Whether it's former President Donald Trump’s face photoshopped into Hulk Hogan’s body, or Vice President Kamala Harris climbing a coconut tree, the 2024 political season is the first to truly highlight the growth of social media, particularly memes.

Some are positive, some negative. Some are funny and some downright mean. But they are here to stay and could be having a much bigger influence than you think.

What You Need To Know

  • Memes started entering the political world in 2012, when Barack Obama and Mitt Romney battled for the presidency

  •  While memes can be fun and even funny, they are often outright mean. Some present misleading information.

  • Campaigns, however, have been using memes more than ever and taking advantage when famous people offer their thoughts via meme

From the moment President Joe Biden stepped down from the campaign, to today with Kamala Harris being the Democratic frontrunner, those with social media and some extra time on their hands have been hard at work creating memes.

“I think we can see it actually going back to the 2012 election, when it was Barack Obama versus Mitt Romney. That's when I think we started seeing and analyzing a lot of memes being used,” Syracuse University Department of Communications and Rhetorical Studies Associate Professor Sylvia Sierra said. 

Harris has become the center of the political meme universe.

Memes – photos or videos on your social media feeds, often with a caption or voice – can make you think. They can make you laugh. And yes, these days, they can also have a very mean spirit behind them.

“The political climate, right, is generally pretty hostile, I would say. I don't know if that's anything new, although some people argue it's gotten worse. I think it's just, you can really see it a lot better kind of in real time now through these mediums," Sierra said.

Good or bad, the memes are here to stay and political campaigns almost have to play along.

“You had like F.D.R. with fireside chats. You had Bill Clinton playing the saxophone, broadcasted on TV for people to see. Now we have the internet,” Sierra added, noting that some politicians have even endorsed others through the use of memes.

And if the memes come from an internet influencer or a major celebrity, the reach the impact on voters could be huge.

“The people who are managing the campaigns are starting to latch on to those memes and exploit them a little bit,” Sierra said.

In fact, just go back to the beginning of this story, the word "brat" flashing in neon green over Harris. You think that was bad, right? Brat? No, not in this context.

It's the name of an album from mega pop-star Charli XCX, and it means something very good from her and to her millions of followers. They call it "Brat Summer," and some have even used the coconut tree reference, which originally was used to claim Harris was crazy, as something now used to support her candidacy.

“Everyone who's online saw that and that got picked up, even by the Harris campaign itself,” Sierra said. "We noticed Harris’ campaign Twitter header was in that same color."

Which does beg the question, how important is all of this to the voter?

“When they're used correctly, yes, because when people find things funny, they want to keep looking,” SU student Jack Noreika said.

“On that level, it should be a little more professional. But I think as far as news goes, probably political memes definitely have more of an outreaching effect,” Clay’s Matt Baldigo said.

What scares Sierra is the amount of misinformation that comes with memes and social media in general. She says without context, without fact-checking, headline readers are not getting the information they need.

Sierra says the misinformation is why the actual candidates should probably shy away from creating or even sharing memes, and let the campaigns do that for them.