Read on Twitter
For this week's newsletter, I took a break from the trolls and instead wrote about
@AndyBeshearKY's Coronavirus response and the meme culture that has sprung up to support it. #TeamKentucky https://medium.com/@melissaryan/andy-beshear-and-his-wholesome-meme-messengers-6c557da2160e
@AndyBeshearKY's Coronavirus response and the meme culture that has sprung up to support it. #TeamKentucky https://medium.com/@melissaryan/andy-beshear-and-his-wholesome-meme-messengers-6c557da2160e
This one's especially personal for me. I'm from Kentucky and most everyone in my family still lives there. I began noticing something on my family's Facebook profiles: Andy Beshear memes. A ton of them. Even some of my Republican relatives were sharing them.
My mother explained to me that Governor Beshear holds a briefing every day and that they are must-see television in Kentucky.
I also discovered the source for most of the pro-Beshear memes is a public Facebook group, andy beshear memes for social distancing teens, which currently boasts more than 200,000 members. https://www.facebook.com/groups/1124321234573690
I joined the group and began exploring. What I found was so much more than just brilliant and funny memes. An entire subculture had sprung up around Beshear’s daily briefings.
The group hosts a daily watch party and creates gifs, video clips, and memes from each day’s briefing in real-time.
Worth noting that despite being founded by James Line, a former Beshear campaign staffer, the group is noticeably not political or partisan. https://www.wkms.org/post/internet-memes-praise-beshear-s-handling-coronavirus-pandemic#stream/0
There are political threads and discussions in the comments but the vast majority of original posts feel more like a Facebook fan community than a political organizing group.
The formula doesn’t vary much; Beshear always begins by asking viewers to “start the way we always start. By saying we will get through this. We will get through this together.” He asks Kentuckians to say this phrase aloud with him from home.
Here’s where things get interesting. Beshear asks viewers to help spread the word on social media, to create “social peer pressure” encouraging other Kentuckians to social distance and do their part to flatten the curve.
He puts the same hashtags up on the screen every day and then amplifies some of the best content from around Kentucky during the briefing: #TeamKentucky #TogetherKY #Patriot #HealthyAtHome
Beshear also gently shames businesses, organizations, and individuals who are not doing their part. His catchphrase, “You can’t be doing that.” has also become the most popular line for memes.
There’s more to the briefings, including graphs, a daily update on Coronavirus cases and deaths, and questions, but after watching several of them I have three takeaways on why they’ve become such a statewide cultural phenomenon:
1. Repetition. Beshear’s message never varies. The briefings run at the same time, follow the same schedule, and offer the same messages every day. After watching a few of them you can repeat his main points by rote.
2. Community. Each briefing hits home that the only way to win is by sticking together and having one another’s backs. Flattening the curve requires every Kentuckian to do their part, for not just for themselves, but for their county, their state, and their nation.
3. Enlistment. Beshear makes a clear hard ask every day for those watching to become evangelists for social distancing and to use social media to model good behavior for others.
The resulting echo chamber is fascinating to watch from a digital organizing perspective. More important, it will save lives. There’s already evidence that Beshear’s policies compared to other state governments in the South are paying dividends. https://twitter.com/KySportsRadio/status/1241360418565689346?fbclid=IwAR3H6H_zzuAu1qSyN0S1SiG5amu4j4Qcfu_g2EF6GaCSQOdFo5zK4aSerMo
Adding an element of grassroots social pressure has the potential to burst through hyper-partisan news bubbles in a way that not much else can.
We need a national version of what’s happening in Kentucky but we won’t see it from President Trump. What’s maddening is that Trump has the online army in place to create a national echo chamber if his Administration wanted to.
The White House has been communicating with pro-MAGA influencers but instead of asking them to amplify public health messaging or help create a sense of national unity they’ve been called to defend Trump’s handling of the pandemic. https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-white-house-privately-backchannels-its-coronavirus-messaging-to-conservative-social-media-influencers
I have no way of knowing if what’s happening in Kentucky will make a statistically significant impact (though if you have polling on this please hit me up!) but anecdotally Beshear seems to be gaining some respect from some of his Republican constituents. https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2020/0403/In-Kentucky-a-Democratic-governor-gains-new-fans-Republicans?fbclid=IwAR1_dpYhG5kPbM09Xb_5RlUGIKbWQ6cVx2aey_dWcOwJTRoebiiVxWxxy4M
Personally, I’m relieved that Beshear’s briefings and memes have influenced people in my own life to take this pandemic more seriously than they might have otherwise. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/partisanship-pandemic-polling-shows-democrats-coronavirus-republicans-parties/story?id=69781489
"We will get through this. We will get through this together."
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