Vernacular critique of the actions of companies and brands in Polish cyber-memes in the face of multiple crises: The case of the war in Ukraine

Abstract

Russia’s aggression against Ukraine in 2022 met with almost unambiguous criticism from the Polish society, which resonated in actual attitudes and found its dimension in media messages, including those on the Internet. Internet users also created and distributed “funny pictures on the Internet” that dealt with the conflict, which popularized the events and gave them a specific emotional narrative. Although the genesis of today’s popular image-based memes is seen in works related to biology (R. Dawkins), from the humanistic perspective they are seen as products of online folklore, created by and addressed to cyberpeople. Memes as vernacular messages amuse, amuse, stigmatize, criticize, but also convey and popularize content that is very important for the cybernetic community. In the era of war in the East, they also present the issues of companies and brands present in Russia before its escalation and their decisions as to the continued presence of the aggressor in the country. The content of the proposed speech is based on the analysis of memes available on the Polish Internet dedicated to individual economic entities present in Russia before the events of February 24, 2022. The main research problem is how individual Western companies and brands are presented in cybermemes created in the era of war. The main thesis of the work is the assumption of a positive image of entities leaving Russia and a negative image of those that remain in the country. The collected material also allows for an ex post analysis of the areas and instruments of criticism and praise of individual companies.