The Seriousness of Humorous Content: Analyzing Opposition Memes During the 2022 Philippine Elections Using a Discourse-Historical Approach
Vincent Carlo Lim Legara, Manuel Enverga IIIAbstract
This paper employs a discourse-historical approach to analyze the memes shared by the political opposition during the 2022 presidential elections in the Philippines. To do this, researchers examined the content shared within a Facebook group given the pseudonym “Opposition House of Memes.” The examination of more than two thousand memes found that the content could be categorized into five themes: (1) criticisms against the Marcos family; (2) criticisms against the Duterte family, (3) criticisms against the Villar family, (4) comparisons between Robredo and Marcos, and (5) identification as a community of Robredo supporters. The researchers found that, when analyzed in terms of the context in which it was produced, the content was underpinned by critiques of the prevalence of political dynasties in national government and of Filipinos’ inclination to vote for recognizable personalities rather than competence or experience in public service.