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How “the left” meme: analyzing taboo in the internet memes of r/DankLeft
Umeå University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Sociology. (DIGSUM)ORCID iD: 0000-0002-9572-5922
Uppsala University, Sweden.
Umeå University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Sociology.ORCID iD: 0000-0001-6289-9427
2025 (English)In: New Media and Society, ISSN 1461-4448, E-ISSN 1461-7315, Vol. 27, no 7, p. 3950-3972Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

This article explores how “the left” meme and the character and emotional reception of taboo-breaking therein via the case of r/DankLeft—a USA-centric Marxist, Anarchist, and Democratic Socialist Internet meme community. It asks: what themes do popular r/DankLeft Internet memes relate to, how does taboo feature within popular r/DankLeft Internet memes, and can any differences in the ways in which taboo-related r/DankLeft Internet memes are received be discerned. In turn, it carries out a thematic analysis of 366 popular memes, a multimodal critical discourse analysis of 41 taboo-related popular memes, and a comparative sentiment analysis of the comments these and other memes have received in r/DankLeft. The article finds that popular memes in r/DankLeft primarily relate to perceived threats to its community of users. It also shows that taboo-breaking does feature in r/DankLeft memes and that when it does correlative patterns emerge in terms of popularity and emotional reception.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Sage Publications, 2025. Vol. 27, no 7, p. 3950-3972
Keywords [en]
Digital culture, discourse analysis, Internet memes, left-wing, radical left, Reddit, sentiment analysis, taboo-breaking, thematic analysis
National Category
Sociology (excluding Social Work, Social Psychology and Social Anthropology) Media and Communication Studies
Research subject
Sociology; media and communication studies
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-221499DOI: 10.1177/14614448241232144ISI: 001173373300001Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85185943739OAI: oai:DiVA.org:umu-221499DiVA, id: diva2:1840749
Part of project
Algorithms of Resistance: Analysing and harnessing anti-racist activism in the age of datafication, Swedish Research Council
Funder
Swedish Research Council, 2019-03351Available from: 2024-02-26 Created: 2024-02-26 Last updated: 2025-09-25Bibliographically approved

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Merrill, SamuelLindgren, Simon

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