Body of evidence: conspiracy, masculinity and otherness in ‘QAnon shaman’ meme discourses

ABSTRACT This article addresses a selection of 43 memes featuring the ‘QAnon shaman’, the alter-ego of actor Jake Angeli and a high-profile participant in the January 2021 ‘Stop the Steal’ rally in Washington D.C. Through a combination of Critical Discourse Analysis and Integrative Framing Analysis, the article asks: ‘How do the QAnon shaman memes represent Angeli as a body of evidence about conspiracy movements such as QAnon, and what might be the ramifications of such representations for public understandings of those movements and their supporters?’ The meme discourses under investigation represent Angeli as bizarre and laughable because of his bodily adornment and failure to overthrow the election results – the latter framed as a failure of masculinity. The article contends that these memes can help reinforce patriarchal white masculinity and distort understandings of why conspiracies attract followers. Relatedly, the piece seeks to identify how conspiracy actors are (further) marginalized and ‘othered’ in media discourses, why this othering is problematic, and how this othering might be mitigated in future media representations.

Memes are a significant media genre due to their ability to be shared and reshared; and their deployment of humour and pop culture references to comment on contemporary culture.The article suggests that the othering evident within the QAnon shaman (hereafter 'QS') memes is problematic because it obscures the multiple reasons why individuals subscribe to conspiracies; and reinforces patriarchal white masculinity through feminizing the QS, who is symbolically aligned with gay and black masculinities.Further, the article contends that this othering can obscure the fact that conspiracy thinking -far from being an aberrant or fringe phenomenon -is in fact a ubiquitous feature of digital media culture.The piece concludes with a brief consideration of how media producers (including meme-makers) might start to produce more ethical representations of conspiracy actors.

Memes, politics, humour
Internet memes are (a) a group of digital items sharing common characteristics of content, form, and/or stance; (b) that were created with awareness of each other; and (c) were circulated, imitated, and/or transformed via the Internet by many users (Shifman 2014, 7-8;emphasis in original).This article conceptualizes memes as comprising an interactive, multimodal viral discourse.This conceptualization is useful inasmuch as it suggests how they can 'work at the individual cognitive level in a manner congruent with political information dissemination, and accordingly, become powerful tools for the public to shape popular discourse around a candidate or issue' (Seiffert-Brockmann, Diehl, andDobusch 2018, 2867).Memes achieve this through deploying assorted tropes; this article examines two that are evident in the corpus under investigation.
The first trope is humour, which takes various forms.These include disparagement humour, which encourages the viewer to feel superior to the subject of disparagement (Vásquez and Aslan 2021, 102).Memes can deploy register humour, which entails 'a situation where most of the language in a text appears in a particular style or tone, except for a few words which are expressed in a register that is somehow different from the rest' (Vásquez and Aslan 2021, 111).Humour can be generated via meme structure, a common version of which is thus: a small line of words at the top of the frame, to indicate a desired outcome (for the character/s in the meme) and a line at the bottom (to indicate what actually happened; this is generally quite different from what the character/s hoped or anticipated).This structure appears in several of the memes discussed below.Humour 'can serve as a form of coping, resistance and connection . . .while making light of absurd situations' (de Saint Laurent, Glăveanu, and Literat 2021, 3).Conversely, normativity can be reinforced via memes that poke fun of individuals and movements that have been deemed 'other'.The humour within the QS memes largely depends upon that sense of otherness, with the (imagined) spectator of the memes interpellated as not-other, not a conspiracist, as having a 'normal' and liveable life.
The second trope is intertextuality, whereby 'the image depends for its meaning on being "read" in relation to a number of other, similar images' (Hall 2013, 222).Memes frequently deploy references (photos, names, catchphrases) that will be familiar to their target audience.Those references are lifted from everyday life and popular culture, including other memes (Vásquez and Aslan 2021, 115).Memes use the associations and emotions associated with those references to amuse, persuade, horrify (de Saint Laurent, Glăveanu, and Literat 2021, 3).The QS memes mobilize a range of cultural references, from pop stars to mythical demons.

Conspiracy, masculinity and the capitol riots
This researcher's interest in QS memes emerged during ongoing research into ways of cultivating ethical online communication during an era in which -owing to a confluence of technological and sociological factors -misinformation has become a pervasive feature of digital media culture rather than exceptions to the norm or the work of a few bad actors (Cover, Haw, and Thompson 2022).This online communication includes media representations of conspiracy actors.There is currently little research on these representations, which is striking given that representation 'connects meaning and language to culture;' it gives form/s to the way we view and experience the world (Hall 2013, 1).The meme is an especially notable mode of representation because of its virality, its ability to reach wide audiences within a compact timeframe, and the versatility of its form and content.Memes circulate alongside a range of other cultural representations; the article briefly traverses some journalistic coverage of the QS in which he is further 'othered'.
Further, the researcher had noticed how these actors have been stereotyped as dangerous and irrational, and as existing in a sphere that is somehow removed from the rest of society. 2 Stuart Hall writes: 'Stereotypes get hold of the few, "simple, vivid, memorable, easily grasped and widely recognized" characteristics about a person, reduce everything about the person to those traits, exaggerate and simplify them' (Hall 2013, 247;emphasis in original).Hall writes that 'stereotyping reduces, essentializes, naturalizes and fixes difference' and 'divides the normal and the acceptable from the abnormal and the unacceptable' (2013,247).This difference coagulates in the figure of the 'other', the individual or group against which the 'normal and acceptable' can be defined.Rob Cover similarly argues that stereotypes 'bind the figure of the human by producing particular sets of borders that articulate some subjects as more patently human than others, and thereby more worthy -in ethical terms -of having a liveable life ' (2016, 7).
This article suggests that stereotyping certain social groups means regarding them as having lives that are regarded as worthy and equal, at least in comparison with those who are not being stereotyped and othered.Judith Butler writes: 'The epistemological capacity to apprehend a life is partially dependent on that life being produced according to norms that qualify it as a life ' (2009, 3).Those who are 'othered' become punchlines, warnings, objects of fascination; they are not understood as trustworthy or as having lives that could be recognized as such.
These insights into stereotyping are pertinent to media representations of conspiracy actors.A crucial aspect of these representations is naming, which Butler describes as 'the time of the other.One is brought into social location and time through being named.And one is dependent upon another for one's name . . .' (1997, 29).Research has demonstrated that names such as 'conspiracy theorist' and 'conspiracy theory' are used to ostracize those to whom they are applied (Husting and Orr 2007;Schäfer et al. 2022Schäfer et al. , 2889)).These names can obscure the reasons why conspiracies have enjoyed public support.They can also metaphorically separate the ostensibly 'normal' non-conspiracist ('us', 'we') from the 'abnormal' conspiracist ('them').For those reasons, this article avoids using those labels, choosing the more neutral 'conspiracy actor' and 'conspiracist'.
The Capitol riots is an appropriate case study, not least because it is one of the most globally famous examples of a culture in which misinformation has become normalized.The demonstrators were driven by factually baseless theories endorsed by a leader (Trump) whose relationship with facts and truth was famously fraught; and who routinely dismissed criticisms of his government as the propaganda of a 'fake news media' (cited in Cover, Haw, and Thompson 2022, 17).'Stop the Steal' was premised on a belief that the 2020 presidential election was manipulated by nefarious, left-wing forces so that Trump had a rightful victory stolen.QAnon is a theory and movement centred around cryptic posts published by an entity known only as 'Q'.The best-known QAnon narrative claims that Trump is battling a cabal of elite, liberal and vampiric paedophiles.Another alleges that former US president John Fitzgerald Kennedy and his son are still alive and will emerge from hiding to support a Trump presidency.The latter is referenced in one of the memes under discussion.
If the Capitol riots are an appropriate case study, then so is the QS, one of the most notorious participants in the Capitol riots.This notoriety may stem from his appearance.His attire (horns, headdress) contrast markedly with the dour darker colours worn by many rioters (Hoechsmann and VanDyke 2022;McKee 2022, 99). 3 During the court case that followed the riots, Angeli's lawyer actually 'suggest[ed] that his client's unorthodox appearance became 'inextricably linked' to the events at the Capitol . . .photos of [Angeli] from the scene 'have become to January 6 what the Swoosh is to Nike"' (cited in Snodgrass 2021).
Surveying journalistic coverage of the Capitol riots, the researcher noticed that the QS/ Angeli has often been reduced to the status of a joke, with little effort to understand him as a human being whose beliefs and actions have been shaped by the society he/we inhabit.For example, a Vice article describes him as an 'enthusiastic QAnon bullshit shoveler' (Castrodale 2021).A Rolling Stone story reports that Angeli was mistaken for an Antifa activist who supposedly infiltrated the Capitol riots.Angeli denied this association.The article states: 'When someone goes to such extravagant lengths to show you who they are, believe them' (Kelly 2021).The word 'extravagant' describes the QS' physical presentation; the author mentions Angeli's 'penchant for showing up to protests shirtless, face-painted, and sporting a horned helmet like some kind of racist Party City Viking who took a wrong turn and ended up at Burning Man' (Kelly 2021).
Further, while collecting data, the researcher noticed that certain memes were emphasizing the relationship between the QS and what this article terms 'patriarchal white masculinity'.That term encompasses performances of masculinity by white men that are characterized by 'dominance over women and subjugated masculinities' (e.g.black and gay masculinities) (Smirnova 2018, 1) 4 ; and by using aggression to both achieve their goals and to punish men who fall outside this masculinity's remit (Diefendorf and Bridges 2020).The QS may appear to perform such masculinity: in one widely circulated photo, which is referenced in memes discussed below, he is flexing his muscles in the Senate chamber; in another, he stands menacingly over a security guard.The researcher discovered, though, that the humour in the memes collected is frequently derived from his apparent failure to be a 'real man', with that failure linked to his inability to achieve his political and spiritual goals -goals that were (it is suggested) ridiculous to begin with.
The article asks: How do the QAnon shaman memes represent Angeli as a body of evidence about conspiracy movements such as QAnon, and what might be the ramifications of such representations for public understandings of those movements and their supporters?

Methodological framework
The article mobilizes two methodological frameworks, the first of which is integrative framing analysis.Framing involves select[ing] some aspects of a perceived reality [to] make them more salient in a communicating text, in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation for the item described (Entman 1993, 52; emphasis in original).Integrative framing analysis involves 'analysing the contribution of both words and visuals to the framing of people or issues across communication contexts' (Dan 2017, 6).This attentiveness to multimodality makes integrative framing analysis appropriate for analysing memes, an inherently multimodal discourse.
The second theoretical approach is critical discourse analysis (CDA), which 'studies the way social-power abuse and inequality are enacted, reproduced, legitimated, and resisted by text and talk in the social and political context' (van Dijk 2015, 466).CDA 'help[s] us decipher the underlying meaning, deep assumptions, and relations of power that are supported by and constructed through a discourse' (Crawford 2004, 23).In particular, the article mobilizes Ruth Wodak's (2015, 182) concept of 'exclusionary practices'.Wodak uses this to analyse how right-wing political leaders have used language to exclude groups deemed 'other' (namely migrants) from the jurisdictions those leaders oversee.These practices are also evident in QS memes, albeit with conspiracy actors being the ones who are metaphorically excluded.For Wodak (2015, 179), 'meanings are always constructed via form and content.'The CDA undertaken in this article focuses particularly on the juxtaposition of image and text, as well as the deployment of intertextuality.
Further, the article emphasizes the significance of interpellation in the memes under analysis.Interpellation 'occurs at the very moment one enters into a rhetorical situation, that is, as soon as an individual recognizes and acknowledges being addressed.An interpellated subject participates in the discourse that addresses him[sic]' (Charland 1987, 138).The piece ascertains how the QS and the memes' (assumed) audiences are interpellated, and how these interpellations contribute to the exclusion of conspiracy actors from the realm of the normal and human.

Data collection and coding
The memes were obtained via a Google Images search undertaken on 10 May 2022, using the search term 'QAnon shaman memes'.The researcher removed duplicates, as well as images that did not fit the definition of 'memes' provided above (e.g.GIFs, cartoons).Images were taken from platforms that include IMGFlip, Pinterest, Reddit, and Twitter.For ethical reasons, the researcher excluded material from private accounts.
A total of 43 memes were collected.This collection is not exhaustive; it at least provides a snapshot of how the QS, and particularly his involvement in the Capitol riots, has been represented in meme form.The memes collected were among those most readily available via a Google search on their date of collection.Thus, the researcher speculated, they are likely to have reached sizable audiences.
The researcher coded the memes manually, using the criteria outlined below in Table 1.The design of these criteria was informed by the researcher's prior familiarity with the memes.
The researcher deployed deductive coding, which seeks to identify themes -and, in this case, frames -in data (Linneberg and Korsgaard 2019, 264).Deductive coding is subjective; the researcher chose interpretations that would at least seem most likely.For example, when the researcher examined incongruity in the juxtaposition of image and text, he asked whether this would be likely to elicit laughter.If a meme seemed largely or exclusively focused on informing viewers of a certain point, the researcher interpreted the tone as being 'informative'.
The researcher has included descriptions of the memes as appendices at the end of the document.This was an ethical decision; reproducing the actual memes would have meant reproducing images that are frequently sexist, homophobic and/or racist, and that are hostile towards individuals (especially Angeli).

Results
39 (90.70%) of the memes were 'humorous' in tone.Of these humorous memes, one was also 'celebratory' (of Angeli's arrest and impending incarceration; his sentence has since been completed).
All memes (100%) under discussion were necessarily a commentary on the QS, by virtue of his inclusion, in addition to other issues (e.g.QAnon).
Five memes (2.15%) commented on North American politics.Examples are Appendices 3 and 4.
Five memes (2.15%) used the QS to comment on conspiracies.In each case, the conspiracy is QAnon.
Two memes (0.86%) used the QS to comment on issues not immediately related to conspiracies or North American politics, e.g.children's inability to respect their bedtime (see Appendix One).
None of the memes selected presented belonged outside the frames described above.

Conspiracy actors as homogenous and 'other'
Some QS memes deploy humour to highlight social injustices and the illogicality of QAnon, without demeaning any individual or group.These memes belong to a history of deploying humour as an act of 'resistance' against conspiracies, propaganda and inequality (Kramer 2023, 244).Appendix 3 highlights the racial disparity in treatment meted out by North American law enforcement officers to white and African-American men.Appendix 4 underscores the improbability of QAnon narratives.In doing so, it challenges the authority and persuasiveness of those narratives; and provides a corrective to the 'Make America Great Again' slogan that is commonly associated with Trump (and that is referenced in Appendix 2). 5  In other memes, disparagement humour is used against the QS himself.His actions are attributed to mental instability and/or a lack of maturity and intelligence.The viewer is interpellated as a non-conspiracist, who is encouraged to laugh at the QS' wrongheadedness and eccentricity.Appendix 1 reduces the QS to the status of naughty child, with the viewer interpellated as the knowing, responsible parents.Appendix 6 interpellates the QS as 'Ragnar the imbecile . . . the leader of the furry viking [sic] rebellion.'Appendix 7 interpellates him as Jay Kay, front man of British funk band Jamiroquai.The QS' resemblance to Kay is further suggested in Appendix 5, which references both Jamiroquai's hit song 'Virtual Insanity' and the QS' participation in the Capitol riots.The quirkiness associated with Kay's star image softens the harshness of the accusation.
To fully gauge the hostility of these memes, the researcher closely examined their framing.What do these frames suggest and what remains absent?Firstly, several of the above tend to represent the QS as somehow a representative of other conspiracy actors, or at least those who support QAnon and Stop the Steal.For example, Appendix 4 juxtaposes the QS with 'Hundreds of QAnon believers', implying that he stands in for those 'hundreds'.Appendix 7 represents the QS as an influential figure in a broader movement; the wackiness of the term 'furry viking rebellion' renders both the QS and the other members of that movement as laughable.
Secondly, the researcher examined those details that remained outside the frame.This was prompted by an awareness that framing 'remains structured by the aim of instrumentalizing certain versions of reality.This means that the frame is always throwing something away . . .always de-realizing and delegitimating versions of reality . . .' (Butler 2009, p.xiii).The QS memes exclude any reference to the sociological and technological factors that have helped popularize, and perhaps normalize, conspiracies.Research has explored the 'casual pathways' to conspiracy thought (Uscinski et al. 2022), and demonstrated that conspiracies thrive in times of social upheaval; QAnon arose in 2017, though the movement's popularity increased significantly during the COVID-19 pandemic 6 (Morelock and Narita 2022).Studies have investigated the processes and the ease through which conspiracies are shared and re-shared on social media platforms (e.g.Cover, Haw, and Thompson 2022;Heft and Buehling 2022).
Moreover, conspiracy thinking has been heavily promoted by well-known, influential conspiracy actors.The best-known of these is Donald Trump himself.He publicly endorsed the 'stop the steal' narrative, warning attendees at a rally immediately preceding the Capitol riots that 'if you don't fight like hell' against the election outcome, 'you're not going to have a country anymore' (cited in Naylor 2021).Trump famously refused to publicly condemn QAnon, even commenting on that movement in vaguely sympathetic ways.For instance, in an October 2020 town hall event, he remarked: 'What I do hear about [QAnon], they are very strongly against paedophilia, they fight it very hard' (cited in Guthrie and Trump 2020).Prior to the Capitol riots, Angeli had achieved notoriety amongst conspiracy actors, appearing on podcasts and at rallies (cited in Hyzen and Van den Bulck 2021, 179).

A failure of masculinity
This section analyses the gendered nature of the 'otherness' attached within the memes under investigation to the QS.Trump's appeal to certain sections of his male constituency serve as a useful context for the analysis that follows.Casey Ryan Kelly argues that Trump's rhetoric adopted 'the reactionary posture of white male victimhood' and, in doing so, gave credence to the conspiracy-like belief that white men have been the 'casualties of identity politics ' -including feminism, LGBTQI+ rights, anti-racism (2018, 164).This reflects a broader phenomenon whereby '[c]onservative governments have proven adept at encouraging formerly privileged groups to channel their economic frustrations, born of historical changes to economic models, at liberal and socialdemocratic political parties' and groups that have historically experienced social marginalization (2022,40).In the corpus under investigation, the QS is depicted as failing to claw back the patriarchal white masculinity that had been robbed by progressive forces.This failure is suggested by a failure to overturn the election results and do the bidding of the mysterious 'Q'-however bizarre and irrational QAnon might be.
Sometimes, the QS' masculinity failure is suggested by an overt feminization.This feminization is rendered in comical terms; the suggestion being that, in failing to be a man, the QS deserves to be laughed at.The oversized tear in Appendix 11 references the old belief that being a man requires the suppression of emotion.The tear's largeness enhances the comedic effect.Appendix 12 references 'Karen', a popular internet archetype of entitled white femininity, who complains to 'the manager' for spurious reasons.Appendix 10 interpellates the QS as the odious Felicia from catchphrase 'Bye, Felicia,' which was introduced in the comedy film Friday (1995).
In other memes, the QS' failed masculinity is suggested by scenes of violent punishment.This punishment represents an especially pronounced emasculation or, more specifically, feminization of the QS, as well as a response to his inability to achieve his aims.The punishment/emasculation is homophobic and racist; humour is derived from the prospect of the QS being sexually penetrable/penetrated by gay and black men.For instance, Appendix 9 implies that the QS is being raped.This suggestion is advanced via the QS' facial expression, which (when viewed in this context) appears to be one of pain; his positioning in front of the shirtless black man; and via references to prison rape and racist stereotypes of black men as sexual predators.This kind of punishment is anticipated by the hope expressed in Appendix 8 that the QS will be forced to wear his outlandish attire in prison; the suggestion being that this garb will not be regarded as conventionally masculine by, and hence will incite violence (especially sexual violence) from other prisoners.The QS' feminization and corresponding alignment with homosexuality is further suggested in a meme where he is depicted as the 'husband' of Joe Exotic (Appendix 13) -another flamboyant, right-leaning pop culture figure who both embraces and eschews aspects of patriarchal white masculinity.
Ultimately, the memes discussed in this section seem more likely to reinforce traditional gender roles than in enhancing their audience's understandings of either Jake Angeli or conspiracy actors in general.Michelle Smirnova argues: 'Acts of everyday resistance such as humour not only go unnoticed, but laughter may be recognition of our own participation in the very structures that oppress us' (2018,4).The QS memes may be (mostly) critical of QAnon and online conspiracies, but their humour depends on male supremacy, racism, homophobia.Further, these memes reinforce the suggestion that Angeli's life is unworthy because he has failed in achieving his (admittedly dubious) political goals.Or worded another way: the QS becomes a 'body of evidence' about a particularly lowly example of the already lowly conspiracy actor.
What, then, might ethical media representations of conspiracy actors look like?Answering this question is beyond the paper's scope.Such representations should at least encourage the development of intellectual empathy.Intellectual empathy involves acknowledging 'the complexity of disadvantage and how it is acquired through lived experience, the slow accumulation of indignities over time, and solidarity with others who have been subject to similar experiences' (Linker 2011, 124).This does not mean condoning conspiracist beliefs, but recognizing the complex reasons why certain individuals hold these beliefs and how laughing at these individuals contributes to the 'indignities' they might face.Such a recognition will itself be a challenging task.Nonetheless, it is surely a crucial step in recognizing the lives of conspiracy actors as actually being lives (Butler 2009, 3), and their 'othering' as being dehumanizing and therefore unacceptable.

Conclusion
This article has argued that QS memes offer revealing case studies in how conspiracy actors have been represented -and misrepresented -in popular culture.These memes encourage audiences to laugh at QS because he fails both in achieving his political goals and in successfully performing patriarchal white masculinity.His self-presentation and beliefs are framed as evidence of the otherness assigned to conspiracy actors.For these reasons, the article has argued, the QS memes can potentially distort rather than enhance their audience's understanding of why conspiracies attract followers, and that conspiracism -far from being an aberration -is endorsed and enabled by media and political structures.These memes also obscure the fact that conspiracy actors are human beings, existing in the same society 'we' all do, with lives that are liveable.

Notes
1.The article uses 'QAnon shaman' and 'QS' to refer to the archetype and 'Angeli' to refer to the man to whom this archetype has been applied.While Angeli certainly appointed himself as a shaman, he is not necessarily responsible for the ways in which the QS stereotype has been deployed in media representations.2.More research is needed on whether such representations might contribute to the stigmatizing of conspiracy actors and (perhaps correspondingly) the strengthening of their beliefs.
There is scholarship on these topics (e.g.Douglas, van Prooijen, and Sutton 2022), though this pays little attention to popular culture.