Political Memes: A Potential Avenue for Teaching Visual Literacy

In the past two decades, screen-based technology like smartphone devices has become ubiquitous within global society. These devices primarily function with visual displays and have allowed visual media to flourish. Visual literacy, the ability to critically consume visual material, is thus an essential competency to teach students for them to be able to navigate the increasingly visual world. The current and upcoming generations of students who grew up surrounded by technology like personal computers and smartphones are what some researchers call “digital natives.” They use visual forms of communication (emoticons, emojis, stickers, GIFs, and memes) to communicate online (in social media and messaging apps) instead of solely traditional word-based forms. However, being constantly bombarded by visuals growing up does not automatically equal visual literacy and, by extension, media literacy. Academic studies on university students’ visual literacy found that students lacked competencies in visual literacy and were not as visually literate as was assumed. When presented with images, the university students in the study lacked skills in critical analysis of visual components, including contextual details, possible manipulations, and what is being implicitly communicated. Therefore, competencies in visual literacy, media literacy, and other related literacies are of the utmost importance in teaching students. This essay will focus on the potential of a specific, emerging type of visual that I argue can be utilized for teaching visual literacy: the Internet meme