VANCOUVER—They pop up on your Facebook and Twitter. They can go viral in a matter of moments. They’ve become more powerful than traditional political advertising. And they’re basically outside of the realm of Elections Canada.

Memes have taken over the federal election.

Take, for instance, how they saturated the discourse late last month: Within moments of the news breaking that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau wore blackface in 2001, thousands of visual jokes surfaced online.

That speaks to how often partisan memes are created, said Fenwick McKelvey, a Concordia University communications professor who studies algorithmic media and political campaign management software.

He’s launched a new project called “The Great Canadian Encyclopedia of Political Memes.”

It will analyze the most popular memes, map how far and how fast they circulate and discuss how people differ in what kinds of memes they produce, modify and share this election.

“If we can use memes as a different way of looking at public opinion, we might have a better sense of what issues matter to Canadians,” McKelvey said. “It may be an unpleasant reality to encounter, but an important one.”

Even more crucial, McKelvey said, is determining how party supporters and citizens use the internet to identify with parties, leaders and movements.

Political memes are a purposeful visual framing of a position and are generally inside jokes that can trigger an emotional response. They work best if shared widely. They’re cheap, free to make and easy to create or alter.

They spread rapidly. And it just takes a click to share.

Now that it’s election time, politicians and citizens are seeking ways into viral social media conversations on subjects such as the environment or immigration. And more than the news, memes are a dominant way people are engaging with politics, McKelvey explained.

But in Canada, there is very little data about how memes are being used in the political sphere and how they influence discourse.

A visual joke creates a feeling of attachment with other people. Political memes can elicit this sense of attachment, care or commitment to a party or leader as a way of creating identity or belonging, McKelvey said.

“That is part of how we develop partisan attachments and how we come to identify our world view,” he said. “Meme culture changes the bar, but also raises authenticity, which is what most campaigns are thinking is an important part of the way people evaluate politics.”

McKelvey’s initial research following the Trudeau blackface scandal found that party supporters made memes to help their party’s public image.

Conservative anti-Trudeau memes highlighted Trudeau’s hypocrisy, questioned his character, and characterized Liberal party calls of racism as disingenuous. Liberal pro-Trudeau memes minimized the incident and jabbed at Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer as the real threat. Leftist memes focused on the social issue of racism in Canada and the skin tone of NDP leader Jagmeet Singh rather than targeting specific images of Trudeau.

McKelvey identified about 30 Facebook groups posting Canadian political memes, with the largest, most active sample being anti-Trudeau and Conservative memes. These groups have a much larger follower count at roughly 900,000 people.

And while all social media groups that constantly share memes care about different issues — climate change on the left and centre, versus political corruption on the centre and right — the Trudeau scandal touched all sides of the spectrum.

Memes provide a new way to understand public opinion and how message control operates on so-called “user-generated” content, he said.

Meanwhile, politicians themselves are using this latest online strategy to infuriate or persuade voters. For instance, a meme posted on Conservative Party candidate Heather Leung’s page prompted comedian Rick Mercer to publicly ask the party to stop using his face.

Politicians have to play the social-media game to reach their constituencies, according to Sun-ha Hong, a Simon Fraser University communications professor specializing in digital culture and technology.

And it’s effective.

“(They) feel like they have to use these memes to tap into a genre of communication and language that is only effective when it is simplified or adversarial,” he explained.

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“But there is an increasingly strategic and co-ordinated element to creating and sharing political memes.”

Memes can be crafted by small interest groups online with the sole intent of trying to get politicians to use them, Hong said.

Their origins are virtually impossible to trace on the dark corners of the internet, such as 4chan. And the images aren’t often linked to a single source that can be verified. And it’s even harder to determine if special interest groups have paid people to create them. So once a politician shares a meme — even if they disavow or retract — they end up amplifying messages with controversial undertones, Hong explained.

Duff Conacher, election law expert and co-founder of Democracy Now likens the way memes are shared online today with clipping an editorial from a newspaper to share with friends in the pre-Internet days. This, he says, is why memes aren’t advertisements, just “sharing someone’s opinion with a friend.”

There are constraints in Canada on third-party advertising to limit what parties and politicians are allowed to do when campaigning. But there’s a murky area when it comes to memes.

Third party advertisers — either a group or individual — must register with Elections Canada if they spend $500 or more on advertising related to the election and report where their money comes from and goes, according to an Elections Canada media spokesperson.

Since Bill C-76 came into effect in June, third parties are also subject to spending limits. And platforms such as Facebook are required to keep a public registry of the ads. During an election campaign, these registered third parties can spend just over $510,000.

But those restrictions do not apply to viral social media content. For it to be an ad, there has to be a placement cost or an organization has to pay for it to enter people’s feeds.

“If it’s a meme that someone is posting on their Facebook or Twitter, that they pulled off the internet, didn’t create it, and shared it, there’s no cost. That’s not a regulated third party activity,” the spokesperson said.

And there are few things that are specifically spelled out as being off limits, including in the social media space, according to Elections Canada documents on election security.

“There is no one simple solution that eliminates cyber and information threats to democracy while maintaining freedom of expression,” the documents state. “Those threats are complex” and reach beyond the realm of election management.

According to Elections Canada, areas considered outside the realm of Elections Canada because they are not regulated by the Canada Elections Act include; ensuring cybersecurity of parties or candidates; correcting false or misleading information related to political party platforms or policies; regulating unpaid content on social media; and policing truth in election advertising apart from tag lines on ads or inaccurate statements on specific topics that would affect elections results.

Meanwhile, what politicians share online is also not restricted by the Canada Elections act.

Newer third party groups, such as Canada Strong and Proud, founded by a former Conservative party staffer and North99, founded by former Liberal party staffers, are using memes, videos and jokes to influence voters with shareable content.

So far, Canada’s political right has proved itself more adept in using this strategy. As a registered third party, Canada Strong and Proud has fully embraced a meme-driven form of action with the intention of creating “shareable” viral content.

And they rely heavily on emotionally evocative content, said Gabrielle Lim, a researcher at Data & Society Research Institute.

“They’re abiding by all the Elections Canada regulations … but it’s interesting how you don’t need a lot of money to do online campaigns,” Lim explained. “There’s so many ways to get the message out online without spending a dime.”

Though Canada Strong and Proud reported just $7,441 in expenses during the campaign period to Elections Canada, they spent more than $100,000 on Facebook ads before the campaign began, The Canadian Press reported on Thursday.

The Manning Centre — an organization launched by Reform Party founder Preston Manning — donated $240,500 to Canada Strong and Proud. It was the first time the group and its sister organizations were required to publish details of their backers.

With files from The Canadian Press

Melanie Green is a Vancouver-based reporter covering politics. Follow her on Twitter: @mdgmedia Oct. 5, 2019 — Editor’s note: This story has been updated from a previously published version that misspelled Sun-ha Hong's name.

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