Banca de DEFESA: ARTHUR DE OLIVEIRA ROCHA

MEMEACTIVISM: SOCIAL PARTICIPATION AND POLITICAL ENGAGEMENT ON THE INTERNET DURING THE BOLSONARO GOVERNMENT

meme; activism; political humor; pop culture; meaning-making

Memes are part of the daily life of Brazilian internet users. Contact with this content occurs mainly through digital social networks. They circulate and spread among users, and there are numerous profiles and pages created exclusively for publishing memes, generating a significant number of followers, comments, likes, and shares. Although the term "meme" was popularized with studies in memetics to designate something different from today's understanding, this terminology was redefined to mean "internet meme." This study aims to understand how internet memes portrayed the first year of Bolsonaro's presidency. The following questions guide the research: What was the role of these memes? What narrative do they tell? And how did they operate? For this purpose, a quantitative and qualitative content analysis, based on Bardin (2008), is applied to a research corpus composed of internet memes taken from humorous pages and profiles on Facebook and Instagram, posted in 2019, which criticized then-President Jair Bolsonaro, aspects of his government, and figures linked to the administration. The central hypothesis is that the production and consumption of these memes served as a form of resistance from those dissatisfied with the government through memeactivism, a type of creative activism that uses satirical humor as a tool, leveraging the widespread popularity of memes among the general population and using digital media, the internet, and social networks as an ideal environment for content circulation. The theoretical framework is based on studies of comedy and humor, from Alberti (2002), Bergson (1983), Minois (2003), and Propp (1992); memes and memetics, supported by Blackmore (2000), Chagas (2020), Dawkins (2007), and Shifman (2013); and activism, according to Braighi; Câmara (2018), Cardon; Granjon (2010), Carpentier (2017), Downing (2002), and Gentilli (2005). The results indicate that the meme acted as an important device of resistance for internet users in the face of political and social issues of the government. Resources such as humor, satire, remixing, intertextuality, and pop culture were used to engage the population, particularly those less likely to engage with politics in a more light-hearted and subtle way. Memes were used as a tool for citizens to express their opinions about Bolsonaro and his government in cyberspace.