Internet Memes as Protest Media in Populist Hungary

Scholars propose that memes are efficient tools of political mobilization as they stimulate large masses to take up a cause. Focusing on what is called O1G activism in Hungary, I demonstrate that the role of memes in political activism is conditioned by the particular sociopolitical contexts in which they are produced. In Hungary, activists used social media to assemble databases of O1G memes, but this strategy was not conducive to building narrative capacity. These databases, however, galvanized other prominent developments. They helped make the domain of politics more inclusive by reconfiguring the affective tone of engagement from confrontation to conversation.