Meme Culture Research Articles

On the interaction of core and emergent common ground in Internet memes

AbstractInternet memes are meaningful objects of diverse shapes that spread across networks of mediated participation (term fromMilner 2012: 10). The distribution and reception of memes bears aspects of communicative interaction, because memes establish usage conventions. This paper will be concerned with the pragmatics of Internet memes. Given that flexibility, novelty and originality are driving forces in meme culture, the question arises how traditional pragmatic notions likerecipient designandcommon groundcan be said to apply for the interaction with memes. Kecskes’ (2008,2010,2012,2014;Kecskes and Zhang 2009) distinction between core common ground and emergent common ground will be discussed and put to use for an explanation of the complex interactive dynamics of Internet communication. This modern form of communication oscillates between reference to shared cultural contents and the establishment and perpetuation of conventions on the one hand, and the pursuit of originality on the other hand. This paper will demonstrate how memes can vary with respect to the degree to which they require core common ground or the generation of emergent common ground for their proper usage. The scale presented as a result of the discussion represents a continuum of the prevalence of semantics versus pragmatics involved in the usage and interpretation of memes.

“Liking” as creating: On aesthetic category memes

Social networks and media hosting sites have recently fostered a growing trend in meme culture: the circulation of images within strangely specific categories of pleasure such as the “oddly satisfying” and the “mildly interesting.” Difficult to define but collectively recognized, what I call aesthetic category memes are made up of images of ordinary things and processes that not only exemplify such categories of pleasure, but also provoke reflection on the peculiar nature of those categories. As a result, I argue, contributors to aesthetic category memes are unwittingly engaged in a philosophical project that tests the principles of aesthetic theory. Examining the growing archive of images and comments alongside key texts in aesthetic theory, I explore how aesthetic category memes reclaim the aesthetic faculties away from the presumed passivity of sharing, consuming, and “liking” online content, thereby revealing the philosophical foundations of what it means to share and “like” at all.

Memes and the Future of Pop Culture

Abstract Pop culture, as a distinct form of culture with its own historical, artistic and textual categories, crystallized in the first decades of the twentieth century as a reaction to the restrictive social traditions of colonial America. It spread quickly and broadly throughout the bustling urban centers of the 1920s—an era when it formed a partnership with technology and the business world. This coalition gave pop culture its identity, allowing it to thrive and form alliances with artistic and literary movements. But pop culture may have run its course with the rise of meme culture—a culture that has evolved on the Internet. This essay revisits the social, psychic, and aesthetic roots of pop culture, suggesting that meme culture has fragmented its historical flow, thus threatening to bring about its demise.

'Making Memes and Shitposting': The Powerful Political Discourse of Alt-Right Meme Culture

'Making Memes and Shitposting': The Powerful Political Discourse of Alt-Right Meme Culture

Internet-memes of Ukrainian origin in the cultural practice of modern society

The purpose of the article. The study is related to the attempt at fixation and systematization of the meme Internet content of Ukrainian origin, which is considered in the paradigm of cultural practices expanding of modern society. Methodology. Network communication is analyzed in the context of cultural studies, in which an empirical method of content analysis was used to identify the artifacts of the Ukrainian meme culture on the national Internet space. Scientific novelty. It is the first comprehensive study of Ukrainian meme culture. In this study, some general patterns of the meme as a phenomenon of modern cyberculture are also revealed. Conclusions. The article attempts to characterize the Ukrainian meme Internet culture in general, with already formed dozens of national characters and templates. Basic memes have been identified. As a result of the study, we conclude that such post-folklore materials enrich the Internet with Ukrainian content, so they contribute to the formation of a national cultural field in cyberspace. The laconic and expressive images of memes reflect essential meanings; an interest of Internet users motivates their clip nature, they can aestheticize information – these are the factors that determine the tendency of the Internet to memetic.

Letter from the Editors

Letter from the Editors

Meme Culture, Alienation Capital, and Gestic Play

Meme Culture, Alienation Capital, and Gestic Play

Famous on the Internet: The Spectrum of Internet Memes and the Legal Challenge of Evolving Methods of Communication

On a daily basis, millions of Internet users re-blog, re-tweet, and re-post the content of others on social media. It is conduct that has led to a flourishing social Internet culture, but it is also conduct that implicates many clashing interests. For some, an Internet meme is a work of their own creativity whose co-option by the Internet at large is an act of infringement. For others, an Internet meme is a violation of their privacy resulting in severe emotional distress. For still others, an Internet meme is a vital communicative tool expressing particular ideas that cannot be articulated in any other way. This Article argues that the legal analyses applied to memes should strive to seek a balance between all of these interests, promoting the continuation of meme culture while also protecting those harmed by meme culture’s excesses. This Article uses the examples of a number of different memes to demonstrate that meme usage encompasses a spectrum of activity ranging from static to mutating in nature. These different uses have correspondingly different impacts on the legal rights of all three meme interest groups, none of which are adequately captured by traditional applications of existing doctrines of intellectual property or privacy laws. This Article posits that explicit acknowledgment of the wide spectrum of meme behavior should be used to help guide and appropriately adjust the application of legal doctrine to the meme in question, with attention paid to the underlying policy interests of a particular meme use. This can lead to more effective legal decisions regarding these memes that balance more precisely the interests of all those affected — both negatively and positively — by Internet meme culture.

From Webcams to Wikipedia There Is An Art & Feminism Online Social Movement : Happening and It Is Not Going Away

The internet has always been a boys club. Women who choose to delve deeper into the net than their email inboxes needn't look very far to find themselves bombarded by the proliferation of archaic negative gender-based stereotypes in almost every digital space, including online games, meme culture, forums, online journalism, YouTube, and beyond. Every major platform and communication model online appears to be a megaphone for men to remind women that women don't belong or that they are only allowed to participate if they accept their role as objects of admiration or quiet, non-opinionated users, in the event they aren't deemed attractive enough for the former role. It is not uncommon for women online to be stalked, to receive death threats, and to be doxxed. And it is implicitly accepted that women will be under constant scrutiny in most digital spaces, especially if they dare to question these pervasive misogynistic field conditions. These threats can be alarming even when exclusively digital, as women have been raped in online spaces as early as 1993 (Dibbell, 1993).

The comedian, the cat, and the activist: the politics of light seriousness and the (un)serious work of contemporary laughter

This article explores three examples of contemporary humour that situate seriousness and unseriousness as important points of departure for theorizing what Anca Parvulescu calls the work and ‘unwork’ of laughter. Through a textual analysis of Louis C.K.'s performative stand-up routines, the mimetic and participatory facets of meme culture at work in the global Nyan Cat phenomenon and in the hoaxing-based activist politics of the Yes Men, this article examines the layers of seriousness attached to what may otherwise be deemed unserious cultural practices. I argue that the relay between unserious content and playful practices may also operate alongside serious political actions that assume unserious and/or humorous guises.

Reflections on Internet Culture

In these edited remarks originally given at ROFLCon in May 2012, Jonathan Zittrain muses on the nature of memes and their relationships to their creators as well as to broader culture and to politics. The distributed environment of the internet allows memes to morph and become distanced from their original intentions. As meme culture becomes more and more assimilated into popular culture, subcultures like those of Reddit or 4chan have begun to re-conceptualize their own role from just meme propagators to cultural producers. Memes can gain commercial appeal, much to the chagrin of their creators. More strangely, memes can gain political traction and affiliation, like American conservative commentator Bill O’Reilly’s ‘You can‘t explain that’ or Anonymous’ ‘Low Orbit Ion Cannon’. Can meme culture survive becoming not just the property of geeks and nerds, but part of the commercial and political world?

Batman, Pandaman and the Blind Man: A Case Study in Social Change Memes and Internet Censorship in China

While the internet has been examined as a utilitarian space for social movements, it also acts as a cultural space for personal and community expression about important social issues. While examining the particularities of the memetic form – often catchy humor, simple imagery, and remixing – the author examines meme culture as a vehicle for political and social critique in the context of China’s stringent web censorship and propaganda. She looks at social change memes that have arisen around internet censorship and in support of the blind lawyer activist Chen Guangcheng. First, she considers these memes as visual and creative practices that sidestep the mechanics of internet censorship in China. She then argues for the role of internet memes in challenging hegemonic media environments, and maintains that these actions should be considered important political acts in and of themselves.

Make Lulz, Not War: How Online Remix and Meme Culture are Empowering Civic Engagement in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam

Although social media platforms have garnered much attention in recent years for their putative role in dramatic social and political movements around the world, scholars such as Clay Shirky and Ethan Zuckerman have suggested that the real potential of such tools for change exists in the way they empower citizens to publicly articulate and debate an array of conflicting views throughout society. In this view, social media matters most not in the streets and squares but in the social commons that Jürgen Habermas termed the public sphere. New image-based social media platforms and creative practices in Vietnam appear to be emerging as powerful tools in this regard, offering a voice to a citizenry who, since 1975, have lived under an authoritarian, and not clearly delineated, legal order restricting the opinions and views eligible for public expression.In 2013, Vietnamese netizens turned to the digital techniques of remix and memetic culture to indirectly express and debate sentiment on issues of often sensitive social and political relevance. Using two recent case studies, we argue that this widespread practice constitutes a culturally-specific form of civic and political engagement that appears to be exerting a subtle but real influence upon the state in this rapidly developing Southeast Asian nation.

StateTube: Anthropological Reflections on Social Media and the Israeli State

Computers and keyboards are the weapons-Facebook and Twitter are the battlefields. It is there that we fight, each and every day. -Israel Defense Forces spokesman, New Media Division pages...have as much impact as a tank-and sometimes even more. -Israeli Member of Parliament, Danny Danon (Likud) Consider, as a point of departure, a set of images that went viral on Israeli social networks October of 2011. Their occasion was the release of abducted Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, held for five years by Hamas and freed exchange for over 1,000 Palestinian prisoners Israeli custody. 1 Popular Israeli criticism quickly mounted about the ways Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu had mobilized Shalit's release for electoral gain. Some Israelis voiced their disapproval the language of the meme-that is, an image, video, or phrase that circulates virally between social media users in the form of parody, pastiche, mashup, or other derivative work (Shifman 2011). The basis of this pastiche was a photograph issued by the Israeli government on the event of Shalit's release, picturing Shalit embracing his father against the background of the smiling Prime Minister (see Figure 1). Only Netanyahu's smile remained intact the photoshopped memes that ensued, while the remaining image was playfully altered accordance with the authorial vision of its remixer. Bibibombing, as this widespread practice was named (playing alliteratively with the Prime Minister's nick-name), flooded Israeli social networks, and Flickr particular. The range of remakes was wide: from key moments Israeli history to iconic popular cultural events and images (looking on at the wedding of William and Kate, joining the cast of The Matrix, etc.), all overlaid with Netanyahu's cheshire smile (see Figures 2-4). This meme culture generated little surprise among Israeli social media users. Yet the involvement of the Prime Minister's office these viral circuits precipitated considerably more commentary. As Israeli newspapers noted, Netanyahu had post[ed] his own 'Bibi-bomb' on Facebook within days of the meme's inception-a photoshopped image of the now iconic smile against the background of Netanyahu's recent United Nations address during the controversial Palestinian membership bid. American Jewish bloggers praised the effort as a welcomed shiftfrom the dour and humorless tenor of the PM's office, as a refreshing refusal of the premise that social networking was conduct unbecoming of a head of state.2 A similar buzz was generated March of 2011, when Netanyahu became the third world leader to appear on YouTube's live interview format, World View (see Figure 5). The user response was substantial, as thousands of viewers from over 90 countries posted video and text questions and Netanyahu responded his well-honed American English and flair for conversational address.3 The substance of his comments was nothing new, including his standard defense of settlement building and celebration of Israel's multicultural democracy. YouTube, however, constituted the difference-that is, the ways this social media platform altered the structure and performance of his address. Joining Netanyahu his Jerusalem living room where the event was staged were both the interviewer and a large computer screen on which video questions from YouTube viewers were screened. Most conformed to the platform's protocols for amateur video production, including poor lighting and shaking cameras. Netanyahu responded kind, often speaking directly to the screen as he employed the exaggerated informality that is social media's hallmark. The event was hailed as a success by members of the prime minister's staffwho praised the Prime Minister's ability to address the international Internet public without filters (Ha'aretz 2011). Within the broader context of Israeli state practices where new media are concerned, these two incidents are by no means anomalous. …