‘These Nevada memes are coming out faster than the results’: Community power and public solidarity in 2020 election memes

Abstract

In the fall of 2020, the nation was grappling with a global pandemic, a racial reckoning, and historic levels of political divide and uncertainty, leading up to a national election in November. During a time when it seemed nothing could manifest itself without being constituted in opposition to a political “other,” memes responding to the counting of ballots in swing states, particularly Nevada, flooded social media. In this article, I use a collection of Nevada election memes to show the power of harnessing humor and community values across national and local audiences. Because memes rely on community norms, their ability to build rhetorical bridges lies in fostering shared commitment and redistributing power dynamics away from institutions and towards the public. Using visual typology and rhetorical topological coding, I will discuss how Nevada election memes showcase strategies of solidarity (linked to common topoi and endoxa), helping audiences cope through a difficult time in our national history and offering an example of how political discourse can be configured around and above political binaries. In our communities, classrooms, and digital spaces, applying this technique reframes political discourse that traditionally capitalizes on division by instead focusing on building discourse grounded in commonality and community.