Research by ARENAS consortium member, Ana Yara Postigo-Fuentes of Heinrich-Heine University was published in the latest issue of the MDPI journal Behavioral Sciences. This special issue was titled Humor Use in Interpersonal Relationships. The article published was titled Relational Humor and Identity Framing in the “Virgin vs. Chad” Meme Format.
Extremist narratives combine two relational dynamics: the in-group is portrayed as both socially superior and simultaneously victimised by an antagonistic out-group, which legitimises hostility or defensive solutions. Despite their relevance, such narratives remain comparatively understudied. To date, little research has examined how extremist narratives are represented through memes, and particularly how humour operates within memetic forms.
The article develops and tests a three-layered analytical framework for examining humour in extremist digital cultures. The framework integrates insights from narrative studies, multimodal discourse analysis, and humour theory to capture how memes condense antagonisms, stabilise symbolic contrasts, and calibrate affective positioning. The Virgin vs. Chad meme format is used as a case study due to its binary archetypal structure and recurrent circulation in Spanish far-right meme ecologies. The study draws on 1225 posts on X (May–August 2024), from which 17 memes employing the format were selected for in-depth qualitative analysis.
Read the complete article here.