Internet Memes as Instruments of Subversion in the Context of Islam and Muslims

This research investigates the nature of internet memes as instruments of subversion in the context of Islam and Muslims. For the purpose of this research, internet memes including Twitter hashtags have been conceived as idea units. The study employed network analysis to examine roughly 208,000 Twitter hashtags related to Islam and Muslims. Based on this data, actor and hashtag networks were created in order to understand the relationship between leading actors, co- occurring hashtags, dominant discursive practices, and their subversion. Thematic analysis of internet memes was also undertaken in order to study the visual and textual elements in the larger context in which the memes were set. Two major themes emerged: ‘Everyday life and Lived Religion’, and ‘Terrorism, Security and Surveillance’. The study provides evidence of agency of individuals to create fissures in the institutional narratives by reappropriating and subverting the popular symbols originally created by social structures as well as creating their own set of language which is unique to the format of internet memes. The findings derived from the network analysis as well as the thematic analysis also demonstrated the relevance of Richard Dawkins’s (1976) gene-meme analogy.