How do Internet memes speak security?

Abstract

Recently, scholars have worked to widen the scope of security studies to address security silences by considering how visuals speak security and banal acts securitise. Scholarship on internet memes and their co-constitution with political discourse is also growing. This article seeks to merge this literature by engaging in a visual security analysis of ‘everyday’ memes. A bricolage-inspired method analyses the security speech of memes as manifestations, behaviours and ideals. The case study of Pepe the Frog highlights how memes are visual ‘little security nothings’ with power to speak security in complex, polysemic and ambiguous ways which can reify or challenge wider security discourse.