Banca de QUALIFICAÇÃO: ARTHUR DE OLIVEIRA ROCHA

SOCIAL PARTICIPATION AND POLITICAL ENGAGEMENT WITH INTERNET MEMES ABOUT THE FIRST YEAR OF THE BOLSONARO GOVERNMENT

memes; memetics; activism; memeactivism; Bolsonaro.

Memes are part of the daily life of Brazilian internet users today. Contact with this type of content occurs especially through digital social networks. They circulate and spread among users on the web and there are countless profiles and pages created exclusively for publishing memes, leveraging a significant number of followers and likes. Even though the term “meme” emerged with the studies of memetics to designate something very different from the understanding we have today, this terminology was given new meaning to its updated version of “internet meme”. This work aims to understand how internet memes portrayed the first year of Bolsonaro's government, what was the role of these memes, what narrative they tell and how they acted. To this end, a quantitative and qualitative content analysis is carried out applied to a research corpus composed of internet memes, taken from pages and humorous profiles on Facebook and Instagram, posted in 2019, which criticized then-president Jair Bolsonaro, aspects of his management and figures linked to the then government. More than a media genre for the benefit of entertainment, the meme can be a device for Internet users to respond to political and social issues in the country, using resources such as humor, satire, remixing, intertextuality and elements of pop culture to engaging the population on topics of public interest in a lighter and more subtle way. Memes have increasingly become a resource for the population to express their opinion and exercise their freedom of expression in cyberspace, moving public opinion and involving people in a form of virtual activism that has creativity and laughter as key points, memeactivism. Furthermore, the meme reaches a level at which it can be understood as a new form of language, of literacy, especially for new generations, on the media platforms that emerge with the advancement and development of information and communication technologies.