(NewsNation) — Social media feeds have been flooded with photos of Vice President Kamala Harris with coconut trees and under a lime green filter as her entrance into the presidential race reinvigorated the internet meme machine.
Even before her campaign officially kicked off, Harris’ Gen Z supporters began churning out memes using coconuts and references to popular singer Charli XCX’s “Brat” album.
She enters a 2024 internet campaign that’s already in midseason form. Trump’s team and supporters are no rookies to memes, pushing content portraying him as a warrior after he dodged an assassination attempt earlier this month.
In one of these photos, Trump’s face is superimposed onto the rapper 50 Cent’s 2003 album cover. The rapper survived getting shot nine times in a drive-by shooting.
While these may seem humorous, memes and other social media content have become an important component of campaign messaging that can help shape the narratives around candidates, Erik Nisbet, professor of policy analysis and communication at Northwestern University, told NewsNation.
Memes are images or videos with a message that speaks to people who get it because of their knowledge or membership in a particular group.
“Images are very powerful, more powerful than text, so memes play a role in emotionally energizing voters, especially low-information voters who aren’t paying attention to the day-to-day of the campaign,” Nisbet said.
What are Kamala’s ‘brat’ and ‘coconut tree’ memes?
After Harris was endorsed by Biden to take his spot in the presidential election, social media has been flooded with pro-Harris memes.
Charli XCX posted on social media “kamala IS brat” a day later in reference to her newly released album “Brat.”
The post accumulated over 30 million impressions and fueled dozens of memes showing Harris’ clips and photos set to the album’s lime green theme.
Harris’ campaign appeared to lean in quickly, setting its X banner photo to the same shade of green.
But even more prolific are the memes related to coconuts drawn from a line Harris said at a White House event for Hispanic leaders in May 2023.
“You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?” Harris said. “You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.”
Online users seized the line and created coconut-themed posts in support of her candidacy, with thousands of results, likes and shares.
Dozens of videos pop up on TikTok when searching for “coconut tree Kamala.”
The @KamalaHQ account bio text on X reads simply “providing context,” a reference to the memed line.
Harris’ office did not return a request for comment by NewsNation.
Trump meme machine rallies around assassination attempt
Trump supporters have also employed memes to get their message across, including superimposing his head on an angel warrior and leading dancing Bollywood soldiers in battle.
“It doesn’t have to be true. It just has to go viral,” Brenden Dilley, a podcaster who organizes private meme makers for Trump, said on his podcast last year.
The Trump campaign did not return a request for comment on social media by NewsNation.
A photo of Trump moments after an assassination attempt on his life during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania, with an American flag blowing in the background and blood across his face, became a meme sensation.
That picture set to music that alludes to Trump as a gangster or protected by God filled largely right-wing social media platforms.
In another meme, a guardian angel has his hand above Trump’s head while he’s giving a speech.
Memes are powerful in terms of influencing people’s perceptions because the image is so “evocative and imprints on people’s minds, and we remember things with which we have an emotional connection,” Nisbet said.
During the solar eclipse earlier this year, Trump shared a meme video on his Truth Social media account that featured clips of people staring up at the sky wearing eclipse glasses and cheering as the sky darkened. The video then cut to an image of the sun with a large silhouette of Trump’s head blocking it out as people cheered.
Will memes get voters to the polls?
Memes introduce candidates to younger voters, especially when they are made in an authentic and organic way, Nisbet said.
This will be key, particularly for Harris, who will need to “mobilize younger voters to get them at least as enthusiastic or engaged in the election as they were in 2020,” he said.
“A vast majority of Americans probably don’t even know who the vice president is right now so an online campaign that is authentic and generating interest around her candidacy among these low-information voters is important for her,” Nisbet said.
Younger people have historically voted at lower rates than older Americans, but that turned a corner in recent election cycles. Turnout jumped from 39% in 2016 to 50% in 2020 and from 13% in 2014 to 28% in 2018, according to Tufts University.
In 2022, Gen Z youth had a higher turnout rate than previous generations’ first midterms, the group said.
Maggie Macdonald, who teaches political science at the University of Kentucky, told NewsNation that young people in our current political climate feel out of touch and not represented, so they’re not consuming political information in the ways the campaigns traditionally reach voters.
Memes are a way to build enthusiasm among that voter bloc, she said.
Trump had been gaining ground on TikTok — a largely youth platform — while he faced Biden, a May analysis by The New York Times found.
TikTok had nearly twice as many pro-Trump posts as pro-Biden ones since November, the outlet found.
“If we allow the Democrats and the leftist organizations and leftist influencers to have a monopoly on the content that’s produced on TikTok, we will lose the next generation of Americans,” C.J. Pearson, a social-media influencer with nearly 149,000 followers on TikTok who co-chairs the Republican National Committee’s youth advisory council, told the outlet.
Political memes can be a double-edged sword
The most impactful messages are the ones you have least control over, Nisbet said.
When memes are made by peers and not yourself, they circulate more, he said, adding that for Harris, they can be very beneficial right now.
He added that this will help her as long as the campaign amplifies or leans into them rather than taking control.
Trump’s campaign has very much leaned into his meme machine. Steven Cheung, the campaign’s spokesman; Dan Scavino, Trump’s social media adviser; and son Donald Trump Jr. frequently share memes on their social media accounts.
But memes can have the opposite effect, energizing the other side if they’re really offensive or if they feel like they’ve gone too far, he said.
Trump drew backlash for sharing a video meme on Truth Social in June that included references to a “unified Reich” among hypothetical news headlines if he wins the election in November.
The “unified Reich” meme was created by an outside group of meme makers with connections to the Trump campaign, according to the New York Times.
The campaign said the video was shared by a staffer and denied it coordinates with the group but said it appreciates the effort of outside creators, according to the outlet.
Nisbet says any type of online content can be co-opted, so a meme put out by one side can be redefined by the other side.
This appeared to be the case with Harris and the coconut tree. Initially, her critics used the line to make her come across poorly, but her supporters later redefined it.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
