Meme-Ing Accountability: Visual Communication as Character Assassination of Austrian and Swedish Politicians and Government Agencies During the COVID-19 Pandemic

In the contemporary digital society, a way of contesting power and claim public accountability is through the use and spread of political memes, as a viral, multimodal (visual and text) genre of communication in the intersection between popular culture and politics. During the COVID-19 pandemic, just like in other contemporary issues, memes of success and failures in the management of the crisis went viral on social media. This chapter explores and compares how negative political memes were used in Austria and Sweden to articulate character assassination of leading politicians and other public power holders responsible for handling the pandemic. Three different dimensions of character assassination are identified which involve qualities of ethics, competence and appearance. Four memes from each country are analyzed, all collected between March 2020 – June 2021. The analysis shows that the memes commented on, criticized and mocked leading politicians and other public officials during the ongoing crisis. Critical evaluations were often expressed in a single meme by a combination of two different dimensions of character assassination. Attacks on ethics and competence were identified, as well as on appearance and competence. However, not on the combination of appearance and ethics. Similarities in the use of memes were found between Austria and Sweden, but also important differences: while the physical appearance of politicians and other power holders was commonly addressed in the Austrian memes, this did not occur in the Swedish ones. Instead, appearance was here addresses in a symbolic and figurative sense.