Memes have become a fundamental aspect of Internet culture and the native language of social media. With their ability to easily convey a message and to be easily shared, they have been adopted by many movements, especially in the Asia-Pacific. Meme creation is driven by remixing and recontextualizing popular images to create interesting ways of distributing messages. Memes within the context of movements tend to be inherently political. Using political humour on the Internet can contribute to the creation and consolidation of a network of shared meanings which then reframes content from mainstream culture. Humour is a means for politics to be explored and understood.

Memes are a cultural product based on social relations, memories, historic, geographic and economic references as well as specific conjectural aspects. Memes that Internet users post, share, and like best are what they find interesting and humorous, reflect their impression of a topic and affect or sensitize them to a topic. Memes can allow non-elite Internet users to yield influence and make their voices heard. Through this, memes can become a tool for grassroots action in human rights movements as memes can be utilized to spread messages quickly.

To demonstrate this, eight political memes from Southeast Asia will be reflected on.

The meme above utilizes the popular Drake meme format known is Drakeposting. This meme typically has two images of the rapper Drake with one representing that he doesn’t approve of something and the other representing that he does approve. The Drakeposting meme is utilized here to criticize Philippine President Rodrigo Roa Duterte.

This meme has remixed the Drakeposting format by removing the second image of Drake. This was done to convey a particular message. The absence of the second image of Drake is meant to imply that when one was critical of Indonesian brutal military dictator General Suharto, who was in power from 1967 until 1998, they would disappear in some manner.

This is an example of the Cat Drake meme format which has become a popular remixing of the original Drake meme. This meme is criticizing Indonesians for the ongoing conflict in West Papua where the people of West Papua are fighting for their independence from Indonesia. This meme is conveying that though Indonesians are against colonization such as the Dutch colonization of Indonesia, they reject the idea of the Indonesian colonization of West Papua.

This meme takes on a popular format of utilizing a topical cultural image with an overlaid humorous text to make a political statement. This image is of former vice presidential candidate Sandiaga Uno with the current vice president, Ma’ruf Amin, before a national debate showing him paying respect to his elder as culturally dictated by kissing his hand even though he is his competitor.

This meme also uses a culturally relevant image overlaid with text to make a political point. This image, however, has been photoshopped to add different shoes and a communist bandana utilizing the ‘ugly aesthetic’ often used in memes. This meme is commenting on Bong Go – a Filipino politician – stating that students go up into the mountains in the night to work for the communist party.

This meme is less focused on criticizing Duterte and more focused on making fun of him. Using humour this way is a common aspect of political meme culture. This meme was posted in a meme Facebook group soon after a report was released that Duterte had fallen from his motorcycle. Though some might see this meme and think it is supporting Duterte, this meme, in fact, does nothing of the sort.  A reading of or direct knowledge of Psalm 109:8 – “May his days be few; may another take his place of leadership” – is required to fully understand the humour within the multiple layers of context used in this meme.

This is a remixed version of the popular I Am The Senate meme. This meme was remixed to criticize Thailand Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha. Prayut is not only the Prime Minister but he also serves as Thailand’s Defence Minister and head of the Royal Thai Police. Therefore, by repurposing this meme, it is able to criticize Prayut’s overarching control of the government that goes against the will of the people.

This meme comments on the Thai election and a secret parliament vote that resulted in the former Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva quitting parliament after his party – the Democrat Party – voted to join the junta-aligned coalition backing Prayuth Chan-o-cha’s bid to become Prime Minister. The Distracted Boyfriend meme was remixed with photoshopped images to represent the feelings of the citizens. Here, the distracted boyfriend has the Democrat party logo photoshopped on him. He is looking back at another girl with the photoshopped face of Prayuth Chan-o-cha while his upset girlfriend has text over her that reads ‘us citizens’. Through this, a message of feeling ignored by the Democrat party is conveyed.

Carmen Ferri is the Asia policy and countering hate speech intern at the Association For Progressive Communications (APC) and is currently based in the Philippines. Carmen holds an MA in New Media and Digital Culture from the University of Amsterdam and an undergraduate in Liberal Arts: Cultural Studies and Sociology from Maastricht University. Her areas of interest include subculture construction in online spaces, online community building, issue mapping, and online political movements.

120 activists, campaigners, journalists, artists, technologists, each supporting various movements from across Southeast Asia, gathered in the Philippines in October 2019 to learn, share, and co-create solutions to the burning issues in the region.

Read more here.

120 activists, campaigners, journalists, artists, technologists, each supporting various movements from across Southeast Asia, gathered in the Philippines in October 2019 to learn, share, and co-create solutions to the burning issues in the region.

Read more here.

Indonesian activist Dhyta Caturani told her story about the recent student protests in Indonesia during the recently concluded Coconet II in the Philippines.

Here is her speech:

I know many of you here. We have met in spaces like this many many times. But most of those who know me don’t know that this year, 2019, marks 20 years of me being shot to a comatose state in 1999. I was beaten up and shot by the police during a protest. I was in a coma for 4 days. And I suffered from a brain injury for years.

But I am still in the movement till today and was still on the street just two weeks ago. Because we had one people’s uprising recently.

But there is also another fact–what keeps me present in the movements. It’s hope. I am angry when I see injustice. But I know that there is also hope if you want to fight for everything good in our life. That’s why I’m in the movement.

Every one of us has a different reason they are in the movement or become an activist. I know that there is one thing that makes the movement keep going. I want to tell you a story about the people’s uprising that is happening in Indonesia.

Many of my friends are here. They were also the organisers of many protests that happened in Jakarta, Yogyakarta, and many other cities in Indonesia.

After Soeharto, the dictator fell in 1998 by a people’s uprising, the movement basically died down. After that, it was only the workers who could mobilise a lot of people, not the students, or the activists. But recently, a lot of bad things happened that was done by our government. That forced people to come out on the street again.

A lot of victims fell on the ground. Some fell because of the teargas and a number of others were seen with bleeding heads and bleeding faces.

We were still on the ground at around 7 pm when the high school students came — still wearing their uniforms.

Because the police did a lot of bad things to the protesters, and they could not take it anymore. They did not want their fellow Indonesian brothers and sisters beaten up, teargassed. That’s why they had come down on the streets and fought with us.

So, that is what is very important. And since the 24th of September, they organised protests themselves, thousands of high school students were on the streets. And they also joined us in the protests on the 30th of September. On that day there were way more high school students than other activists.

UPDATE: Dinh Thao is now safe at home, according to reports from close family. However, her passport was confiscated. We will update this post with further developments.

This morning, at 8:50 AM, activist Dinh Thao took a flight from Bangkok to Hanoi (Noi Bai). She had decided to return to her homeland after nearly 4 years of capacity building and human rights advocacy for Vietnam across many countries around the world.

Her allies on the ground reported that when Dinh Thao arrived at the airport, more than 10 security officials surrounded her and took her into an interrogation room. They have lost contact with her from that point onwards.

Advocates from across Southeast Asia are calling for her immediate release. “Vietnam has an obligation under international law to refrain from intimidating and obstructing the work of human rights defenders (HRDs),” said Gayatri Khandhadai, Asia Policy Regional Coordinator of the Association for Progressive Communications (APC).