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Paper short abstract

This paper examines memes from ongoing Serbian student protests as digital folklore, functioning both as forms of political resistance and as an emotional valve, helping youth release tension, anger, and frustration while shaping counter-discourses.

Paper long abstract

This paper examines the role of memes as a form of digital folklore that has emerged within the ongoing student protests in Serbia, which have been unfolding for nearly a year. Positioned at the intersection of humor, resistance, and digital creativity, protest-related memes reflect how young people construct and communicate an oppositional political subculture in both online and offline spaces. By analyzing the mechanisms of humor that characterize this folkloric genre, the paper investigates how memes not only satirize the ruling political order but also serve as symbolic tools of solidarity, mobilization, and the articulation of dissent.

Through the lens of folklore and youth subculture theory, I argue that these digital artifacts represent more than ephemeral jokes: they embody a sustained counter-political discourse that parallels street-level activism and reinforces it in the digital sphere. In doing so, Serbian student protest memes exemplify how young people's political subcultures actively shape their views of politics and their imaginaries of alternative political futures.

By situating the case study within the broader framework of digital folklore in the Global South, the paper contributes to the panel’s critical engagement with youth digital activism. It demonstrates how the interplay of humor, political culture, and digital media under conditions of democratic erosion in Serbia reflects the pressures of technological globalism while simultaneously highlighting the potential of youth-led digital subcultures to generate folkloric civil impact and resist dominant political narratives.