Internet memes as a tool of popcultural citizenship

This bachelor thesis focuses on internet memes as a possible element of political communication. Memes themselves were first investigated by R. Dawkins in the late 1970s. With the rise of the Internet, the concept began to appear under the term 'Internet memes'. The history of the concept of meme, both in its classical and internet form, is included in this thesis, alongside their definitions, as with the concept of political communication, for which I offer different variants of definition. In addition, I also present the Internet homes of memes, i.e. the websites on which Internet memes have developed (and continue to develop) and on which they are disseminated. After introducing the basic categories of memes, I focus on introducing the "Pepe the Frog" meme, as a distinctly unique meme with respect to its history and "life journey", in the context of political communication. Subsequently, I offer other formats of memes, from other categories, that have been used in political communication, but their history is not as deep and significant as Pepe's. There are examples of global memes as well as memes from the Czech Republic. Apart from the internet sources, I have used the book by L. Shifman: Memes in Digital Culture and by Brian McNair: An Introduction to Political Communication and a documentary..