Role of Memes, Trolls, and Bullying in Building Public Agenda on Social Media about National Issues of Pakistan

Abstract

Memes, Trolls, and Cyberbullying have emerged as new phenomena for setting the political agenda on social media in recent years, and they have grabbed significant attention in research studies of this digital era. The purpose of this research was to find out the Role of Memes, Trolls, and Bullying in building public agenda on social media about national issues of Pakistan. The current study used survey research design. The self-administered questionnaire was designed to collect data using closed-ended questions. Responses were collected via questionnaire and analyzed using through SPSS. The sample size for this study is 400. Students and employees, male and female, at the University of Sargodha were selected as the sample for this study. Purposefully, respondents were selected who used social sites (Facebook and Twitter) and were familiar with the phenomena of Memes, Trolls, and Cyberbullying. The researcher uses agenda-setting and agenda building theories as the theoretical foundation for this investigation. Furthermore, according to respondents that politician used Memes more frequently for altering the public perception in political issues as compared to Trolls or Cyberbullying. Conclusively, it was found in this study that usage of Facebook is more frequently then Twitter. This study also finds that political parties create and share Memes to defame their opponents. Hypothesis of this study that user consume Memes in political affairs more frequently than Cyberbullying is proven strongly. Users believe that Memes, Trolls and Bullying are interesting way of spreading targeted political information. This study proves that Memes affect the fame and personality of targeted political leaders.