Sociological insights in the study of visual data: methodological aspect internet meme analysis)

The article outlines the role of sociology in the overall understanding of the digital environment represented by visual data, and provides an algorithm for studying Internet memes as a distinct type of polymodal phenomena. The connection between online and offline variants of the modern socio-cultural space is revealed. To understand the phenomenon of culture and its various aspects, it is especially promising to appeal to this type of Internet memes, which from a substantive point of view can be called «quasi-political». They include examples of images and texts in which politicization and ideologization are subjected to initially non-political processes and phenomena from the sphere of religion, sports, show culture, art, etc. Examples of the “Political memes” group were used as an empirical base. The corpus of research material allows making a conclusion about the formation of dichotomy in the broadcast of memes built on the opposition of «liberal - conservative».