Content analysis of metaphors in political memes related to 2024 parliamentary Jordanian elections on X

This study examines the use of monomodal and/or multimodal metaphors in political memes published on Platform X during the 2024 Jordanian parliamentary elections. The political memes were analyzed using Multimodal Metaphor Theory (Forceville, C. 2009. Non-verbal and multimodal metaphor in a cognitivist framework: Agendas for research. In C. Forceville & E. Urios-Aparisi (eds.), Multimodal metaphor , 19–42. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter) and Critical Metaphor Analysis (Charteris-Black, J. 2004. Critical metaphor analysis. In Corpus approaches to critical metaphor analysis , 243–253. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK). The results revealed that the most frequently used metaphor was human behavior is animal behavior , which is interpreted as sharp criticism and satire directed at the behavior of politicians and voters during the elections. The least common metaphor was advertising for the campaign is giving food away . Its rarity is attributed to a lack of visual impact compared to more controversial practices such as vote-buying. All the collected memes contained only multimodal metaphors indicating a preference for using various modalities to enhance the meme’s impact. The metaphors used in political memes largely mirror the reality of the 2024 Jordanian parliamentary elections from the perspective of memes’ creators. The prevalence of negative metaphors indicates widespread distrust of the political system and its representatives. The humor in these negative portrayals reflects public frustration and disillusionment with the current electoral process, without directly calling for revolutionary or violent change.