Just a meme? : The role of context in mythologies of memetic misogyny

Özkula, Suay Melisa and Prieto-Blanco, Patricia and Morales, Esteban and Divon, Tom and Lundqvist, Martin (2026) Just a meme? : The role of context in mythologies of memetic misogyny. New Media and Society, 28 (4). pp. 1592-1618. ISSN 1461-4448

Text (10.1177_14614448251396942.pdf)
10.1177_14614448251396942.pdf - Published Version
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial.
Download (1MB)

Abstract

This article provides a multiplatform systematic analysis of contextual factors in what we term memetic misogyny, a form of implicit, polysemous and ephemeral visual gender-based hate. We draw on a feminist ethnographic approach with a semiotic analysis applied across three case studies of meme-based misogyny (Greta Thunberg, Karens and anti-feminist memes related to protest #SisterIDoBelieveYou) on Twitter/X, Facebook, Reddit and YouTube to argue that memetic misogyny is created, maintained and co-shaped by (1) misogynistic contents (depictions, aesthetics and narrative framing), (2) platform affordances (real and imagined) – above all meme affordances and (3) the hegemonic discourses of the cultural communities where these are distributed. In combination, these three create what we call mythologies of memetic misogyny, that is, gendered socio-cultural and socio-political narratives that present misogynistic ideas as if they were natural, universal and timeless gendered truths, often going unnoticed because of the volatile, polysemous and polycontextual nature of memes.