Examining Racial and Gender Biasness: A Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis of Memes Framing the Speeches of Kamala Harris

Abstract

Despite many researches on intersectionality, this research focuses on racism and gender stereotypes in memes, particularly within the political context of Kamala Harris.The objective of this research is to invesigate certain communication tools, such as irony, humour and pathos which are interpreted in memes depicting Harris' speeches and how the textual and visual components of memes are responsible for racial and gender inequality. The data consists of 16 internet memes which are sampled purposively. Through a qualitative approach, this study uses Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis (MCDA) by Kress and Leeuwen’s (2006) framework to investigate how political memes shape gender and racial stereotypes about Kamala Harris. MCDA enables the researcher to focus at how the text and images in memes convey meaning. Highlight the context that suggest to Harris’ political persona and public pronouncements, 16 memes were carefully selected from YouTube Reels, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter between 2021 and 2024. Results show that memes misrepresent Kamala Harris by having visual-textual manipulation, humor, and irony to uphold gender and racial stereotypes. Her political credibility is indirectly undermined by these memes, which portray her as emotionally unstable, unqualified, or dependent on manlike characters. It was further suggested to investigate the effect of publi