The Reception of Memes as Political Information in the Media

Department of Communication, Universitas Diponegoro, Central Java, Indonesia

^* Corresponding author: hedipudjos@gmail.com

Abstract

Lately memes have been using as viral marketing for products in advertising or satire in political campaigns in Indonesia. In 2013 Richard Dawkins, the author of The Selfish Gene (1976), characterized that memes on the internet as a human creativity. The pictures in the meme are tailored to the user’s feelings and become the feeling of society. Meme cannot be said to be the ideal journalistic formula because most of them do not use the 5W + 1H journalism rule. Ironically though meme is not information that contains accuracy, relevance, and completeness of journalism, but at the same time it is in great demand even highly trusted, as they are easily accepted as information. While information that does not contain accuracy, often called hoax news. In Indonesia meme experiencing a surge in volume during the last 2014 presidential election; there are so many memes about Jokowi and Prabowo circulating on the Internet at the time, and later also many outstanding memes that contain the image in the form of satire, silly and even funny. Meme phenomenon related closely with the ease of dissemination of information through the media, especially online media. Bauckhage (2011: 42), meme usually develops through comments, imitations, parodies, or even media coverage. Meanwhile, according to Shifman (2013: 362), meme phrases are generally applied to describe propaganda. In Indonesia, meme is dominated by political news and satire especially during the 2014 presidential election.