Internet Memetics as an Emotiogenic Environment of the Network Communication

Abstract

The article presents the results of a study that deals with identification of the features peculiar to the functioning of meme communication in the Internet environment in relation to young users on the example of the Russian-language, German-language and English-American-language Internet segments. In the course of this research, the term “memetics” is introduced, which includes various topic structural-systemic and semantic features of the phe-nomenon of “meme” and “meme-communication”. Based on the hermeneutic approach, with the interdisciplinary features of meme-communication in mind, semiotic varieties are analyzed, including both creolized (polycode) and non-creolized (monocode) types of meme-communication inherent in the three above analyzed linguistic segments of the Internet. Topic and compositional features of the obtained data are discussed, taking into account the infor-mation content of the three sources of Internet communication. The main research method is the hermeneutic ap-proach to describing the data obtained, which allows interpreting the results with regard to various departments of knowledge: linguistics, cognitive science, media studies (forms of information transfer), virality, testing, etc. At the center of the study is the concept of “toxicity”, and this makes it possible to determine how communicants-users of the Web can be negatively affected in various ways.