The Meme Event: Memefication, Memory-Making and Political Resistance in the Biafra Digital Discourse
Date of Award
6-26-2026
Date Published
July 2026
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
Communication and Rhetorical Studies
Advisor(s)
Lyndsay Gratch
Keywords
Biafra;Igbo;Memes;Memory-making;Nigeria;Political resistance
Subject Categories
Communication | Social and Behavioral Sciences
Abstract
In this thesis, I examine the Biafran digital commemoration on May 30th every year—Biafra Commemoration Day. Specifically, I examine how the Biafran digital commemorative culture functions as memorialization and political action. Drawing on theoretical reserves from modern meme studies and performance studies, I propose a theory of “meme event”—a coordinated digital practice that encompasses not just memetic content but the larger ecology of its creation, circulation, strategic timing (May 30th), and strategic deployment. The rallying slogan “We don’t die, we multiply” serves as the anchor around which the meme event revolves, circulating both memetic content and non-meme posts. This theoretical innovation foregrounds how Biafran communities do memorial work through coordinated digital practices and not just what memorial content they produce. Using a manual social media scraping method —extracting content from social media platforms through screenshots, and a hashtag-based sampling method, I collated the first fifty (50) memes incorporating the slogan “We don’t die, we multiply” and non-meme posts that the algorithms pulled up for me to make up the corpus I interpreted across Facebook and Instagram. Applying the concepts of vertical and horizontal intertextuality to create a robust comparative analysis framework for the Biafran meme event, I analyze the multiple ways in which the Biafran meme event functions as memorial work—constructing temporal bridges, creating sacred space, offering testimony and witnessing, and staging defiant survival. I also demonstrate how the Biafran meme event stages three key political actions—construct political subjects, political mobilization, and political resistance—highlighting the visual, symbolic, and textual mechanisms through which this political work is performed. By analyzing the Biafran meme event as memorial work and political action, the study illuminates how digital media can transform historical memory into active cultural and political articulations. This study contributes to the existing conversation on memes, memory, and political resistance, demonstrating how the meme event integrates visual, textual, and symbolic memetic elements and non-meme posts to serve as both memory and stage resistance in a specific, timed, and strategically deployed digital practice—meme event.
Access
Open Access
Recommended Citation
Onwukwe, Chimaobi Dick, "The Meme Event: Memefication, Memory-Making and Political Resistance in the Biafra Digital Discourse" (2026). Theses - ALL. 1048.
https://surface.syr.edu/thesis/1048
