Political memes have, without a doubt, become a social media staple. Rather than being just mere entertainment, users utilize them in various ways. These range from socializing with peers, communities, and even unknown users, to keeping oneself updated and educated on current events. However, existing research about memes largely focuses on their specific content, and/or niche partisan communities that create and spread only a fraction of them. This leaves a large portion of their online presence untackled, and the question of how meme content may affect its audience underexplored. But paying closer attention to what audiences do with internet's favourite media format can tell us a lot about how social media continues to transform the flow of information in our society.

The dissertation project of Martina Paulenová, a 5th semester PhD candidate from Masaryk University in Brno, is an attempt at investigating what non-niche audiences do with memes, from multiple angles. In her work, she dissects the ways in which political memes trigger users' active information-seeking behaviour, (de)motivate online participation by being (not) funny or (mis)aligned with their opinions, and affect the levels incivility in comment sections. She will present her arguments and methodologies for studying online political memes, as well as preliminary (and even some final) results of her ongoing deep dive into meme audience practices.