Memes as Mobilizational Rhetoric: Emotion, Circulation, and Resistance in the July Uprising

This paper examines the rhetorical and circulatory dynamics of internet memes in the July Uprising in Bangladesh, focusing on how these dynamics contributed to political mobilization. Drawing on existing scholarship on multimodality, shared emotional registers, humour, and in-group identification, the paper analyzes three widely reproduced meme forms that emerged from protestor communities: the shooting of protestor Abu Sayed, the SuperVan girl, and the “Natok kom koro pio” meme. Each meme is examined in relation to its physical protest event, visual composition, subsequent recontextualization, and circulation across digital platforms. The results of these analyses demonstrate how memes mobilize through empowering the exchange of emotions. Memes will only become widely reproduced if the viewing community connects with them, which in these cases, occur through identifying with Abu Sayed’s martyrdom, SuperVan girl’s victor narrative, and the collective contempt for state authority. Understanding the emotional needs of participants becomes important to meme creators, as the memetic circulation functions as a form of collective and democratic authorship. These circulations also illustrate the reciprocal relationship created between the online communities and offline protest events. The paper argues that memes do not only reflect political reality, they actively become a means through which physical events are shaped, interpreted and remembered, redistributing controlling power over political narratives. The physical events and artifacts become symbols in internet culture while pieces of pre-existing internet culture become integrated into the physical reality of protests.