Internet Memes Research Articles

Implicature, Technique, and Function of Humor on Instagram Memes

Nowadays, humor is a phenomenon that emerges and is enjoyed by social media users. On social media, humor develops in a new form of communication namely “internet memes”. In addition, internet memes with humorous nuances come with certain ideas and functions intended by the meme maker. This study furthermore attempts to examine the themes or ideas of memes, conventional implicatures, humor creation techniques, and the functions of internet memes uploaded by @memecomic.id Instagram account. This research is a qualitative descriptive study, which data was collected by screen capture technique. The data were subsequently analyzed using qualitative descriptive method and pragmatic approach in exploring the implicature or implied purpose as well as the function behind the meme creation. It was shown in the study result that social phenomenon memes are presented using humor allusion and definition techniques. Moreover, the function of social phenomenon memes is solidarity which includes sharing experiences, obtaining advantage of shared experiences, ridiculing without hurting, and psychologically addressing life common problems with humor to soothe the psyche. What is more, social phenomenon memes are created to share behaviors or social problems experienced by most people. Consequently, the memes will seem ridiculous and humorous without hurting anyone.

“The General Said”

Times of trial require resorting to new methods for venting up the tension. Internet memes during the first outbreak of the pandemic proved to be the necessary outlet, while, at the same time, provided a platform for the public to share their opinion, albeit in a humorous way, on the measures imposed, the people involved in the fight against the virus, and basically on everything that determined their everyday lives. The latter has been fostered greatly by the fact that humour is a generally relatable phenomenon. At the same time though, it can also be culture specific and some peculiarities of the embedded message can remain hidden for the general public. In order to trace these opposing aspects in the creation of internet memes, the paper analyses a corpus of 84 memes circulated on Facebook and Instagram in the period of 13 March 2020 – 30 May 2020. The subject in all these memes is General Ventsislav Mutafchiyski, who was in charge of the struggle with COVID-19 pandemic in Bulgaria, and the main methods of analysis are Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and Multimodal Discourse Analysis. The focus is on intertextuality and the paper argues that some of the intertextual links used in the creation of the memes might be left misunderstood by the general public due to the specificity of the message carried or the images that have been selected by the authors of these pieces of digital humour. Thus, mediation, i.e. the time needed to decode the message, would be longer for people who are not familiar with the images or ideas used, while smaller for those aware of them. Additionally, the paper argues that the age of the recipients as well as their personal preferences are also of significance for the proper understanding of the message a meme carries. Furthermore, the analysis also proves the fact that although some images might be used simply as a background and do not carry substantial information, without them one cannot understand the full array of ideas the author/ poster of a particular meme is trying to convey.

Laughing at political opponents

The paper is devoted to the analysis of the discursive dimension of the standoff between supporters of 6th Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and those of his predecessor Petro Poroshenko. This dimension is implemented in Internet memes as one of the forms of political satire. Memes can be defined by their goals, frame of reference and means. The discursive practices used in memes aiming at the symbolic defamation of a political opponent and his electoral base are considered, taking into account the target, the focus, and the presentation of political satire about the protagonists Zelensky and Poroshenko. The corresponding parameters (goal-target, frame of reference-focus, means-presentation) constitute the analytical framework for the examination of the interrelations between political participation, political humour, political satire, and political discourse in this paper.

STUDY OF METAPHOR TYPES IN SELECTED NIGERIANS’ COVID-19 INTERNET MEMES

A global health catastrophe brought on by COVID-19 profoundly altered how people view the world in their day-to-day existence. This led to the development of the internet meme, an evolving trend that is now utilised for humorous graphics and the multimodal expression of ideas. Social network users have created their own distinctive communicational methods that may be difficult for persons beyond a particular age to understand; this enabled social network users to communicate freely their ideas, thoughts, jokes and critiques of their societies and political leaders in a much more creative way. However literature is fraught with studies on complex semiotic constituents of memes in political, medical, and socio-economic discourses. Hence, not much linguistic studies have investigated COVID-19 memes through Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT). Thus, the study examined the types of conceptual metaphors in the selected Nigerians' COVID-19 internet memes using the CMT approach. Qualitative method was adopted for the study. The qualitative method accounted for the textual and content analysis of the metaphors found in each meme which were classified under the identified types of metaphors: imagistic, ontological, orientational, and structural. Six COVID-19 internet memes were chosen from Facebook using a purposeful sampling strategy based on the prevalence of the metaphorical linguistic portrayal of Nigerians. The chosen data ranged from March 14, 2020, to March 15, 2020. The research concentrated on analysing 6 online memes using the CMT to locate the metaphors because of the uneven distribution of the memes. Analysis with the conceptual metaphorical theory revealed that all the selected memes have metaphorical connotations, the metaphors identified were: image, structural, ontological and orientational, which all revealed the societal mindsets as well as unique paradigms of the effects and coping strategies that COVID-19 victims adopted in the course of the phenomenon. In conclusion, metaphors served as invaluable cognitive devices that enhanced in-depth meaning recovery from the studied COVID-19 internet memes. This study however, would motivate linguists and many inter-disciplinary researchers to further work on cognitive metaphors in other discourses.

Could the Implementation of Augmented Reality Influence Consumers’ Purchase Intention in E-Commerce?

Augmented reality in e-commerce has become the latest trend in the world of online shopping. The purpose of this study is to empirically prove the influence of perceived of usefulness and the perceived ease of use towards behavioral intentions through attitudes. The urgency of this research is the new phenomenon of online shopping experience in Indonesia using augmented reality technology in e-commerce. This study used primary data by distributing questionnaires to 200 users of AR application in e-commerce with random sampling techniques. This study used Path analysis with SPSS. The results of the study prove that the perceived of usefulness and the perceived ease of use have a significant effect on online purchase intentions through attitudes. The perceived ease of use has more influence than the perceived of usefulness.

Interenet ads as a form of Internet communication. Specifics of translation. (based on the material of the Chinese and English languages)

The aim of the article is to study specifics of Internet advertising as a communicative process in virtual discourse. The relevance of the chosen topic is determined by accelerated technological development, modification of Internet communication with the participation of the latest elements of technology and software, and the evolution of communication processes. The tasks of the research are to consider the theoretical origins of formation of Internet communication; to distinguish the concept of Internet advertising; to analyze the peculiarities of Internet advertising in the context of virtual discourse. The object of the article is Internet advertisements. The subject of the research is elements of translation and adaptation of Chinese and English texts of Internet advertisements in Ukrainian. The article examines the phenomenon of Internet advertising as a form of Internet communication. The theoretical origins of the formation of Internet communication are considered. A general overview of the characteristics of Internet communication is provided, namely, its cross-border nature, expressiveness, illustrativeness of texts, the use of a significant number of graphic elements in messages is examined. It is noted that in the communicative processes inherent in online communication, a widespread combination of oral and written forms of speech appears in order to further improve, modify and obtain new opportunities for the implementation of online forms of communication, which have become an integral part of life of modern society. The concept of Internet communication is defined as a modern communication process that has deeply entered life of society. The concept of Internet advertising is distinguished. It is noted that online advertising is a form of communication process used in cases of finding and selling a product, service or brand through channels determined by the virtual environment. The peculiarities of Internet advertisement as a small-form text that exists separately in virtual space are analyzed. The characteristics of Internet advertisement in the context of virtual discourse, its types and forms are studied.

Representation of Current Sociocultural Realities in German Society: Thematic Group of Internet Memes OUTSIDER — LOCAL

This article presents an analysis of internet memes in Germany from 2020—2023, focusing on the thematic group “Outsider — Local”. The study examines various characteristics of these memes, such as their place and date of posting, “genetics”, precedent phenomenon, addressing, field structure, object and subject of criticism, interaction of visual and verbal series, patterns of meaning generation, sources of humor, and genre. The article identifies four subgroups of memes, which include criticism of political subjects (in defense of migrants), criticism of political subjects (against migrants), criticism of migrants, and criticism of local ethnic Germans. The study finds that social groups themselves, such as migrants and typical Germans, are the most frequently criticized objects. Additionally, the authorities are criticized for their insufficient or excessive support of migrants, while typical Germans are criticized for their cultural standards. The most frequent subjects of criticism for migrants include their large numbers, low integration into German society, criminal tendencies, pretentiousness, and disrespect for other cultures. The article notes that intercultural memes are infrequent, while borrowed memes that refer to recognizable characters and contemporary precedent phenomena with broad addressing dominate. Finally, the dominant genre varieties are macros and edvices.

Системные модификации исходного содержания медийных поликодовых репрезентантов комплексных прецедентных феноменов

The article studies systemic modifications of the original content in complex precedent phenomenon «Directed by Robert B. Weide» in polymodal units. The study is aimed at analyzing the linguo-semiotic specifics of encoding of polycode representatives in a complex precedent phenomenon (CPP). In the course of the analysis of 480 polymodal units (Internet memes, creolized articles and news items) chosen by selective sampling method from English and Russian Internet domains, a set of precedent elements that are a part of the CPP was identified. The description of systemic modifications of the original content of polycode representatives in the CPP «Directed by Robert B. Weide» was carried out based on such methodological techniques as case studies, situational and cultural reflection, component analysis of words and phrases, intertextual, stylistic and inductive research methods. The study specifies the CPP is an integrative sign that includes elements of several semiotic codes. They are as follows: 1) visual precedent images of Larry David, the character of the Curb Your Enthusiasm series; comedian-host S. Harvey at the beauty contest ceremony; captions on a black background; 2) verbalized elements (text) «Directed by Robert B. Weide»; the names «Robert B. Weide» and «Larry David», catch phrases of the sitcom character; 3) auditory element - L. Michelini’s melody «Frolic». Systemic modifications of the original content of the polycode representatives in CPP «Directed by Robert B. Weide» are characterized in a diachronic key: starting from the formation of an associative connection of the image of the main character of the series and the difficulties of communicative interaction, to the name-representative associated with directing an absurd or embarrassing situation («Robert B. Weide») and precedent text of the caption («Directed by Robert B. Weide») with the semantics of summing up some annoying or fatal situation. The text examples demonstrate CPP encoding in four variants at different semiotic levels (visual, verbal, auditory) and in different syncretism formats (using one / two or all codes of the original CPP).

LINGUISTIC AND VISUAL MODES CONTRIBUTION TO THE HUMOR PRODUCTION OF PUNS IN INTERNET MEMES

This article aims to get a better understanding of the text-picture interaction and, in particular, the pragmatic consequences of 150 online memes that feature puns, one of the linguistic humor subgenres. This article will analyze a corpus of 150 memes. Using a comic taxonomy by McCloud (1994). The internet memes then were to be categorized. The default taxonomy of categories produced the following classification of internet memes: word specific (28), picture specific (2), additive (29), and interdependent (91). The findings show rather significant disparities among the findings. Some categories in the original taxomony are even absent in the data set.

Television archives, social networks and the young audiences: The example of Internet memes as a way to revitalise public broadcasters’ engagement

The purpose of this research is to explore the efforts that Spanish public television archives are making to bring their audiovisual content closer to young people via social networks. Specifically, this text focuses on analysing the public television archives of the Spanish national television company RTVE and of the Andalusian regional public television agency (RTVA), known as Archivo RTVE and MemorANDA, respectively. The methodology used is based on both qualitative and quantitative tools, consisting of content analysis and in-depth interviews. The results obtained show that both platforms manage to reach young people, but indirectly through viral videos or Internet memes. The RTVE archive is the most successful among young people because it has a more extensive collection and more resources as well as a policy that is more clearly geared towards the dissemination of its audiovisual heritage. The most negative aspect identified in this study was the repetition of regional clichés, especially in the case of MemorANDA.

How do you Meme Trump, Noah? Shaping a New Memescape in The Daily Show with Trevor Noah (January 2016 – December 2019)

With The Daily Show’s popularity for late-night televised political satire, the infotainment genre has progressively turned into a major venue for mass-mediated political discourse in the US. Arguably, the show employs creative political memes in tandem with a plethora of multimodal strategies that all function in collegiality in revival of a journalism of critical inquiry showcasing how political dissent is negotiated and mitigated. Set against this backdrop, this paper argues for a new conceptualization of “digital memes” to incorporate the visuals integrated in talk show monologues. These visuals have undergone a shift from being merely “aesthetic-expressive” graphics to share many of the internet meme’s features and hence make them mount to be a sub-genre of memes. More specifically, the study extends scholarship on political memes proposing a more nuanced methodological and analytical framework premised on meme-inherent news values and host-specific converging communication accommodation strategies. The paper is an attempt to introduce an inclusive approach that draws on various perspectives that can do better justice to the rich complexity inherent to memes. For the purpose, a corpus of 235 meme instances from January 2016 to December 2019 in The Daily Show with Trevor Noah’s entertainment-based, ideologically-driven political commentary was examined. This is to capture how the intervention of memetic aesthetics in the topical monologue of the show as far as Trump’s administration is concerned can alter the trajectory of political satire. Findings showcase that the emerging memes in the late-night show, particularly image macro memes, have superseded late-night television as the leading edge of political satire.

Internet memes as an internal communication strategy: practices at the startup Delivery Direto as a case study

Internet memes as an internal communication strategy: practices at the startup Delivery Direto as a case study

Reassembling digital intimacy

ASMR, an online phenomenon comprising videos in which a performer employs technologically processed sounds to evoke a pleasurable, tingling sensation in the viewer and foster a sense of intimacy has been rapidly gaining popularity in recent years, with its aesthetic increasingly adopted in popular music. The paper investigates one example of such imbrication, Zaumne’s album, Emo Dub (2018), which samples voices from ASMR videos, transforming them into disembodied intensities, detached from their original context. As such, Zaumne’s music goes beyond either merely incorporating aspects of ASMR, or deconstructing it in a critical fashion; instead, it modulates its affective potential for affording mediated intimacy. Consequently, drawing on the concepts of networked affect and assemblages, the paper argues that Zaumne’s music exhibits a form of posthuman intimacy that does not pertain to relations between subjects, but rather to attunement with the impersonal dynamic of digital networks: the constant circulation of content, and the random and contingent affective encounters that produce transpersonal identities and subjectivities.

Digital Europeanism and extending the literary Europeanist discourse: The Twitter feeds of @PulseofEurope and @mycountryeurope

This article argues that the study of literary Europeanism should be extended to the discourse of wider textual Europeanism, understood here as a digital Europeanism that examines digital texts, in the widest sense, contextualised within the norms of digital culture. The texts emanating on the platform Twitter from two explicitly pro-European/pro-European Union accounts, one German-language and one largely (non-native) anglophone – @PulseofEurope and @mycountryeurope – were examined from 9 May 2021 to 9 November 2021. In evidence was a type of textual Europeanism that indeed owes a degree of coherence to the norms of digital culture. This was seen in relation to referentiality, that is, the use of already existing and circulating cultural materials for one’s own cultural production. This was evident in commented and uncommented retweets, social TV practices and the Europeanisation of Internet memes. The creation of a sense of communality – the way in which meanings can be stabilised, options for action generated and resources made accessible via a collectively supported frame of reference – is also in evidence and to be seen in the distinct discursive creation of an authoritarian ‘other’. This ‘other’ consists of a temporal ‘other’ – a small number of tweets relating to authoritarianisms of the past; an inner-European Union ‘other’ – tweets relating to movements towards authoritarianism within the European Union, especially in Hungary and Poland; and an external European Union other – tweets relating to authoritarianism on the European Union’s borders, especially in Belarus and Russia.

Memecry: tracing the repetition-with-variation of formulas on 4chan/pol/

ABSTRACT In this article we propose a new theoretical framework to conceptualise Internet memes and to trace their temporal variation on 4chan/pol/. We draw from literature on primary and secondary orality to conceptualise the repetition-with-variation of Internet memes as a form of memecry, which we argue is specifically pertinent to the collectivity of online subcultures. We operationalise its study through formulas: mnemonic phrases that encapsulate important elements of oral cultures, which have arguably regained prominence in ephemeral and fast-paced online environments. While Internet memes have often been studied as single images or words, formulas provide a more complex unit for tracing variation and not only circulation. We offer a quali-quantitative protocol to investigate memecry and visualise the spread and variability of 65 prominent formulas on 4chan/pol/, a far-right space known for its reliance on memes. By discussing several cases, we demonstrate how 4chan’s collective identity indeed features typical of secondary oral cultures, while revealing how the memecry of its formulas is entwined with reactionary sentiments and a subcultural struggle for distinction.

Blending parody: The case ofMy Corona

AbstractThis contribution is an attempt to integrate the notion of conceptual blending (Fauconnier and Turner 1998; Fauconnier and Turner 2002; and Fauconnier and Turner 2003) and Linda Hutcheon’s (1985) view of parody as a form of repetition maintaining a critical distance, through the analysis of a multimodal Internet meme. The case study chosen is a parodic music video of the Knack’s classic hitMy Sharona, showing the absurdity in everyday life during the times of the Covid-19 pandemic. The study is thus based on two conceptual paradigms: Blending Theory and Pragmatic Studies of Parody.

#BoomerRemover: COVID-19 and the intertextual politics of internet memes

This article analyzes ‘Boomer Remover’ the controversial term for COVID-19 popularized on social media in early 2020. It mobilizes digital media theory and discourse analysis to ask what makes Boomer Remover acceptable for its users. It conceptualizes Boomer Remover as an internet meme and argues that memes use intertextuality (the way new texts build upon older texts) as a core mechanism of meaning making. This allows the meme form to communicate a high-level of complexity and depth in an easily consumed format, however, it also bifurcates audiences as a meme is understood differently depending on the audience member’s familiarity with reference points. This article analyzes these divergent understandings through a framework of ‘discourse communities’. It unpacks how for a discourse community familiar with internet memes the term has come to be connected with progressive politics, and contrasts this with readings of Boomer Remover as ageist attack for those unfamiliar with the memetic contexts. Rather than privilege one reading of the Boomer Remover meme as correct, this article shows that in order to understand the social impact of memes, we must recognize their inherent polysemic nature.

Fridays for Future and Mondays for Memes: How Climate Crisis Memes Mobilize Social Media Users

Modern protest movements rely on digital activism on social media, which serves as a conduit for mobilization. In the social media landscape, internet memes have emerged as a popular practice of expressing political protest. Although it is known that social media facilitates mobilization, researchers have neglected how distinct types of content affect mobilization. Moreover, research regarding users’ perspectives on mobilization through memes is lacking. To close these research gaps, this study investigates memes in the context of climate protest mobilization. Based on the four-step model of mobilization, a survey of users who create and share memes related to the Fridays for Future movement on social media (<em>N</em> = 325) revealed that the prosumption of climate crisis memes increases users’ issue involvement and strengthens their online networks. These factors serve as crucial mediators in the relationship between users’ prosumption of climate crisis memes and political participation. The results suggest that mobilization through memes is effective at raising awareness of political issues and strengthening online discussion networks, which means that it has strategic potential for protest movements. By looking at memes from the perspective of their creators and examining a specific type of social media content, this study contributes to the literature on digital mobilization.

MemeTector: enforcing deep focus for meme detection

Image memes and specifically their widely known variation image macros are a special new media type that combines text with images and are used in social media to playfully or subtly express humor, irony, sarcasm and even hate. It is important to accurately retrieve image memes from social media to better capture the cultural and social aspects of online phenomena and detect potential issues (hate-speech, disinformation). Essentially, the background image of an image macro is a regular image easily recognized as such by humans but cumbersome for the machine to do so due to feature map similarity with the complete image macro. Hence, accumulating suitable feature maps in such cases can lead to deep understanding of the notion of image memes. To this end, we propose a methodology, called visual part utilization, that utilizes the visual part of image memes as instances of the regular image class and the initial image memes as instances of the image meme class to force the model to concentrate on the critical parts that characterize an image meme. Additionally, we employ a trainable attention mechanism on top of a standard ViT architecture to enhance the model’s ability to focus on these critical parts and make the predictions interpretable. Several training and test scenarios involving web-scraped regular images of controlled text presence are considered for evaluating the model in terms of robustness and accuracy. The findings indicate that light visual part utilization combined with sufficient text presence during training provides the best and most robust model, surpassing state of the art. Source code and dataset are available at https://github.com/mever-team/memetector.

Deconstructing Internet Memes through Semiotic Analysis: Unveiling Myths and Ideologies in Visual and Verbal Signs

This paper will examine the meanings embedded in memes through semiotic analysis. Semiotics, as proposed by Chandler (2007), is the study of signs and symbols and their meanings, particularly in the context of communication and representation. Internet memes are culturally significant artifacts that consist of visual and verbal signs which convey a shared experience or cultural reference within a community. The objective of this study is to explore the myth and ideology that is conveyed through the signs used in these memes, and to examine the message that is being communicated to the audience. The data were collected by using observation method which involves the selection of a sample of widely shared Internet memes on social media platforms. This study used qualitative method in analyzing the data. These memes were analyzed using semiotic analysis to identify the signs used in the Internet memes and their associated meanings. The findings suggest that memes are a form of communication that uses signifiers to convey a message, and the connotative meanings of these signifiers can reveal the myth and ideology behind the message. Memes convey cultural values and beliefs and can challenge or reinforce dominant cultural ideologies. Understanding them can shed light on cultural reproduction in society, with implications for media, cultural, and sociology studies in the digital age.