Between Cultural Engineering, Media Sensationalism & Memetic Propaganda: A Curious Case of Erratic Obituaries for Late American Secretary

A controversial and grotesque obituary for former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright appeared on 25 March 2022, at the door of the Sokol House building in Banja Luka, the capital of the Bosnian Serb Republic. A similar obituary was found in Arilje, Serbia. Both obituaries quickly circulated on social media and became headlines in Serbian mass media, demonstrating the power of memes in spreading complex cultural information. This incident is being studied to understand how memetic content can be used in culture wars and public diplomacy and how the American government and Serbian-American relations are represented in Serbian public political discourse, particularly in relation to Albright's death. The study inspects the literature on memetics and thanatopolitics while introducing a rigorous research methodology (rhetorical criticism and mediated discourse analysis) in order to study the mentioned obituaries and accompanying news articles. Our findings suggest that using memes as collective memory anchors (or taking a meme's eye of view approach) can be effective in propaganda activities, particularly in culture wars. We argue that the analyzed case represents an instance of memetic propaganda, as it encompasses a sophisticated fusion of media sensationalism with memetic/cultural engineering techniques.

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