What does it all meme? : a look into gender stereotypes and traits in the 2016 presidential primary campaign.

This content analysis examines how social media memes portrayed presidential primary candidates during the 2016 United States presidential election. In the wake of Internet and social media evolutions in communications, memes of candidates have been added to the new paradigm of American political news consumption. Along with framing theory, the researcher used feminist communications and media theories to analyze the 2016 presidential election and Democratic primary candidates, Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, as well Republican primary candidates, Carly Fiorina and Ted Cruz. This thesis seeks to find how political memes used common gender biases and stereotypes to frame the politicians. The researcher gained results from N = 550 memes collected from Google and Facebook groups.