
Published
30.05.2026
Views
29

Abstract

The aim of the study was to identify trends in the operation of political memes across various sociopolitical contexts and to ascertain their impact on the formation of public perceptions during election campaigns. To investigate the structure, tone, and dissemination of political memes across four electoral campaigns (United States 2016, Brazil 2018, Ukraine 2019, and India 2019), the methodological framework combined corpus and network analysis. This approach enabled the tracing of variations across platforms and types of digital interaction. The results demonstrate that political memes are complex visual-textual units that inform, affect, mobilise, discredit, and signal political belonging. Their dominant functions vary according to political context, platform architecture, and audience structure: emotional and discrediting memes intensified polarisation and reinforced candidate-related frames in the US; mobilisational and informational memes facilitated the construction of a “new” anti-system candidate and encouraged youth engagement in Ukraine; and WhatsApp-based memes supported targeted mobilization in Brazil. The findings further reveal that open platforms, such as X, Reddit, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, increase visibility, virality, and agenda-setting. Conversely, closed or semi-closed channels, like WhatsApp and Telegram, enhance group-based trust and targeted dissemination while reducing transparency and external verification. The study concludes that the influence of political memes depends on informational compression, emotional resonance, and identificational signalling, rather than any single communicative function. Ultimately, political memes represent an independent form of digital political communication capable of influencing public opinion through interaction with user communities, platform algorithms, and content. These findings have practical implications for media literacy initiatives, platform regulation, electoral communication analysis, and the development of rapid visual fact-checking techniques tailored to modern digital campaigns

Keywords

social media; digital communication; voter; campaign; mobilisation

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Suggested citation

Mile, K., & Zogaj, B. (2026). Political memes as a communicative tool for shaping public opinion in election campaigns: A comparative analysis. Society. Document. Communication, 11(2), 166-178. https://doi.org/10.69587/sdc/2.2026.166