symbolically

In a symbolic manner.

Haha, memes are funny! Until they totally become racist. Pepe the Frog lived a very normal meme life right up until online trolls turned him into a green thing of hate in 2016. It got so bad his creator symbolically killed him off in 2017.

By means of symbols or a symbol.

As symbols or a symbol.

In the end, the deadlock was resolved by a minor -- but for the National Party symbolically important -- addition to one of the other subsections of the language clause.