Psychological-Distress Effects of Memes: A Critical Discourse Analysis

Abstract

The main purpose of this study was to explore the negative impacts of humour-created memes that disturb people’s psyche and their normal routine; it leads them towards depression through imitation and parody in an ironic way to exploit their personal life in the Pakistani context. It manipulates social ideologies, beliefs, thinking and practices. Some popular Facebook pages are Lateetfon Ki Dunya, and Pakistani Political memes are created and spread memes on social media. Memes often serve the purpose of puns and humiliating others (Irfan, 2021). To meet the objective of this study, ten badly effective memes were analysed. The content of these memes plays a crucial role in the production of memes' multimodal discourse because memes discourse is owned by the masses. Internet memes stimulate crowd engagement because they might be seen as a common language (McCulloch, 2019; Milner, 2016). Data were analysed under Fairclough's theoretical framework to elucidate the data detection. This research study indicated that layman uses those platforms to influence the behaviour and living of famous personalities and destroy their individuality by character assassination and they find no escape in this digital age.