Election 2024: Political parties urged to utilize memes as a form of communication to entice young voters

In an era where social media dominate our lives, political parties have been advised to leverage internet memes, as it is fast becoming a form of communication tool among social media users.

Political Marketing Strategist at the University of Ghana, Professor Kobby Mensah believes that memes can be used to influence voters. He described memes as a heuristic form of communication which allow people to be provoked and engaged.

Commenting on the back of TV3’s feature titled “From Laughter to deception? The Role of Internet Memes in Modern Communication,” Prof. Mensah argues that as politics is perceived to be hard news and perhaps, not appealing to some people, this alternative approach can be adopted to engage political stakeholders so they can equally contribute to the national discourse.

He said, “For stakeholders who are hard to reach, especially the young people, political parties can use memes to obviously communicate information that young people actually find it difficult to communicate. With issues like corruption, you can use memes to get people interested in corruption news, just as criticizing an opponent too”.

He indicated that political parties can also use memes to communicate their manifestos since everything cannot be in hard print.

“You could actually use memes to communicate simple ideas and very complex ideas as well. And that could be far-reaching because you can have it gone viral for example. So yes, political parties can effectively use it”. Professor Kobby Mensah spoke to Grace Agyemang on TV3 Weekend Central.

The feature titled “From Laughter to deception? The Role of Internet Memes in Modern Communication” is a four-minute news feature by TV3’s Job Kwabena Laboja exploring the widespread adoption of internet memes as a form of online communication and how they are transforming the way information is shared and consumed among internet users.

Internet memes are predominantly funny online images, videos and texts that become viral through a collective process of sharing, imitation and remixing.

By Ademayah Nyansamoahene