Just a meme? The role of context in mythologies of memetic misogyny

This article provides a multiplatform systematic analysis of contextual factors in what we term memetic misogyny , a form of implicit, polysemous and ephemeral visual gender-based hate. We draw on a feminist ethnographic approach with a semiotic analysis applied across three case studies of meme-based misogyny (Greta Thunberg, Karens and anti-feminist memes related to protest # SisterIDoBelieveYou ) on Twitter/X, Facebook, Reddit and YouTube to argue that memetic misogyny is created, maintained and co-shaped by (1) misogynistic contents (depictions, aesthetics and narrative framing), (2) platform affordances (real and imagined) – above all meme affordances and (3) the hegemonic discourses of the cultural communities where these are distributed. In combination, these three create what we call mythologies of memetic misogyny , that is, gendered socio-cultural and socio-political narratives that present misogynistic ideas as if they were natural, universal and timeless gendered truths, often going unnoticed because of the volatile, polysemous and polycontextual nature of memes.