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  • Memes to mend the wound: digital cultures against language repression

    by Rojda Yavuz

    Rojda Yavuz is a multidisciplinary creative with a practice rooted in writing and moving images. Their interests include the body and digital subcultures which they approach through a critique of power and coloniality. They are currently based in Brussels and can be found on Instagram via rrrrrojda.

    Visual communication and imagery on Kurdish cyberspace have held my fascination for the longest time. Extensive hours and cloud storage have been spent on curating and collecting digital ephemera in the format of memes, texts and videos from social media platforms, blogs and chat rooms, in the hopes of catching them before they disappear in this era of digital plenty. Whilst it would be unrealistic to allocate a transcendent or revolutionary quality to these time-based and profit-driven platforms, I fully confess my excitement about the potentialities that they have brought in the struggle against cultural repression and linguicide in Turkey Northern Kurdistan, and for colonised people as a whole.

    I. The ban of a language

    The Kurdish language has been a source of great anxiety in the Turkish imagination ever since the inception of the Republic in 1923, as it demystifies the category-blind national philosophy borrowed from France: “one state, one nation, one language” (Kadıoğlu 1996, 5). The corpora of public settings – spatial, textual, interactional, institutional – became overtly and decisively marked for the use of Turkish, and Turkish only (Jamison 2015 p.36). This fear was finally crystallised in 1983 into Law No. 293, “The Law Concerning Publications and Broadcasts in Languages Other Than Turkish”, officially banning the use of Kurdish in public and private spaces and declared that “the mother tongue of all Turkish citizens is Turkish” (HRW 1999). As such, any utterance of Kurdish, through an audio-visual broadcast or the name of a newborn, on what was known as “Turkish territory” and thus also in Kurdistan, became punishable by law. The law was retracted in 1991, coinciding with Turkey’s attempts at joining the European Union, but was swiftly followed by an “anti-terrorism” law that permitted the witch hunt on the language to continue. The Republic has since undergone a shift in political landscape with its current Islamist government performing a different attitude towards Kurdish, aiming for the hearts and votes of Kurds. The Erdoğan government repealed the language ban in 2001 and amended the law on radio-television broadcasting in 2002 (Arsan 2018). Erdoğan introduced courses for Kurmancî (the Kurdish dialect spoken in Northern Kurdistan) at private institutions as a “foreign language course” and approved Kurmancî broadcasting programs on national television, all part of his policy package coined “the Kurdish opening” (Derince 2013). In 2009, the Republic even witnessed the creation of its first state-owned Kurdish-spoken TV channel, TRT-Kurdî. As such, undoubtedly seeming like a historical moment, the Kurdish language was officially and legally introduced to the public.

    However, Erdoğan’s language efforts failed to persuade Kurds en masse and instead were viewed as a tool to decontextualise and trivialise Kurdish language rights. This is primarily due to the ongoing violent repression of the Kurdish political struggle in Northern Kurdistan and Rojava that was not halted but instead appeared in concert with his “Kurdish opening”. Conjointly, the content of the channel is strictly curated along state ideology, with a heavy restriction on anything echoing kesk û sor û zer (“green, red and yellow”, the colours of the Kurdish liberation movement). Neither the language courses, nor the broadcasting programs were designed in dialogue with Kurdish activists but instead, took place behind closed government doors, as the state’s primary concern was, and still is, to expand its network of domination (Derince 2013).

    What is more, the contested place the Kurdish language holds in the Turkish imagination remains untouched by this seeming tolerance conveyed by the AKP government. Though no longer outlawed, teaching, speaking or singing in Kurmancî still elicits cruelty in Turkey. In May 2020, a 20 year old Kurdish man Barış Çakan was murdered in Ankara for listening to Kurdish music in a public place (Bianet 2020). On 24 August 2021, news anchor and TV-show host Didem Arslan Yılmaz interrupted an interviewee on national television when they spoke Kurdish, shutting the words down with “Doğru düzgün Türkçe konuşsun. Burası Türkiye Cumhuriyeti.” (“Speak proper Turkish. This is the Turkish Republic.”) (Bianet 2021). Kurdish street musicians performing on İstiklal Avenue and elsewhere in İstanbul are constantly harassed by Turkish police officers who halt their performances and confiscate their instruments (Sol 2022). On 2 May 2023 Cihan Aymaz was stabbed to death in Kadıköy by a Turkish passerby after he refused to sing “Ölürüm Türkiyem” (“I’ll die for you my Turkey”), a Turkish nationalist hymn. A few days earlier on 26 April six members of a Kurdish theatre group in Diyarbakır Amed were arrested and held for 3 days by Turkish police (Bianet 2023).

    These cases of violence are not anomalous but are in line with Turkey’s violent repression of any mark of Kurdish existence. The language continues to be banned from all public institutions in Turkey and Northern Kurdistan, including schools, thus stripping Kurdish people away from their right to education in their mother tongue. It is important to note that the freedom of the language is directly related to the liberation of the Kurdish people, as the repression of the language is a symptom rather than the cause of Turkish colonialism. It also follows as such that any element relating to the Kurdish language, regardless of a potential personal or intimate nature, will always be political for Kurds from Northern Kurdistan, and that we should not, and we do not, rely on our oppressor for the dissemination and preservation of our language.

    II. Webs, networks and the popularisation of a language

    (Figure 1: screenshot taken on 22 June 2022 from the chat site tirşik.net. The text on the image reads “We had only just moved to the city. We didn’t have med-tv at home. One day during a visit I became acquainted with med-tv and I was bewildered. Dear god in heaven, what is this? I turned to my brother. I said: oh my god!!! The television can speak Kurdish!!????”)

    Kurmancî television predates any efforts of professed tolerance by the state of Turkey. Witnessing the language on screen evokes early childhood memories marked by a living room, a television and my father sitting next to me, fixated on the green, red and yellow logo that spelt MED-TV. MED-TV was the first Kurdish satellite television established in 1995 by Kurdish refugees in Western Europe through a coordinated effort from studios in London and Denderleeuw (Belgium). The channel aired talk shows, news broadcasts, songs, documentaries and children’s programs in Kurmancî primarily, but Soranî, Aramaic, Zazakî and Turkish also made their appearance on screen. Needless to say that MED-TV marked a historical moment for Kurds and thus instantly became popular. The language that was previously cornered into the private sphere now became a public tool of consciousness building through a satellite. MED-TV’s Kurdish content, alternative news broadcast from the military fronts and live performances of revolutionary songs undermined Turkish sovereign rule and held the allure of a united Kurdistan. The channel connected Kurdish people through satellite links across state borders, reaching West Asia, North Africa and Europe, crisscrossing from the four parts of Kurdistan to its diasporas. As a nation constantly on the move, dispersed, incarcerated and exiled, MED-TV spatially brought Kurdish people together, where satellite footprints functioned as national borders, and thus through networks realising the dream of Kurdish sovereignty (Hassanpour 2020).

    (Figure 2: a meme from my collection referring to the then-popular “Sizin orda da germ e” phrase on Kurdish social media)

    What is most relevant about MED-TV is how the channel creatively exerted the right to communicate audio-visually in Kurmancî. Turkey’s ambitions to put the language to sleep had created a lack of Kurdish audio-visual products and popular culture, thus causing a cultural deprivation. MED-TV mended exactly this wound. These visual efforts offered not only a new window on the Kurdish language, but on the world and life itself. However, the physicality and visibility of MED-TV’s infrastructure, from the satellite dishes of the viewers to the studio spaces of the producers, rendered the channel vulnerable. The channel was eventually shut down through a coordinated effort by Turkey and its Western European allies. 

    It is within this context that the utopian promise inherent to the internet and the mobile infrastructure required for digital cultural production prove helpful. In recent years Kurmancî meme pages have sprung up like mushrooms in cyberspace, decorating the walls of network sites such as Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and Facebook. The specific content and meaning of these memes have no pertinence to this essay, rather the language as methodology becomes relevant; the practice of writing and creating digitally in Kurmancî is what underpins my earlier-stated excitement. What is noteworthy is that these digital efforts are pioneered by individuals living in Kurdistan. This stands in contrast to Kurmancî television production in the 1990s and early 2000s, led exclusively by Kurds in the diaspora due to the absence of political freedoms in Kurdistan (Hassanpour 2020 p.179). The means to run a meme page consist of a smartphone, internet connection and digital know-how, as opposed to the vulnerable infrastructure of studio spaces and satellite dishes required for the former. 

    (Figure 3: screenshot of my meme collection taken on 21 June 2022 from my laptop.)

    In “Indigenous Memes and the Invention of a People”, Frazer and Carlson (2017) analyse the ways in which memes are entangled in the achievement of an anti-colonial politics for Indigenous people in the settler colony of Australia. Analysing memetic production and dissemination on the Facebook page of the Australian Aboriginal activist group Blackfulla Revolution (BFR), using Deleuze his notion of “assemblage”, they contend that memes both anticipate and produce an audience − they “contribut[e] to the invention of a people” (Deleuze 2013, p. 217 in Carlson and Frazer 2017, p.10). Internet users, both Indigenous and white Australians, are attracted to the BFR Facebook page to interact with the memes and consequently, with one another. I argue that algorithmic constellations and the temporal logic of memes both achieve this. The meme and the algorithm are underpinned by the promise of futurity. The user perpetually looks forwards and towards the next meme as the meme appears on its own through the nerves of the algorithm and does not require effort from its consumer. Hassanpour’s analogy of satellite footprints also proves helpful here. The algorithmic network creates a language community and contributes to the illusions of a virtual geography, therefore digitally transcending colonial language bans; the Kurmancî speakers come together on the meme page.

    The most prominent Kurmancî memelord was nocontextkurd. Undoubtedly a pioneer in the practice of curating a Kurmancî meme page on Instagram, the user produced and shared digital artefacts in a range of mediums, including text, image and video with over five hundred thousand followers on his Instagram and eponymous Twitter account. The Kurmancî memetic realm is marked by global meme templates such as Tuxedo Winnie the Pooh, as well as context-specific puns tapered over found images that require the knowledge of the language and a material link to Northern Kurdistan in order to grasp it. The popularity of the Kurmancî meme, and other digital ephemera, should be attributed to the scarcity of Kurmancî comedic content, or any popular content, on a grand scale. Its humorous nature is easily absorbed and relatable to different audiences, spanning across geographies, generations and political ideologies. This stands in contrast to MED-TV’s programming, as well as the few other Kurmancî television efforts that have since come to existence. Most of MED-TV’s broadcasting time was dedicated to propagating the Kurdish cause for liberation. The intention to activate, fund and champion the cause created a content and tone that was heavy in nature and difficult to digest. Secondly, as MED-TV served as an attempt at language standardisation, the language used by the channel was technical and academic, far from what I had heard growing up. With no institutions in Northern Kurdistan in the 1990s dedicated to language, it follows that any organised attempt in Kurmancî would fulfil this role of language standardisation. MED-TV became an institution, much like a legislator of language or an academy, in which Kurmancî could be preserved, developed and disseminated (Hassanpour 2020 p.165). Although I made many attempts to join my father and uncles in watching the channel, the heavy content and technical language rendered it difficult to make a connection with the screen and resulted in my interest dwindling quickly. 

    (Figure 4: meme saved on 5 August 2022 from the chat site tirşik.net. Winnie the Pooh depicting the regression in the variations for the Kurmancî word “like so”.)

    These trends continue to dominate Kurmancî television efforts in the present as the fight against Turkish colonialism is ongoing. Batman-based comedian Deniz Özer made a skit on this particular matter that he released on his Instagram page (Denoozer72 2018). In the video, Deniz is seen working as a waiter at a café and makes several (failed) attempts to understand a customer’s needs. The video concludes with the pun in which he describes the customer’s language as “Kurdî ya televîzyonê” (“The Kurdish spoken on television”), alluding to the language alienation caused for many people, including myself. As such, with a lack of television programs or other forms of popular culture mimicking the aesthetics and language of banal life, digital ephemera floating in the Kurmancî pockets of the World Wide Web carry a humorous tone and a relatability otherwise not popular in Kurdish visual media. The Kurmancî meme declares Kurdish existence in the most banal form. The playful content generated and expressed by Kurdish online users transport me back to my childhood home, where the language is used with simplicity and mirrors the intimacy of the family sphere outside the lines of nationalism or academia. Trivial every day gestures or bodily expressions of joy displayed in memes and Tiktok videos stand out from the conflict and war-ridden images of destruction and displacement that dominate the Kurdish imagination and visual archive, and instead propose and feed a different imagination of life.

    After continuously being harassed and reported by fascist trolls and anonymous bullies, Instagram shut down nocontextkurd in 2021 for “violating community guidelines”. Turkish efforts in repressing expressions and celebrations of Kurdish culture predate Kurdish migration to cyberspace. Similarly, the Republic pulled many of its European diplomatic strings and enforced various forms of intimidation to stop the emission of MED-TV’s television signals, leading to the channel’s official termination in 1999 (Hassanpour 2020 p.187). However, the time for mourning the loss of the meme page was short as the user’s back-up account nocontextkurd2 was already in existence, alluding to the anticipation of Turkish violence. What is more, nocontextkurd has since been reopened as an Instagram account and plenty of other meme producers and curators have been established since then, with nan.u.pivaz, pozmezzin_ and kendimebatman as the memelords of our time. It is first and foremost an indication that irregardless of the many efforts made by the state of Turkey or its people in silencing and smothering the Kurdish language and culture, new culture will always be built and this time it is in the form of a meme.

    Sources

    Arsan, Esra. “Kurdish broadcasting via state TV in Turkey – Cultural diversity or government’s propaganda machine: The case of TRT 6.” Catalan journal of Communication & Cultural Studies 10, No. 1 (2018): 3-24. https://doi.org/10.1386/cjcs.10.1.3_1 

    Denoozer72. 2018. “Kurdî ya televîzyonê”. Instagram video, February 2, 2018. https://www.instagram.com/p/BespiOvFKpv/ 

    Derince, Mehmet Şerif. “A break or continuity? Turkey’s politics of Kurdish language in the new millenium.” Dialectical Anthropology 37, no. 1 (March 2013): 145-152. www.jstor.com/stable/42635387

    Hassanpour, Amir. Essays on Kurds: historiography, orality and nationalism. New York: Peter Lang, 2020.

    Human Rights Watch. “IX. Restrictions on the use of the Kurdish language”. Accessed August 19, 2022. https://www.hrw.org/reports/1999/turkey/turkey993-08.htm. 

    “İstiklal’de polisin yasakladığı Kürtçe şarkı Meclis’e taşındı”. Sol, January 31, 2022. https://haber.sol.org.tr/haber/istiklalde-polisin-yasakladigi-kurtce-sarki-meclise-tasindi-324854

    Jamison, Kelda Ann. “Making Kurdish public(s): language politics and practise in Turkey.” PhD diss. The University of Chicago, 2015.

    Kadıoğlu, Ayşe. “The paradox of Turkish nationalism and the construction of official identity.” Middle Eastern Studies 32, No. 2 (1996): 177-194. https://doi.org/10.1080/00263209608701110 

    Ryan Frazer, Bronwyn Carlson. “Indigenous Memes and the Invention of a People.” Social Media + Society 3, No. 4 (October-November): 1-12. https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305117738993 

    Torî, Wesîla. “Evîn Tîryakî: “Êrîşên dawî yên li ser hunermendên kurd bi hilbijartinê ve girêdayî ne”. Bianet, May 08, 2023.

    https://m.bianet.org/kurdi/mafen-mirovan/278389-evin-tiryaki-erisen-dawi-yen-li-ser-hun

    ermenen-kurd-bi-hilbijartine-ve-giredayi-ne

    TP. “Kürtçe konuşan kadını hattan alan Arslan Yılmaz’a tepki.” Bianet, August 25, 2021. https://m.bianet.org/bianet/insan-haklari/249280-kurtce-konusan-kadini-hattan-alan-arslan-yilmaz-a-tepki 

    TP/SD. “‘Kurdish Music’ Allegation About Killing of 20-Year-Old Çakan”. Bianet, June 1, 2020. https://bianet.org/english/human-rights/225019-listening-to-kurdish-music-20-year-old-cakan-kiled 

  • Femcel memes and resistance within meme subcultures

    Femcel memes and resistance within meme subcultures

    by Hazel June

    Hazel is a writer focusing on resistance against neoliberal, postfeminist discourses through memes, art, and everyday interaction. You can follow her on @memehoeverlord on Instagram.

    Identifiable by an aesthetic of quirkiness, use of ‘sad girl’ symbolism, and self-aware irony, femcel memes create a distinctly gendered affective experience. Differing from both the extremist involuntary celibate communities (often referred to as “incels”) and those which mobilise ‘femcel’ to produce foster solidarity between women experiencing alienation in their sexual or romantic lives, the memeification of ‘femcel’ weaves together complicated discursive strands regarding a range of affective experiences. 

    ‘A femcel is not a woman who is involuntarily celibate … in my honest opinion a femcel is a subculture that spawns from female experience and teenage girlhood’ is an explanation offered by meme author @girlfromwebsite. This conceptualisation of a femcel ‘subculture’ illustrates something which may be understood as predicting the ‘success’ of memes – a sense of affinity and relatability achieved through recognition of cultural references and shared experiences within the semiotics of memetic texts (Knobel & Lankshear, 2007). In this context, ‘female experience’ requires appropriate knowledge of memes themselves in addition to understanding a particular feminised subjectivity produced within and through digital spaces. For femcels, loneliness and alienation are recalibrated away from earnest lamentations of involuntary celibacy into a satirical celebration of messy emotions, reclaiming negative labels as a kind of self-aware irony (Lanigan, 2022). Despite being heavily aestheticized, the relatability of femcel memes is predicated upon affect. This essentially distinguishes them from “-core” suffix memes which are predominantly visual and aesthetic (KnowYourMeme, 2022). Various symbols have become somewhat synonymous with the femcel genre –  Lana Del Rey, Amy Dunne of Gone Girl, and more recently, the titular character of the film, Pearl. Yet it is the emotional states that these symbols are used to portray which allows them to accrue meaning in this genre of memes rather than their visuals alone, while the usage of certain imagery to convey this ‘female experience’ (re)produces certain visuals as the totems of femcel memes.

    24/10/2022, @femcelpilled666, Instagram

    The humorous and light-hearted modality of memes has been utilised to render legible a departure from hegemonic values by subverting dominant discourses, as seen in instances of ‘pro-ana’ content or ironic valorisation of self-injurous behaviour in ‘depression memes’ that refuse to focus on positive emotions or recovery from mental illness (Ging & Garvey, 2017; Lindgren & Johansson, 2021). The meme above invites viewers to relate with Mia Goth as Pearl in the eponymous film – the central character of this image – as she expresses unhinged desperation. A need for male validation is constructed as insurmountable to the extent that existing one day without it is an exceptional feat warranting recognition and praise, allowing the meme to construct a feminised subject position that responds to the pressures of objectification in an unrestricted manner. Constructing the situation depicted in the image above as relatable (despite the obvious excess) is humorous, something which allows memes to create varied and multi-layered meanings (Grundligh, 2018). 

    This candid expression of affinity with extreme emotional states that appear incongruent with the actual gravity of a situation or outright ‘unhinged’ is something of a staple within femcel content. Hyperbole is frequently used in memes to bestow them with a polyvocality, allowing audiences to flexibly interpret the discourses which they construct and derive varied meanings (Ask & Abidin, 2018). The very nature of memes as a mode of communication already necessitates unstable structures of meaning as re-sharing and remixing creating ambiguity, which in turn produces humour as original meanings are ridiculed or satirised through techniques that exaggerate or subvert. Yet this subversion when coupled with extreme emotional difficulty produces dissimulation, whereby the ironic humour of memes suggests nothing is to be taken seriously (Chateau, 2020). ‘The female experience’ may be defined by turmoil, frustration, and suffering under oppressive governmentalities that can only be fully articulated under a veil of memeified humour. On the other hand, the texts may be read as irreverent yet light-hearted entertainment that are not necessarily to be taken seriously. It is within this ambiguous semiotic space that free-flowing discourses about how it feels to be a young woman can proliferate without the added burden of concern or pity that more earnest discussions may usher in, and potentially oppose the hegemonic norms of quiet placidity for women.

    @gaygothgirlfriend, Instagram, 15/01/23

    On the other hand, incongruity and bizarreness circumnavigate hegemonic regimes that punish non-normative discourse and produce relatability in memes by conveying vulnerability. Adams identifies quirkiness as an aesthetic popularised by femme meme creators that disrupts conventional meme structures through visual restructuring, creating intimacy through authenticity (2021). Like femme memes, femcel memes present affect in an unregulated manner unbound from neoliberal discourses of self-optimisation. The subjectivities constructed through these memes actively reject a feminised neoliberal sensibility defined by self-discipline, self-improvement, and belief in the inevitability of sexual difference (Gill, 2017). Buttressed by humour and quirkiness, femcel memes allow individuals to ‘feel seen’ as they tap into a shared sense of feminine rage and bring together networks of individuals with similar experiences. Here we can appreciate the flexible opportunities for meaning-making that these memes offer: humour and irony facilitate dissimulated affective discourse, while the ‘correct’ interpretation of quirkiness allows intimate affective networks to form when users relate to hyper-specific sentiments such as the meme above.

    Femcel memes mobilise a degree of tacit resistance, yet this is more complex than simply using a veneer of humour to convey a more serious message. Affective and aesthetic dimensions within femcel content are essentially co-productive and integral to one another – and not just in terms of media and visuals that have come to define a ‘femcel canon’ in their allegiance to aestheticized sadness (McClay, 2022). The subject matter of these texts (simultaneously desiring / repudiating male validation) and their visuals (discordant image / text, inconsistent remixing) appropriately articulate a range of experiences and dispositions that are as complicated as the memes themselves. Compositional incoherence ostensibly reflects the ‘messiest’ feelings towards matters such as mental illness, sexual objectification, and gender norms that cannot be summarised through more banal or conventional memes. This is especially relevant for a generation of digital natives for whom memeified irony is arguably becoming a staple of online (and perhaps offline) communications.

    @girlfromwebsite, 9/2/23, Instagram

    ‘We live in a society that’s pretty self-aware about the horrors of the system and being mentally unwell’ suggests @girlfromwebsite, a self-awareness which appears explicitly ironic and irreverent in memes. Femcel content appears to romanticise toxic, flawed character traits, yet the way this is conveyed is entirely tongue in cheek. Aestheticization of femcel as yet another internet “-core” is flippant and self-satirising in the marriage between whimsical, feminised visuals and discordant, emotionally charged text overlays. The memeification of ‘femcel’ is the final step in creating distance from the vitriol of misogynistic incels – femcels are not a gender-flip of this community: they are victims of involuntary celibate discourse, and readily subvert the original meaning of the term as memetic (re)production carves out a niche cultural space. Femcels are screaming into the void, but laughing while they do so.

    Various ‘genres’ of memes are identifiable, whether this be due to their subject matter, visual composition, or both. While there is reasonable variation within femcel memes as a genre, they are consistent in their flippant, irreverent address of serious issues, their underlying sense of heterofatalism and desacralisation of mental illness tinged with irony and quirkiness, and a clear visual aesthetic defining the canon. The digital / cultural literacy required to interpret femcel memes is not separate from the emotional relatability but in a sense part of it, as this creates the aesthetic-affective-linguistic matrix of what @girlfromwebsite refers to as the “whole teen girl internet experience put into words … through memes”. Here we can understand that in some senses memes are becoming subcultural, allowing individuals to play with relatability and affect through irony as the lingua franca of internet humour, but also to produce this with and through aesthetics that come to define the essence of what becomes understood as ‘girlhood’ for some. 

    Adams, J. (2021) ‘The quirky intimacy of femme mental health memes’, Feminist Media Studies, 21(1), pp. 1-17.

    Ask, K. & Abidin, C. (2018) ‘My life is a mess: self-deprecating relatability and collective identities in the memification of student issues’, Information, Communication & Society, 21(6), pp. 834-850.

    Chateau, L. (2020) ‘”Damn I Didn’t Know Y’all Was Sad? I Thought It Was Just Memes”: Irony, Memes and Risk in Internet Depression Culture’, M/C Journal, 23(3).

    Gill, R. (2017) ‘The affective, cultural and psychic life of postfeminism: A postfeminist sensibility 10 years on’, European Journal of Cultural Studies, 20(6), 606-626.

    Ging, D. & Garvey, S. (2017) ”Written in these scars are the stories I can’t explain’: A content analysis of pro-ana and thinspiration image sharing on Instagram’, New Media & Society, 20(3), 1181-1200.

    Grundlingh, L. (2018) ‘Memes as speech acts’, Social Semiotics, 28(2), 147-168.

    Knobel, M., & Lankshear, C. (2007). Online memes, affinities, and cultural production. In M. Knobel & C. Lankshear (Eds.), A new literacies sampler (pp. 199–227). Peter Lang Publishing.

    KnowYourMeme (2022) Core. Available at: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/core

    Lanigan, R. (2022) ‘Are you a femcel?’, i-D Magazine. Available at: https://i-d.vice.com/en/article/3adzn9/femcel

    Lindgren, S. & Johansson, A. (2021) ‘Getting Better? Hegemonic, Negotiated and Oppositional Uses of Instagram for Mental Health Support’, Journal of Communication Inquiry, 0(0), 1-23.

    McClay, B.D. (2022) ‘The Femcel Canon’, Gawker. Available at: https://www.gawker.com/culture/the-femcel-canon

  • The story of the Meme Studies Index

    The story of the Meme Studies Index

    Jun 17, 2022

    by Idil Galip

    The Meme Studies Research Network (MSRN) Index is a collaborative project that collects and presents academic literature about the use, spread and impact of internet memes. The MSRN index was modeled after the Cyberfeminism Index facilitated by Mindy Seu and LSE Digital Ethnography Collective’s reading list. You can visit it on memestudiesindex.com.

    Internet memes increasingly help steer politics, culture, sociality and consumption in contemporary society. They are cheap and easy to make, disseminate and monetise. As forms of civic expression they hold symbolic and material power within global digital cultures, and can quickly spread from online platforms into seemingly offline spheres. We make sense of the everyday as well as the extraordinary through internet memes, interpreting public events and personal crises via memetic templates and ironic communion online.

    Meme creation can be euphoric, almost libidinal. Meme creators will often tell you the best memes are those that are made in a split second, those ones that they don’t labor over for hours. This euphoria can extend to the comments section of an Instagram meme or a TikTok post, and infect the audience. A temporary sense of community can be found in the comments, where people riff off each other’s jokes, and create a makeshift, impermanent space for momentary meme-induced catharsis.

    At the same time, this libidinal pull of meme creation and dissemination unsurprisingly informs a lot of the antagonistic subcultures of the internet. Memes are used to harm, bully, troll and threaten just as they are used for laughter, critique, resistance and communion.

    The ubiquitous nature of internet memes, as well as their manifold functions make them a vital part of contemporary social life. However, they are slippery and evade definite categorisation, they morph and shapeshift from one day to the next – by the time you can recognise one iteration of a meme, it has already been remixed and deepfried by a thousand people, on a thousand different platforms.

    So how do we catch the cunning, mercurial meme and take a good look at it? Can a meme ever be a subject of scholarly examination? What would happen if I put the meme in a beaker and mixed it with some hydrochloric acid? Would I need to wear safety goggles?

    Thankfully, there are people who have already done this (no need for Bunsen burners). Scholars have written and published academic works about internet memes and their roles in society since the early 2000s. You can find academic articles about everything from 9/11 jokes (Kuipers 2005), to the Harlem Shake (Soha and McDowell 2016) and the affective labor that meme creators on Instagram engage in (Holowka 2018) within this literature.

    The only problem is that they are often difficult to find for people who are not already embedded within academic spaces. At university, you may be taught how to do an academic literature search in order to find scientific, peer-reviewed sources, by taking a “research methods” class. So, looking for trustworthy academic research online is a skill that can be learned and taught, but can be inaccessible to those outside of the Ivory Tower.

    When I first started my PhD in 2018, even equipped with the research skills I mentioned above, I found it difficult to access up-to-date meme research. I felt that there was a limited amount of resources available and I had already read all of them (I hadn’t). Trying to google something like “articles about internet memes” would result in a flurry of non-academic results, buried under KnowYourMeme entries and journalistic pieces, which was not what I was looking for. An ideal place to start for me would have been a meme studies reading list that I could consult for an initial entry into the literature. I couldn’t find such a list, so I gave up and started to build my own library on an academic citation software called Zotero. By early 2020, I had a growing list of academic articles about internet memes that I was citing in my PhD research, covering topics such as identity, feminism, art, and politics.

    But by November 2020, I was stuck in a damp and dark apartment with no access to an office, library, or intellectual camaraderie. As a result of the pandemic and the subsequent lockdowns, the academic communities and networks that I relied on for support were out of reach. The only connection I retained to the academy was through my digital devices. Feeling lonely and understimulated I started using social media, and in particular, Twitter, more actively.

    Thanks to the scholars I followed on Twitter, I was exposed to different and inspiring modes of academic research and knowledge exchange that I didn’t know existed before. I had been following the LSE Digital Ethnography Collective on Twitter for a while and had made use of their digital ethnography reading list for my own research previously. I was inspired by the co-founders of the collective (Zoe Glatt and Dr Branwen Spector) and how they used their academic credentials to make knowledge about online research more accessible. They had made an open-access reading list for academic resources on digital ethnography, and would post the seminars they hosted at LSE about topics such as online research methods, digital platforms, and digital culture on YouTube.

    At the same time, I saw people tweeting about something called the Cyberfeminism Index. My ears perked up at the mention of cyberfeminism. I found out that it was an “in-progress online collection of resources for techno-critical works from 1990–2020 facilitated by Mindy Seu ‘’ and commissioned by Rhizome. Coming across this exciting project was serendipitous, as I was trying to understand the connections between the internet, feminism, digital technologies, resistance, community, and capitalism to better contextualise my own PhD work, which focuses on the labour that goes into the making and sharing of internet memes.

    I would go on the index (www.cyberfeminismindex.com) and find captivating texts and weird websites that I otherwise would not have come across. It was an amazing experience – after years of using google as a portal into information, I had unknowingly internalized this motto: “if it’s not on google, it doesn’t exist”. The thematic curation of the Cyberfeminism Index was so exciting in comparison to my daily digital experience. I felt like I could bypass google’s algorithmic control of knowledge, and instead lose myself in this index, like I would in a library. It was soothing, meditative, fun, informative.

    In an interview about the Cyberfeminism Index, Mindy Seu mentions how she was inspired by the idea of “sharing as survival” that underpin feminist resource guides, such as the The New Woman’s Survival Catalog (billed as the “pre-internet feminist internet”). These feminist guides were pulling resources together and presenting them for people who may not be able to access each source separately.

    The New Women's Survival Catalog
    The New Woman’s Survival Catalog, 1973. Source: Eye on Design

    In this interview, Seu also underlines the “politics of citation” in knowledge creation and exchange, and states “we cite as a way to ‘legitimize’ certain practices”. Citation is vital in how we understand what kinds of knowledge is trustworthy, legitimate, scientific, robust, and valuable, and should therefore be taken seriously. By citing certain people over and over again, we also run the risk of making other people’s work invisible.

    This doesn’t have to be maliciously intended, it can be that we haven’t had the time to look beyond what has already been cited and vetted, and we may even be burnt out and intimidated by the overabundance of information we have access to due to the ubiquity of digital technologies. This was how I felt when I first started my PhD journey, afraid of the vastness of the knowledge that I couldn’t possibly parse over 4 years, and at the same time, restricted by what google could offer me.

    Going back to November 2020, after witnessing the creative ways that knowledge could be shared online, I decided that I would make the library I had started on Zotero available online to anyone who may be interested in studying internet memes. My feeling was that, if I was having difficulties finding and collecting research about internet memes, so were other scholars. The pandemic had made it challenging for me to feel like I was a part of a research community, and by sharing this library I thought I’d be able to connect with others who were also studying digital culture, specifically internet memes. So after I converted the Zotero library into a PDF and put it on google docs, I sent out a tweet asking if anyone would be interested in co-editing and developing this document with me. I got a lot of positive responses, and lots of DMs. People had been looking for something like this!

    I quickly realized that there were many people who were excited by the possibility of forming a meme studies community. This is when I messaged Zoe Glatt, from the LSE Digital Ethnography Collective, and explained that I was thinking of setting up a collective similar to theirs. I asked for her advice on how to facilitate such an endeavor, and she gave me a roadmap to ways of bringing people together online. This was extremely useful, and I felt grateful that instead of gatekeeping this knowledge, Zoe was more than happy to share her wisdom with me. A discord server, a mailing list, and a Twitter account later, the Meme Studies Research Network (MSRN) was born, thanks to all of the support from scholars such as Zoe, as well as contributors and members such as Madeleine Hunter, Giula Giorgi, Hester Hockin-Boyers, Lucie Chateu, Danielle Rudnicka-Lavoie, Natalia Stanusch, Dr Liam Mcloughlin, Cem A., and many others.

    Today we have over 400 people on our Discord server, our “Meme Studies Reading List” (the Zotero library turned google doc) has been mentioned in various newsletters and podcasts. People have made use of it to write journal articles, essays, blog posts, and dissertations. However, our long term goal with this reading list was to turn into its own index so it could be accessed as a stand-alone website.

    I was inspired by the Cyberfeminism Index, its content and curation, as well as its minimalistic design. I had discussions about turning the list into an index with Nik Slackman from Bard Meme Lab, who suggested that we start a google sheets file and start cataloging all the sources in preparation. I then broached this topic with Jillian and Omnia from virtualgoodsdealer and they were very interested in building something together.

    Meme with text: i fw the vision fam. let's link I'm tryna Build

    This was an exciting opportunity, as I had interviewed both Jillian and Omnia for my PhD and was writing about virtualgoodsdealer as a creative, entrepreneurial intervention that seeks to circumvent platform-dependency. So the chance to work with them on building new avenues for knowledge creation, fit well into virtualgoodsdealer’s ethos as well as my research principles.

    I managed to secure a small funding award from Edinburgh Future Institute’s student research project scheme, and we got to working. Jillian started building the website, and Omnia and I continued cataloging the sources on the google sheets file. After several months of collaboration, facilitated mainly by a Discord group chat, the index is ready.

    On the Meme Studies Index you can find a selection of academic, and academic-adjacent, articles and essays on the use, spread, and impact of internet memes.

    We have included some thematic tags, which will show you the topics, platforms and places that the resource in question addresses, visible on the right hand side. If you click a tag, you will be taken to a page where you can see other sources that have been tagged with the same topic.

    As Mindy Seu says about the Cyberfeminism Index, the Meme Studies Index is also “INCOMPLETE and ALWAYS IN PROGRESS”.

    The index should be taken as a guiding resource, but not as a definitive catalog of all academic research about internet memes. The way we compiled this index was subjective, and done on a more-or-less voluntary basis, which makes it limited in ways that it wouldn’t be if it were funded on a larger scale. We are always looking to expand it and if you have suggestions of sources that you think we should add to the index, please email memestudiesrn@gmail.com. We will update the index whenever we are able to do so, but rest assured that this will be an ongoing and living project.

    Thanks to all the members of the Meme Studies Research Network who contributed to this project, and to Emma Damiani who worked with us to create the new MSRN and MSRN Index logo, which we will be using from now on.

    I hope that you find the Meme Studies Index useful!

  • MSRN Index (2020-2023)

    Overview

    This reading list contains 172 scholarly resources on meme studies published between 1982 and 2022. The collection emphasizes Identity (29), Art & Aesthetics (25), Linguistics (19), Feminism (18), and Memes as Capital (16), with studies across platforms including Instagram (11), Facebook (5), Tumblr (4) and others.



    Contents

    • Reading List by Topic(49 topics)
    • Platform-Specific Studies(10 platforms)


    Reading List by Topic



    Identity (29 entries)

    1. Newton, Giselle, Zappavigna, Michele, Drysdale, Kerryn, Newman, Christy E.. (2022). More than Humor: Memes as Bonding Icons for Belonging in Donor-Conceived People. Social Media + Society, 8(1). Link
    2. Zeng, Jing, Abidin, Crystal. (2021). ‘#OkBoomer, time to meet the Zoomers’: studying the memefication of intergenerational politics on TikTok. Information, Communication & Society, 1-23. Link
    3. Denisova, Anastasia. (2020). Internet Memes and Society: Social Cultural, and Political Contexts. Routledge Link
    4. Guenther, Lars, Ruhmann, Georg, Bischoff, Jenny, Penzel, Tessa, Weber, Antonia. (2020). Strategic Framing and Social Media Engagement: Analyzing Memes Posted by the German Identitarian Movement on Facebook. Social Media + Society, 6(1). Link
    5. Hakoköngäs, Eemeli, Halmesvaara, Otto, Sakki, Inari. (2020). Persuasion through bitter humor: Multimodal discourse analysis of rhetoric in internet memes of two far-right groups in Finland. Social Media + Society, 1-11. Link
    6. Tuters, Marc, Hagen, Sal. (2020). (((They))) Rule: Memetic Antagonism and Nebulous Othering on 4chan. New Media & Society, 22(12), 2218-37. Link
    7. Wiggins, Bradley E.. (2020). Boogaloo and Civil War 2: Memetic Antagonism in Expressions of Covert Activism. New Media & Society. Link
    8. Burton, Julian. (2019). Look at Us, We Have Anxiety: Youth, Memes, and the Power of Online Cultural Politic. Journal of Childhood Studies, 3-17. Link
    9. Jiang, Yaqian, Vásquez, Camilla. (2019). Exploring Local Meaning-Making Resources: A Case Study of a Popular Chinese Internet Meme (Biaoqingbao). Internet Pragmatics, 3(2), 260-82. Link
    10. Literat, Loana, Kligler-Vilenchik, Neta. (2019). Youth Collective Political Expression on Social Media: The Role of Affordances and Memetic Dimensions for Voicing Political Views. New Media & Society , 21(9), 1988-2009. Link
    11. Penney, Joel. (2019). ‘It’s So Hard Not to Be Funny in This Situation’: Memes and Humor in U.S. Youth Online Political Expression.. Television & New Media. Link
    12. Perreault, Gregory, Ferrucci, Patrick. (2019). Punishing Brady, redeeming Brady: a fantasy theme analysis of memes from the 2015 Deflategate controversy. Atlantic Journal of Communication, 27(3), 153-68. Link
    13. Procházka, Ondřej. (2019). Chronotopic Representations as an Effect of Individuation: The Case of the European Migrant Crisis. Language in Society, 1-27. Link
    14. Sobande, Francesca. (2019). Memes, Digital Remix Culture and (Re)Mediating British Politics and Public Life. IPPR Progressive Review, 26(2), 151-60. Link
    15. Ask, Kristine, Abidin, Crystal. (2018). My Life Is a Mess: Self-Deprecating Relatability and Collective Identities in the Memification of Student Issues. Information, Communication & Society , 21(6), 834-50. Link
    16. DeCook, Julia R.. (2018). Memes and symbolic violence: #proudboys and the use of memes for propaganda and the construction of collective identity. Learning, Media and Technology, 43(4), 485-504. Link
    17. Eschler, Jordan, Menking, Amanda. (2018). \”No Prejudice Here\”: Examining Social Identity Work in Starter Pack Memes. Social Media + Society , 4(2). Link
    18. Ging, Debbie, Garvey, Sarah. (2018). “Written in These Scars Are the Stories I Can’t Explain”: A Content Analysis of pro-Ana and Thinspiration Image Sharing on Instagram. New Media & Society, 20(3), 1181-1200. Link
    19. Harvie, David, Milburn, Keri. (2018). On the Uses of Fairy Dust: Contagion, Sorcery and the Crafting of Other Worlds. Culture and Organization, 24(3), 179-95. Link
    20. Procházka, Ondřej. (2018). A Chronotopic Approach to Identity Performance in a Facebook Meme Page. Discourse, Context & Media , 25, 78-87. Link
    21. Yus, Francisco. (2018). Identity-Related Issues in Meme Communication. Internet Pragmatics, 1(1), 113-33. Link
    22. Frazer, Ryan, Carlson, Bronwyn. (2017). Indigenous Memes and the Invention of a People. Social Media + Society, 3(4). Link
    23. Tiidenberg, Katrin, Whelan, Andrew. (2017). Sick Bunnies and Pocket Dumps: ‘Not-Selfies’ and the Genre of Self-Representation. Popular Communication, 15(2), 141-53. Link
    24. Gal, Noam, Shifman, Limor, Kampf, Zohar. (2016). “It Gets Better”: Internet Memes and the Construction of Collective Identity. New Media & Society, 18(8), 1698-1714. Link
    25. Oakley, Abigail. (2016). Disturbing Hegemonic Discourse: Nonbinary Gender and Sexual Orientation Labeling on Tumblr. Social Media + Society, 2(3). Link
    26. Williams, Amanda, Oliver, Clio, Aumer, Katherine, Meyers, Chanel. (2016). Racial microaggressions and perceptions of internet memes. Computers in Human Behaviour, 63, 424-34. Link
    27. Boxman-Shabtai, Lillian, Shifman, Limor. (2015). When Ethnic Humour Goes Digital. New Media & Society, 17(4), 520-39. Link
    28. Varis, Piia, Blommaert, Jan. (2015). Conviviality and Collectives on Social Media: Virality, Memes, and New Social Structures. Multilingual Margins: A Journal of Multilingualism from the Periphery, 2(1), 31-45. Link
    29. Dundes, Alan. (1987). Cracking Jokes: Studies of Sick Humor Cycles & Stereotypes. Ten Speed Press


    Art & Aesthetics (25 entries)

    1. Manovich, Lev. (2020). Cultural Analytics. MIT Press
    2. Schonig, Jordan. (2020). \”Liking\” as Creating: On Aesthetic Category Memes. New Media & Society , 22(1), 26-48. Link
    3. Aharoni, Tali. (2019). When High and Pop Culture (Re)Mix: An Inquiry into the Memetic Transformations of Artwork. New Media & Society, 21(10), 2283-2304. Link
    4. Hardesty, Robby, Linz, Jess, Secor, Anna J.. (2019). Walter Benja-Memes. GeoHumanities, 5(2), 496-513. Link
    5. Waters, Angela. (2019). This Insider Meme Account Mercilessly Trolls the Art World: Artists, Collectors and Especially Gallery Interns Are Not Safe from the Satire of @jerrygogosian. Sleek-Mag Link
    6. Applegate, Matt, Cohen, Jamie. (2017). Communicating Graphically: Mimesis, Visual Language, and Commodification as Culture. Cultural Politics, 13(1), 81-100. Link
    7. Boudana, Sandrine, Frosh, Paul, Cohen, Akiba A.. (2017). Reviving icons to death: when historic photographs become digital memes. Media, Culture & Society, 39(8), 1210-1230. Link
    8. Johnson, Mo. (2017). By Any Memes Necessary: This Art Exhibit Takes Feminist Internet Culture From URL To IRL. Instagram Bust Link
    9. Voigts, Eckart. (2017). Memes and Recombinant Appropriation: Remix, Mashup, Parody. In The Oxford Handbook of Adaptation Studies (Ed. Thomas M. Leitch), 286-302. Oxford University Press
    10. Voigts, Eckart. (2017). Memes, GIFs, and Remix Culture: Compact Appropriation in Everyday Digital Life. In The Routledge Companion to Adaptation (Ed. Dennis R. Cutchins, Katja Krebs, Eckart Voigts), 390-403. Routledge
    11. Gries, Laurie E. . (2015). Still Life with Rhetoric: A New Materialist Approach for Visual Rhetorics. University Press of Colorado Link
    12. Irvine, Martin. (2015). Remix and the Dialogic Engine of Culture: A Model for Generative Combinatoriality. In The Routledge Companion to Remix Studies (Ed. Eduardo Navas, Owen Gallagher, Xtine Burrough), 15-41. Routledge
    13. Sonvilla-Weiss, Stefan. (2015). Good Artists Copy; Great Artists Steal: Reflections on Cut-Copy-Paste Culture. In The Routledge Companion to Remix Studies (Ed. Eduardo Navas, Owen Gallagher, Xtine Burrough), 54-63. Routledge
    14. Wiggins, Bradley E., Bowers, G Bret. (2015). Memes as Genre: A Structurational Analysis of the Memescape. New Media & Society, 17(11), 1886–1906. Link
    15. Elleström, Lars. (2014). Media Transformation: The Transfer of Media Characteristics among Media. Palgrave Macmillan
    16. Jenkins, Eric S.. (2014). The Modes of Visual Rhetoric: Circulating Memes as Expressions. Quarterly Journal of Speech Link
    17. Shifman, Limor. (2014). The Cultural Logic of Photo-Based Meme Genres . Journal of Visual Culture Link
    18. Manovich, Lev. (2013). Software Takes Command: Extending the Language of New Media. Bloomsbury Link
    19. Navas, Eduardo. (2013). Modular Complexity and Remix: The Collapse of Time and Space into Search. Anthrovision, 1(1). Link
    20. Navas, Eduardo. (2012). Remix Theory: The Aesthetics of Sampling. Springer
    21. Friedberg, Anne. (2009). The Virtual Window: From Alberti to Microsoft. MIT Press
    22. Tamás, Polgár. (2005). Freax: The Brief History of the Computer Demoscene. CSW-Verlag
    23. Manovich, Lev. (2001). The Language of New Media. MIT Press
    24. Saper, Craig. (2001). Networked Art. University of Minnesota Press Link
    25. Bolter, David J. , Grusin, Richard A.. (1999). Remediation: Understanding New Media. MIT Press


    Linguistics (19 entries)

    1. West, Joel. (2020). The Selfish Meme: Dawkins, Peirce, Freud. Semiotica. Link
    2. Diedrichsen, Elke. (2019). On the Interaction of Core and Emergent Common Ground in Internet Memes. Internet Pragmatics, 3(2), 223-59. Link
    3. Fomin, Ivan. (2019). Memes, Genes, and Signs: Semiotics in the Conceptual Interface of Evolutionary Biology and Memetics. Semiotica, 230, 327-40. Link
    4. Smith, Christopher. (2019). Weaponized iconoclasm in Internet memes featuring the expression ‘Fake News’. Discourse & Communication, 13(3), 303-19. Link
    5. Yus, Francisco. (2019). Multimodality in Memes: A Cyberpragmatic Approach. In Analyzing Digital Discourse: New Insights and Future Directions (Ed. Patricia Bou-Franch, Pilar Garcés-Conejos Blitvich), 205-31. Springer International Publishing. Link
    6. Yus, Francisco. (2019). Pragmatics of Humour in Memes in Spanish. Spanish in Context, 18(1), 113-35. Link
    7. Diedrichsen, Elke. (2018). Cognitive Mechanisms and Emergent Grammatical Features in Internet Memes. Linguistics Beyond and Within, 4, 22-37
    8. Matley, David. (2018). ‘This Is NOT a #humblebrag, This Is Just a #brag’: The Pragmatics of Self-Praise, Hashtags and Politeness in Instagram Posts. Discourse, Context & Media , 22, 30-8. Link
    9. Nissenbaum, Asaf, Shifman , Limor. (2018). Meme Templates as Expressive Repertoires in a Globalizing World: A Cross-Linguistic Study. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 23(5), 294-310. Link
    10. Yus, Francisco. (2018). Positive Non-Humorous Effects of Humor on the Internet. In The Dynamics of Interactional Humor: Creating and negotiating humor in everyday encounters (Ed. Villy Tsakona, Jan Chovane), 283-304. John Benjamins Publishing Company. Link
    11. Katz, Yuval, Shifman, Limor. (2017). Making Sense? The Structure and Meanings of Digital Memetic Nonsense. Information, Communication & Society , 20(6), 825-42. Link
    12. Cannizzaro, Sara. (2016). Internet Memes as Internet Signs: A Semiotic View of Digital Culture. Sign Systems Studies, 44(4), 562. Link
    13. Seta, Gabriele De. (2016). Neither Meme nor Viral: The Circulationist Semiotics of Vernacular Content. Lexia: Rivista Di Semiotica. Link
    14. Bourlai, E., Herring, S.. (2014). Multimodal Communication on Tumblr: \”I Have So Many Feels !\”. Tumblr Proceedings of the 2014 ACM Conference on Web Scienc Link
    15. Diedrichsen, Elke. (2013). Constructions as Memes–Interactional Function as Cultural Convention beyond the Words. In Beyond Words : Content, Context, and Inference (Ed. Frank Liedtke, Cornelia Schulze), 283-305. Mouton Series on Pragmatics
    16. Huntington, Heidi E.. (2013). Subversive Memes: Internet Memes as a Form of Visual Rhetoric. AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research. Link
    17. Davison, Patrick. (2012). The Language of Internet Memes. In The Social Media Reader (Ed. Michael Mandiberg), 120-34. New York University Press
    18. Leskovec, Jure, Backstorm, Lars, Kleinberg, Jon. (2009). Meme-Tracking and the Dynamics of the News Cycle. Proceedings of the 15th ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining Link
    19. Kilpinen, Erkki. (2008). Memes versus Signs: On the Use of Meaning Concepts about Nature and Culture. Semiotica, 171, 215-237. Link


    Feminism (18 entries)

    1. Hockin-Boyers, Hester, Pope, Stacey, Kimberly, Jamie. (2020). #gainingweightiscool: the use of transformation photos on Instagram among female weightlifters in recovery from eating disorders. Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health, 13(1), 94-112. Link
    2. Lagerwey, Jorie, Nygaard, Taylor. (2020). Tiger King’s Meme-Ification of White Grievance and the Normalization of Misogyny. Communication, Culture and Critique. Link
    3. Negra, Diane, Leyda, Julia. (2020). Querying ‘Karen’: The Rise of the Angry White Woman. European Journal of Cultural Studies. Link
    4. Peck, Andrew, Good, Katie Day. (2020). When Paper Goes Viral: Handmade Signs as Vernacular Materiality in Digital Space. International Journal of Communication, 14(23). Link
    5. Brantner, Cornelia, Lobinger, Katharina, Stehling, Miriam. (2019). Memes against Sexism? A Multi-Method Analysis of the Feminist Protest Hashtag #distractinglysexy and Its Resonance in the Mainstream News Media. Convergence, 26(3). Link
    6. Lind, Rebecca Ann. (2019). Race/Gender/Class/Media: Considering Diversity across Audiences, Content and Producers. Routledge
    7. Massanari, Adrienne. (2019). “Come for the Period Comics. Stay for the Cultural Awareness”: Reclaiming the Troll Identity through Feminist Humor on Reddit’s /r/TrollXChromosomes. Feminist Media Studies, 19(1), 19-37. Link
    8. Harlow, Summer, Rowlett, Jerrica Ty, Huse, Laura-Kate. (2018). \”Kim Davis be like … \”: a feminist critique of gender humor in online political memes. Information, Communication & Society , 23(7), 1057-73
    9. Massanari, Adrienne, Chess, Shira. (2018). Attack of the 50-foot social justice warrior: The discursive construction of SJW memes as monstrous feminine. Feminist Media Studies, 18(4), 525-42. Link
    10. Breheny, Caitlin. (2017). “By Any Memes Necessary”: Exploring the Intersectional Politics of Feminist Memes on Instagram. Instagram MA Dissertation, University of Uppsala
    11. Gerges, Merray. (2016). GothShakira: High Priestess of Dank Feminist Memery. Instagram Canadian Art Link
    12. Kanai, Akane. (2016). Sociality and Classification: Reading Gender, Race, and Class in a Humorous Meme. Social Media + Society, 4. Link
    13. Retallack, Hanna, Ringrose, Jessica, Lawrence, Emilie. (2016). “Fuck Your Body Image”: Teen Girls’ Twitter and Instagram Feminism in and Around School. In Learning Bodies (Ed. Julia Coffey, Shelley Budgeon, Helen Cahil), 85-103. Springer. Link
    14. Dobson, A. S.. (2015). Girls’ ‘Pain Memes’ on YouTube: The Production of Pain and Femininity in a Digital Network. YouTube Ashgate Link
    15. Rentschler, Carrie, Thrift, Samantha C.. (2015). Doing Feminism in the Network: Networked Laughter and the ‘Binders Full of Women’ Meme. Feminist Theory, 16(3), 329-59. Link
    16. Miltner, Kate. (2014). “There’s No Place for Lulz on LOLCats”: The Role of Genre, Gender, and Group Identity in the Interpretation and Enjoyment of an Internet Meme. First Monday, 19(8). Link
    17. Shifman, Limor, Lemish, Dafna. (2011). “Mars and Venus” in Virtual Space: Post-Feminist Humor and the Internet. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 28(3), 253-73. Link
    18. Merrill, Lisa. (1988). Feminist Humour: Rebellious and Self-affirming. Women’s Studies, 15(4), 271-80. Link


    Memes as Capital (16 entries)

    1. Jensen, Minna S., Neumayer, Christina, Rossi, Luca. (2020). “Brussels Will Land on Its Feet like a Cat”: Motivations for Memefying #Brusselslockdown. Information, Communication & Society, 23(1), 59-75. Link
    2. Marciszewski, Mark. (2020). The Problem of Modern Monetization of Memes: How Copyright Law Can Give Protection to Meme Creators. Pace Intellectual Property, Sports & Entertainment Law Forum, 9(61)
    3. Mielczarek, Natalia, Hopkins, W. Wat. (2020). Copyright, Transformativeness, and Protection for Internet Memes. Journalism & Mass Communicaton Quarterly, 98(1), 37-58. Link
    4. Paßmann, Johannes, Schubert, Cornelius. (2020). Liking as Taste Making: Social Media Practices as Generators of Aesthetic Valuation and Distinction. New Media & Society. Link
    5. Zulli, Diana, Zulli, David James. (2020). Extending the Internet meme: Conceptualizing technological mimesis and imitation publics on the TikTok platform. New Media & Society, 1-19. Link
    6. Couldry, Nick, Mejias, Ulises Ali. (2019). The Costs of Connection: How Data Is Colonizing Human Life and Appropriating It for Capitalism. Stanford University Press
    7. Literat, Loana, Van Den Berg, Sarah. (2019). Buy Memes Low, Sell Memes High: Vernacular Criticism and Collective Negotiations of Value on Reddit’s MemeEconomy. Information, Communication & Society, 22(2), 232-49. Link
    8. Matalon, Lee J.. (2019). Modern Problems Require Modern Solutions: Internet Memes and Copyright. Texas Law Review, 98(405)
    9. Benaim, Mickael. (2018). From Symbolic Values to Symbolic Innovation: Internet-Memes and Innovation. Research Policy, 47(5), 901-10. Link
    10. Brubaker, Pamela Jo, Church, Scott Haden, Hansen, Jared, Pelham, Steven, Ostler, Alison. (2018). One Does Not Simply Meme about Organizations: Exploring the Content Creation Strategies of User-Generated Memes on Imgur. Public Relations Review, 44(5), 741-51. Link
    11. Nissenbaum, Asaf, Shifman, Limor. (2017). Internet Memes as Contested Cultural Capital: The Case of 4chan’s /b/ Board. New Media & Society, 19(4), 483-501. Link
    12. Phillips, Whitney, Milner, Ryan M.. (2017). The Ambivalent Internet: Mischief, Oddity, and Antagonism Online. Polity
    13. Milner, Ryan M.. (2016). The World Made Meme: Public Conversations and Participatory Media. MIT Press
    14. Yang, Guobin, Jiang, Min. (2015). The Networked Practice of Online Political Satire in China: Between Ritual and Resistance. International Communication Gazette, 77(3), 215-31. Link
    15. Castella, Tom De, Brown, Virginia. (2011). Trolling: Who Does It and Why?. BBC Link
    16. Brodie, Richard. (2009). Virus of the Mind: The New Science of the Meme. Hay House


    Politics (6 entries)

    1. de Saint Laurent, Constance, Glăveanu, Vlad, Literat, Ioana. (2021). Internet Memes as Partial Stories: Identifying Political Narratives in Coronavirus Memes. Social Media + Society, 7(1). Link
    2. Fang, Kecheng. (2020). Turning a Communist Party Leader into an Internet Meme: The Political and Apolitical Aspects of China’s Toad Worship Culture. Information, Communication & Society, 23(1), 38-58. Link
    3. Huntington, Heidi E.. (2020). Partisan cues and internet memes: Early evidence for motivated skepticism in audience message processing of spreadable political media. Atlantic Journal of Communication, 28(3), 194-208. Link
    4. Merrill, Samuel. (2020). Sweden Then vs. Sweden Now. First Monday, 25(6). Link
    5. Anderson, C.W., Revers, Matthias. (2018). From Counter-Power to Counter-Pepe: The Vagaries of Participatory Epistemology in a Digital Age. Media and Communication, 6(4), 24. Link
    6. Huntington, Heidi E.. (2016). Pepper Spray Cop and the American Dream: Using Synecdoche and Metaphor to Unlock Internet Memes. Communication Studies, 67(1), 77-93. Link


    Memetics (6 entries)

    1. Cao, Rosa. (2020). Crowding Out Memetic Explanation. Philosophy of Science, 87(5), 1160-1171. Link
    2. Castaño, Díaz, Mauricio, Carlos. (2013). Defining and characterizing the concept of Internet Meme. Revista CES Psicología, 6(2), 82-104. Link
    3. Aunger, Robert. (2000). Darwinizing Culture: The Status of Memetics as a Science. Oxford University Press
    4. Lynch, Aaron. (1998). Thought Contagion: How Belief Spreads Through Society: The New Science of Memes: How Ideas Act Like Viruses. Basic Books
    5. Moritz, Elan. (1990). Memetic Science: I – General Introduction. Journal of Ideas, 1(1), 3-23. Link
    6. Hull, David L.. (1982). The Naked Meme. Wiley-Blackwell


    Humour (4 entries)

    1. Holm, Nicholas. (2021). Deadpan humour, the comic disposition and the interpretation of ironic ambiguity online. New Media & Society. Link
    2. Ngwira, Emmanuel, Lipenga, Ken Junior. (2018). A Country Laughing at Itself: Malawian Humor in the Digital Age. English Studies in Africa, 61(2), 21-35. Link
    3. Davies, Christie. (2011). Jokes and Targets. Indiana University Press
    4. Kuipers, Giselinde. (2005). Where was King Kong when we needed him?” Public discourse, digital disaster jokes, and the functions of laughter after 9/11. The Journal of American Culture, 28(1), 70-84. Link


    Religion (3 entries)

    1. Campbell, Heidi E., Arredondo, Katherine, Dundas, Katie, Wolf, Cody. (2018). The Dissonance of “Civil” Religion in Religious-Political Memetic Discourse During the 2016 Presidential Elections. Social Media + Society, 4(2), 1-15. Link
    2. Aguilar, Gabrielle K., Campbell, Heidi A., Stanley, Mariah, Taylor, Ellen. (2017). Communicating Mixed Messages about Religion through Internet Memes. Information, Communication & Society, 20(10), 1498-1520. Link
    3. Duerringer, Christopher M.. (2016). Who Would Jesus Bomb? The Republican Jesus Meme and the Fracturing of Ideology. Social Media + Society, 2(1), 1-12. Link


    Digital culture (3 entries)

    1. Moreno-Almeida, Cristina. (2020). Memes as Snapshots of Participation: The Role of Digital Amateur Activists in Authoritarian Regimes. New Media & Society, 23(6), 1545-1566. Link
    2. Mihailidis, Paul, Viotty, Samantha. (2017). Spreadable spectacle in digital culture: Civic expression, fake news, and the role of media literacies in “post-fact” society. American Behavioral Scientist, 61(4), 441-454. Link
    3. Ernst, Wolfgang. (2012). Digital Memory and the Archive. University of Minnesota Press


    Other Topics

    • Meme factories (2): Abidin (2020), Baulch (2022)
    • Definitions (2): McGrath (2019), Miltner (2018)
    • Fandom (2): Lowe (2020), Wong (2021)
    • Far-right (2): Bolaños Somoano (2022), Burnham (2022)
    • Architecture (1): Scavnicky (2020)
    • Trolling and antagonism (1): Bayerl (2016)
    • Youth (1): Casey (2019)
    • Twitter (1): Chonka (2019)
    • New media (1): Chun (2016)
    • Environment (1): Davison (2016)
    • Ideology (1): Duncan (2017)
    • Parody (1): Highfield (2016)
    • Affect (1): Holowka (2018)
    • Leftist politics (1): Jennings (2019)
    • Citizenship (1): Kligler-Vilenchik (2016)
    • Health (1): Kostygina (2020)
    • Mental health (1): McCosker (2020)
    • GIF (1): Miltner (2017)
    • Social movements (1): Mina (2019)
    • Social media (1): Moody-Ramirez (2019)
    • Marketing (1): Nelson-Field (2013)
    • Algorithms (1): Pilipets (2020)
    • Actor-Network Theory (1): Hagen (2022)
    • Ageism (1): Lee (2021)
    • Elections (1): McKelvey (2021)
    • Walter Benjamin (1): Lovink (2018)
    • Meme quiddities (1): Segev (2015)
    • Diaosi (1): Szablewicz (2014)
    • Holocaust (1): González-Aguilar (2022)
    • Anti-vaxx (1): Brady (2022)
    • Incels (1): Brooke (2022)
    • Participatory culture (1): Nielsen (2022)
    • White supremacy (1): Williams (2020)
    • Hate Speech (1): Paz (2021)
    • Copyright (1): Soha (2016)
    • Affordances (1): Caliandro (2021)
    • Migrant (1): Ibrahim (2018)
    • Irony (1): Phillips (2019)


    Platform-Specific Studies



    Instagram (11 studies)

    1. Caliandro, Alessandro, Anselmi, Guido. (2021). Affordances-Based Brand Relations: An Inquire on Memetic Brands on Instagram. Social Media + Society, 7(2). Link
    2. Hockin-Boyers, Hester, Pope, Stacey, Kimberly, Jamie. (2020). #gainingweightiscool: the use of transformation photos on Instagram among female weightlifters in recovery from eating disorders. Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health, 13(1), 94-112. Link
    3. McCosker, Anthony, Gerrard, Ysabel. (2020). Hashtagging Depression on Instagram: Towards a More Inclusive Mental Health Research Methodology. New Media & Society, 23(7), 1899-1919. Link
    4. Jennings, Rebecca. (2019). Leftist Memes Are Everywhere on Instagram. Now Their Creators Are Unionizing. Instagram Vox Link
    5. Ging, Debbie, Garvey, Sarah. (2018). “Written in These Scars Are the Stories I Can’t Explain”: A Content Analysis of pro-Ana and Thinspiration Image Sharing on Instagram. New Media & Society, 20(3), 1181-1200. Link
    6. Matley, David. (2018). ‘This Is NOT a #humblebrag, This Is Just a #brag’: The Pragmatics of Self-Praise, Hashtags and Politeness in Instagram Posts. Discourse, Context & Media, 22, 30-8. Link
    7. Holowka, Eileen Mary. (2018). The Post and the Grab: Instagram Memes and Affective Labour. Instagram Palgrave Macmillan Link
    8. Breheny, Caitlin. (2017). “By Any Memes Necessary”: Exploring the Intersectional Politics of Feminist Memes on Instagram. Instagram MA Dissertation, University of Uppsala
    9. Johnson, Mo. (2017). By Any Memes Necessary: This Art Exhibit Takes Feminist Internet Culture From URL To IRL. Instagram Bust Link
    10. Gerges, Merray. (2016). GothShakira: High Priestess of Dank Feminist Memery. Instagram Canadian Art Link
    11. Retallack, Hanna, Ringrose, Jessica, Lawrence, Emilie. (2016). “Fuck Your Body Image”: Teen Girls’ Twitter and Instagram Feminism in and Around School. In Learning Bodies (Ed. Julia Coffey, Shelley Budgeon, Helen Cahil), 85-103. Springer. Link


    Facebook (5 studies)

    1. McKelvey, Fenwick, DeJong, Scott, Frenzel, Janna. (2021). Memes, scenes and #ELXN2019s: How partisans make memes during elections. New Media & Society. Link
    2. Guenther, Lars, Ruhmann, Georg, Bischoff, Jenny, Penzel, Tessa, Weber, Antonia. (2020). Strategic Framing and Social Media Engagement: Analyzing Memes Posted by the German Identitarian Movement on Facebook. Social Media + Society, 6(1). Link
    3. Merrill, Samuel. (2020). Sweden Then vs. Sweden Now. First Monday, 25(6). Link
    4. Moody-Ramirez, Mia, Church, Andrew B.. (2019). Analysis of Facebook Meme Groups Used During the 2016 US Presidential Election. Social Media + Society, 5(1), 1-11. Link
    5. Procházka, Ondřej. (2018). A Chronotopic Approach to Identity Performance in a Facebook Meme Page. Discourse, Context & Media, 25, 78-87. Link


    Tumblr (4 studies)

    1. Lowe, J.S.A. (2020). Kitten Thinks of Nothing but Murder All Day: Tumblr Text Post Memes as Fandom Détournement. Tumblr University of Michigan Press Link
    2. Pilipets, Elena, Paasonen, Susanna. (2020). Nipples, memes, and algorithmic failure: NSFW critique of Tumblr censorship. New Media & Society, 24(6), 1459-1480. Link
    3. Oakley, Abigail. (2016). Disturbing Hegemonic Discourse: Nonbinary Gender and Sexual Orientation Labeling on Tumblr. Social Media + Society, 2(3). Link
    4. Bourlai, E., Herring, S.. (2014). Multimodal Communication on Tumblr: \”I Have So Many Feels !\”. Tumblr Proceedings of the 2014 ACM Conference on Web Scienc Link


    Reddit (4 studies)

    1. Brady, Miranda J., Christiansen, Erika, Hiltz, Emily. (2022). Good Karen, Bad Karen: visual culture and the anti-vaxx mom on Reddit. Journal of Gender Studies. Link
    2. de Saint Laurent, Constance, Glăveanu, Vlad, Literat, Ioana. (2021). Internet Memes as Partial Stories: Identifying Political Narratives in Coronavirus Memes. Social Media + Society, 7(1). Link
    3. Literat, Loana, Van Den Berg, Sarah. (2019). Buy Memes Low, Sell Memes High: Vernacular Criticism and Collective Negotiations of Value on Reddit’s MemeEconomy. Information, Communication & Society, 22(2), 232-49. Link
    4. Massanari, Adrienne. (2019). “Come for the Period Comics. Stay for the Cultural Awareness”: Reclaiming the Troll Identity through Feminist Humor on Reddit’s /r/TrollXChromosomes. Feminist Media Studies, 19(1), 19-37. Link


    4chan (3 studies)

    1. Hagen, Sal. (2022). ‘Who is /ourguy/?’: Tracing panoramic memes to study the collectivity of 4chan/pol/. New Media & Society. Link
    2. Tuters, Marc, Hagen, Sal. (2020). (((They))) Rule: Memetic Antagonism and Nebulous Othering on 4chan. New Media & Society, 22(12), 2218-37. Link
    3. Nissenbaum, Asaf, Shifman, Limor. (2017). Internet Memes as Contested Cultural Capital: The Case of 4chan’s /b/ Board. New Media & Society, 19(4), 483-501. Link


    Twitter (3 studies)

    1. Paz, María Antonia, Mayagoitia-Soria, Ana, González-Aguilar, Juan-Manuel. (2021). From Polarization to Hate: Portrait of the Spanish Political Meme. Social Media + Society, 7(4). Link
    2. Vicari, Stefania, Murru, Maria Francesca. (2020). One Platform, a Thousand Worlds: On Twitter Irony in the Early Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic in Italy. Social Media + Society, 6(3). Link
    3. Highfield, Tim. (2016). News via Voldemort: Parody Accounts in Topical Discussions on Twitter. New Media & Society, 18(9), 2028-2045. Link


    YouTube (2 studies)

    1. Soha, Michael, McDowell, Zachary J.. (2016). Monetizing a Meme: YouTube, Content ID, and the Harlem Shake. Social Media + Society, 2(1). Link
    2. Dobson, A. S.. (2015). Girls’ ‘Pain Memes’ on YouTube: The Production of Pain and Femininity in a Digital Network. YouTube Ashgate Link


    TikTok (2 studies)

    1. Zeng, Jing, Abidin, Crystal. (2021). ‘#OkBoomer, time to meet the Zoomers’: studying the memefication of intergenerational politics on TikTok. Information, Communication & Society, 1-23. Link
    2. Zulli, Diana, Zulli, David James. (2020). Extending the Internet meme: Conceptualizing technological mimesis and imitation publics on the TikTok platform. New Media & Society, 1-19. Link


    Other Platforms

    • Imgur (1): Brubaker, Pamela Jo, Church, Scott Haden, Hansen, Jared, Pelham, Steven, Ostler, Alison. (2018). One Does Not Simply Meme about Organizations: Exploring the Content Creation Strategies of User-Generated Memes on Imgur. Public Relations Review, 44(5), 741-51.
    • WhatsApp (1): Baulch, Emma, Matamoros-Fernández, Ariadna, Suwana, Fiona. (2022). Memetic Persuasion and WhatsAppification in Indonesia’s 2019 Presidential Election. New Media & Society.

  • Cultural capital and ironic literacy in the meme economy

    Cultural capital and ironic literacy in the meme economy

    Meme Bulletin #6
    by Lucie Chateau

    Memes do not exist on their own, but within a digital cultural economy where they are shared, liked and retweeted to accrue cultural capital. Cultural capital is the asset of knowingwhat makes a meme successful. It entails understanding societal trends and unique forms of humour and irony, as well as being in tune with the flows of affect that make up circulation in the digital cultural economy. Cultural capital is acquired “through a systemic exposure to sub-cultural variety, especially to cultures that generate significant amount of visible symbols”. (Ravasi and Rindova, 2004) That cultural capital can, in turn, be turned into financial capital when those that post (but not always create) memes can monetise their circulation through the curation of accounts with massive fan followings and sponsored content. (Marcizewski, 2020)

    Figure 1. The ‘Memes Bubbles Chart’ posted on r/MemeEconomy.

    The above “meme bubbles chart” helps us understand the flows of cultural capital in the so-called “meme economy”. The satirical subreddit /r/MemeEconomy, aptly analysed by IoanaLiterat and Sarah van den Berg, parodies a stock market approach to “investing” in memes, as seen in the language used in this chart (smart money, institutional investors). (2017) Once a meme is produced and starts to gain in popularity (its stealth phase), it is able to breach its “original community”, often a subculture or specific forum, and reach the mainstream. It is during this transitional phase that smart institutional investors will share or repost the meme. However, once the public phase is reached, demise in the form of a Buzzfeed article is imminent. In effect, the financial discourse used by redditors in the forum taps exactly into how a meme emerges and exponentially gains in cultural capital.

    Possessing cultural capital is to know when to “invest” in a meme. It shows that you have enough cultural understanding to distribute a meme before it becomes mainstream. Being ironically literate is also a form of cultural capital. As seen in this graph, ironic usage of a meme shows a quite literal off-the-charts potential of acquiring cultural capital by ironically using a meme. This means that, once a meme has undergone its first lifecycle of acquiring popularity and breaching the mainstream, it still contains potential to be used and circulated, but this has to be done ironically. Irony is the very lifeblood of the meme economy because it determines the cultural capital of the meme itself. Therefore, understanding irony is crucial to having cultural capital on the internet. However, it is not within everyone’s reach to be ironically literate.

    We should not assume that cultural capital is evenly distributed or that all forms of ironic literacy are the same. Certain identities are cemented in meme culture and can be characterized as “oppressive identity work” in the way that they “contain potent imagery and messaging around race, ethnicity, and gender”. (Jordan and Menking, 2018) As Kate Miltner points out, drawing on Ryan Milner (2013):

    “white masculinity is the constructed centrality in many participatory collectives, and as such, quite a few memes engage in problematic representations of women and people of color. This raises the key issue of what subjectivities are baked into these formats: how does that impact what we express and who chooses to participate in this way?” (2014) 

    This idea is echoed in Adrienne Massanari’s work on Reddit as a toxic technoculture. (2017) The idea of a homogenous meme culture is laughable. Cultural capital is contingent on continuous identity work that is often at the expense of an outsider, and can be perceived as a gatekeeper to many meme-ing communities online.

    Meme of the month: 

    The image shows an enlarged, panicked emoji, with wide eyes and sweat on both side of its face. The face is framed by top text and bottom text. The top text reads “Oh God” and the bottom text reads “What if the meme I sent them is weird? What if they don’t get it? What if they think I’m being weird oh god oh fuck”

    References 

    Eschler, Jordan, and Amanda Menking. ““No Prejudice Here”: Examining Social Identity Work in Starter Pack Memes.” Social Media+ Society 4, no. 2 (2018): 2056305118768811.

    Literat, Ioana, and Sarah van den Berg. “Buy memes low, sell memes high: Vernacular criticism and collective negotiations of value on Reddit’s MemeEconomy.” Information, Communication & Society 22, no. 2 (2019): 232-249.

    Marciszewski, Mark. “The Problem of Modern Monetization of Memes: How Copyright Law Can Give Protection to Meme Creators.” Pace Intell. Prop. Sports & Ent. LF 9 (2020): lxv.

    Massanari, Adrienne. “# Gamergate and The Fappening: How Reddit’s algorithm, governance, and culture support toxic technocultures.” New media & society 19, no. 3 (2017): 329-346.

    Milner, Ryan M. “FCJ-156 Hacking the Social: Internet Memes, Identity Antagonism, and the Logic of Lulz.” The Fibreculture Journal 22 2013: Trolls and The Negative Space of the Internet (2013).

    Miltner, Kate M. ““There’s no place for lulz on LOLCats”: The role of genre, gender, and group identity in the interpretation and enjoyment of an Internet meme.” First Monday(2014).

    Ravasi, Davide, and Violina Rindova. “Creating symbolic value: a cultural perspective on production and exchange.” SDA Bocconi Research Paper 111/04 (2004).

  • We are hosting a talk in November!

    Dr Shana MacDonald will be joining us on November 15th and will give a talk titled “Feminist Media Studies Approaches to Studying Digital Activist Meme-scapes”.

    This talk considers the significance of memes within digital activist spaces as tools for circulating necessary cultural critique. In the talk Dr. MacDonald will outline an intersectional feminist media approach to activist Internet memes that places emphasis on visual cultural histories and an analysis of form. The method Dr. MacDonald employs starts from the methodological premise that memes must be read for the interrelationship between their text, context, and paratextual afterlives. She will demonstrate this methodological approach via an analysis of several anti-capitalist feminist memes and meme accounts actively producing content during the current pandemic. 

    This talk is hosted by the Meme Studies Research Network with help from the Centre for Data, Culture and Society at the University of Edinburgh.

    If you would like to attend this online event, please register here: https://forms.gle/5zXet3oQFvHQK2fE7

    The zoom link will be sent out to registered participants a day before our event.

    Date: November 15, 2021
    Time: 11AM EST – 3PM GMT
    Place: Online (Zoom)

    About Dr MacDonald:

    “Dr. Shana MacDonald is Associate Professor in Communication Arts and the current President of the Film Studies Association of Canada.

    Her SSHRC funded interdisciplinary research is situated between film, media and performance studies, and examines intersectional feminism within social and digital media, popular culture, cinema, performance, and public art. Dr. MacDonald is a convenor of the qcollaborative (qLab), a feminist design lab dedicated to developing new forms of relationality through technologies of public performance. Through the lab Shana co-runs the online archive Feminists Do Media (Instagram: @aesthetic.resistance) and Feminist Think Tank gatherings at the GI.  She has published in Feminist Media Studies, Feminist Media Histories, Media Theory Journal, and the Canadian Journal of Film Studies, and is lead author on the forthcoming book Networked Feminist Activisms (Lexington Press, forthcoming).She holds a PhD in Communication and Culture (2013), an MA in Cinema and Media Studies (2005) from York University, and a BFA in Image Arts (2001) from Ryerson University. 

    Follow Dr. MacDonald’s SSHRC funded social media campaign on Instagram @aesthetic.resistance or on Twitter @shanamacPS”

  • “Two lessons from our recent study on memes and the far right”

    “Two lessons from our recent study on memes and the far right”

    Michael Vaughan, Jordan McSwiney, Annett Heft & Matthias Hoffmann

    The following blog post summarises findings from a recent paper published in Information, Communication & Society titled “Sharing the hate? Memes and transnationality in the far right’s digital visual culture”

    Memes figure prominently in research on the far right, and for good reason. Contemporary far-right actors have shown they can effectively use the irony and ambiguity of memes to mobilise while masking their extreme and sometimes violent ideology. And memes are no longer just for the “extremely online” – rioters storming the US capitol in January 2021 carried with them a range of memetic references, from Pepe the Frog to Kekistan. 

    Our research team wanted to explore the role of memes in the visual culture of far-right organisations. We chose 25 far-right organisations across four countries – Australia, Germany, Italy and the US – and collected data from Facebook, Twitter and Telegram to answer two specific questions: How salient are memes compared to other visual genres, and how transnational are these visual cultures across different country contexts?  

    Lesson #1: findings about meme salience depend on research design choices 

    One of the most surprising findings in our project was that memes actually made up a small proportion of the images in our dataset. This seemed to challenge the expectations we had formed from public and academic discourse about the prevalence of memes in far-right visual culture. In fact, only 6% of images fell into the meme category, compared with other more dominant genres like photography (48%). We highlight a potential method-oriented explanation for this surprising finding, to help inform meme researchers in the future when designing studies. 

    In general, our research was designed to support a cross-national comparison of the visual culture of national far rights. We therefore chose to study far-right organisations such as movements and alternative media outlets. We chose these groups for several reasons: they have established significance for national far right ecosystems; systematic and comprehensive data collection is more straightforward when focusing on a predefined list of public accounts; and these kinds of groups are more easily differentiable among, and comparable across, national contexts. However, memes as an expression of participatory and user-driven digital culture are perhaps more likely to be found in more individualised arenas of participation, such as chan boards, rather than more traditional organisations.  

    We also chose to perform a content analysis of a random sample of images shared by each organisation over a defined time period, rather than purposively sampling memes directly. This allowed us to draw more systematic conclusions about the prevalence of a range of different types of visual genres (including memes but also categories such as photography and artwork), which naturally left the question of their relative salience open to empirical verification. 

    In combination, these two research design choices – studying far-right organisations on specific platforms, and content analysing a random sample of their visual communication – opened up the possibility for our surprising finding about the relative absence of memes. 

    Lesson #2: be more cautious about the “global” reach of Anglophone internet culture

    Memes were not entirely absent from our data, and we found an interesting difference between the countries in our study. In particular, memes were more prevalent in Anglophone organisations(Australia and the US) as opposed to the Italian and German ones. Where memes did occur in European countries, they drew exclusively  on Anglophone cultural references, such as the “One Does Not Simply Walk Into Mordor” meme which appeared in Germany’s Ein Prozent. 

    In general, our impression was that far-right organisations in Italy and Germany opted for a more serious and earnest tone in visual communications which fit poorly with the ironic distance characteristic of  internet memes. This meant that the European organisations in our study were more likely to use other genres of image, such as “shareposts” which are also built using templates designed for online circulation, but lack the irreverent tone and participatory dimension of memes. 

    Ultimately, our findings show that national cultures play a decisive role in shaping how different actors engage with digital culture in general, and memes in particular. Our comparative research design revealed in particular differences between Anglophone and European countries in our study, which can introduce a note of caution into assumptions about the “global” nature of digital visual culture. 

    You can read the full paper, including additional findings about our transnational visual discourses of “fascist continuity”, “Western civilizational identity” and “pop cultural appropriation” here: https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2021.1961006 

  • Memes and Identity

    Memes and Identity

    By Giulia Giorgi

    Twitter: @GiuliaGiorgi14

    Among the different functions ascribed to memes, the impact on the creation and expression of collective identities is probably one of the most studied aspects of memetic culture. In this context, memes are mostly conceived as either a shared code between members of online communities or as a social practice underlying the mechanisms of cultural production. Specifically, scholars agree that memes contribute to shaping “the mindsets, forms of behaviour, and actions of social groups” (Shifman 2014, p. 18). This statement has two major implications: on the one hand, assuming a (theoretically open) logic of participation, users are expected to actively engage in the moulding of collective identities; on the other hand, as output of the continuous reinterpretation of cultural artifacts and their elements, memes contribute to forging shared norms and values.

    In this light, user-driven practices of meme repackaging have become an essential and valued component of the digital participatory culture: patterns of intertextual referencing to other memes may produce a sense of belonging to online communities, as they leverage on subcultural competences to be deciphered and reappropriated (Laineste and Voolaid, 2016). Quoting Shifman (2014), memes can thus be regarded as the cultural embodiment of the so-called “networked individualism”, as they enable users to develop and express their identities within and in relation to online groups. 

    In addition to intertextuality, many memes employ ironic humour to enhance social and communitarian bonds. According to Gal (2019), polysemic meanings incorporated in ironic utterances relies on sets of shared knowledge to be understood: while their correct decoding creates a sense of communion, failure may lead to social exclusion. This argument resonates with the findings obtained by Miltner (2014), whose qualitative inquiry demonstrates how LOLCats memes are employed by online groups members as in-group boundary establishment and policing. In particular, the scholar noted that LOLCats memes developed as parts of a world with recurring personas and intertwining narratives, thus creating elaborate in-jokes, which rely on complex and stratified subcultural knowledge. One of the most recognizable features of these memes is ‘lolspeak’, a fabricated slang made of incorrect grammar and a childlike tone. Over time, this dialect was adopted by members of different social networking and community sites as a code for in-group interactions, which ultimately contributed to the creation and reinforcement of group boundaries. Participants of the study also reported using LOLCats memes and lolspeak to express their feelings, especially difficult ones, or to convey emotional support. Along this line, the conceptualization of memes as performative acts advanced by Gal et al. (2016) indicates how their initial emotional supportive function may give rise to negotiation practices over collective identityand group membership. Examining the participatory YouTube LGBTQ+-supportive campaign ‘It Gets Better’, the scholars noticed a tendency towards conformist patterns of participation to the LGBTQ identitarian discourse, from which marginal demographics and minorities were almost absent. Contextually, users’ compliance or violation with respect to the norms of memetic production contributed to validate or subvert the conveyed narratives. 

    To date, existing literature exploring the identitarian function of memes has mostly focused on single case studies, choosing subcultural and/or platform-specific communities as objects of studies.From this perspective, memes are employed by subcultural and highly reactionary online groups to spread the anti-feminist and racist messages promoted by the so-called ‘toxic-technocultures’ (Massanari, 2017). For instance, Nagle (2017) describes memes originated from 4chan as the symbol of anti-establishment online culture wars raging over issues like feminism, free speech, and political correctness. Similarly, Tuters and Hagen (2019) have explored how strategies of memetic antagonism adopted by 4chan users are used to both target a ‘nebulous othering’ and contextually signal belonging to the community of /pol/. While mostly linked to the subcultural logics of fringe websites like 4chan and Reddit, the use of memes in support of controversial identities has recently spread to mainstream social media as well. Such is the case of the alt-right affiliated account The Proud Boys on Instagram, which harnesses the power of different performative and linguistic practices (like memes) as a form of political propaganda and recruitment (DeCook, 2018). According to the author, acculturation into the community requires becoming familiar with such practices, which in turn strengthen the identity and the boundaries of the group. In this context, memes are also used to imbue the far-right extremist ideology with a recognizable aesthetic, featuring famous memetic characters like Pepe The Frog, vapor wave layouts, as well as ad-hoc created logos and slogans.

    Aside from practices of meme creation and circulation, users can engage in discussions around the value of memes to mark their allegiance to specific communities. With this respect, Literat and Van Der Berg (2019) maintain that processes of ‘vernacular criticism’ on Reddit MemeEconomy challenge the memetic features typically praised by mainstream culture. In particular, the three determinants of value of a meme include: the positioning with respect to mainstream culture, its versatility, and its cultural relevance. Put another way, a meme’s perceived quality is higher when it is not ‘too’ popular (or normie), yet has a good potential for expansion and has a good balance between immediate social resonance and long-term popularity. Ultimately, this critical appraisal of memes accomplishes an identitarian function, in that it secures the users’ position within the MemeEconomy community, while legitimating the differences between “insiders, newcomers and ‘normies’ (those who appear to insiders as oblivious to this specialized discourse on memes)” (p.13).

    Similar observations have called into question the modalities through which users participate in memetic culture. Overall, it is argued that participation in meme collectives intertwine openness and restriction. According to Milner (2016), memes could be the “quintessential participatory artefact” (p. 12), because the technology required to produce them is free and easy. Moreover, participation in meme production is facilitated by a number of apps and websites like Imgur and Memegenerator providing ready-to-use templates. However, this does not necessarily mean that memes are also socially accessible: in fact, scholars like Jenkins (2006) contend that subcultural knowledge is necessary in order to engage in participatory culture. If the level of technical skills required to create and manipulate memes is lowered by user-friendly softwares, the same does not apply for the transformative competence, intended as the ability to play with language and image to create innovative artifacts. This, in fact, implies a wider subcultural literacy, which covers the knowledge of the cultural text and, crucially, of the memetic conventions. 

    Therefore, the chances to access online communities depend on how users are able to prove specific competences, also referred to as meme literacy (Milner, 2016). This competence, which involves the knowledge of both meme formal conventions and the logics regulating specific groups or communities (Knobel and Lankshear, 2007), is shared by members of meme collectives and – as elaborated by Literat and van der Berg (2019) – continuously negotiated through intergroup discussions. Meme literacy also marks the boundary between in-group members ‘in the know’ and outsiders. Recalling Thornton (1996), Angela Nagle claims that: “subcultural capital is earned through being ‘in the know’, using obscure slang and using the particularities of the subculture to differentiate yourself from mainstream culture and mass society” (Nagle 2017, p. 96). 

    Thus, established social conventions not only dictate the norms for transformative creation, but also function as gatekeepers, excluding the uninitiated. Nissenbaum and Shifman (2017) go further in arguing that meme literacy has a direct influence on members’ status within the community – thus conceptualising them as a form of ‘cultural capital’. As a result, users who manage to rightfully interpret the cultural conventions underpinning memetic culture are respected by others, while those who fail are downgraded and mocked at (Massanari, 2013). Moreover, memes are regarded as a form of ‘contested’ capital: their ‘unstable form’, torn between innovation and convention, reinforces the community ties, as it keeps the discourse over ‘meme literacy’ active (Nissensbaum and Shifman, 2017). To summarize, even though the technical processes by which memes are created, circulated, and transformed are open and participatory, the culture regulating their production and circulation is far from being democratic and inclusive. In this context, the notion of ‘meme literacy’ has become a cornerstone of meme theory, as the prism through which the flow of interactions surrounding memetic culture can be observed (cfr. Kanai, 2016; Procházka, 2018).

    References

    DeCook, J. R. (2018). Memes and symbolic violence:# proudboys and the use of memes for propaganda and the construction of collective identity. Learning, Media and Technology, 43(4), 485-504.

    Gal, N., Shifman, L., & Kampf, Z. (2016). “It gets better”: Internet memes and the construction of collective identity. New media & society, 18(8), 1698-1714.

    Gal, N. (2019). Ironic humor on social media as participatory boundary work. New Media & Society, 21(3), 729-749.

    Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New

    York University Press.

    Kanai, A. (2016). Sociality and classification: Reading gender, race, and class in a humorous meme. Social Media+ Society, 2(4), 2056305116672884.

    Knobel, M., & Lankshear, C. (2007). Online memes, affinities, and cultural production. A new literacies sampler, 29, 199-227.

    Laineste, L., & Voolaid, P. (2016). Laughing across borders: Intertextuality of internet memes. The European Journal of Humour Research, 4(4).

    Literat, I., & van den Berg, S. (2019). Buy memes low, sell memes high: Vernacular criticism and collective negotiations of value on Reddit’s MemeEconomy. Information, Communication & Society, 22(2), 232-249.

    Massanari, A. (2017). # Gamergate and The Fappening: How Reddit’s algorithm, governance, and culture support toxic technocultures. New media & society, 19(3), 329-346.

    Milner, Ryan M. (2016). The World Made Meme: Public Conversations and Participatory Media. MIT press.

    Nagle, A. (2017). Kill all normies: Online culture wars from 4chan and Tumblr to Trump and the alt-right. John Hunt Publishing.

    Nissenbaum, A., & Shifman, L. (2017). Internet memes as contested cultural capital: The case of 4chan’s/b/board. New Media & Society, 19(4), 483-501.

    Procházka, O. (2018). A chronotopic approach to identity performance in a Facebook meme page. Discourse, Context & Media, 25, 78-87.

    Shifman, L. (2014). Memes in digital culture. MIT press.

    Thornton, S. (1996). Club cultures: Music, media, and subcultural capital. Wesleyan University Press.

    Tuters, M., & Hagen, S. (2020). (((They))) rule: Memetic antagonism and nebulous othering on 4chan. New Media & Society, 22(12), 2218-2237.

  • Complicating gender through memes

    Complicating gender through memes

    by Hester Hockin-Boyers, Leslie Liu and Danielle Rudnicka-Lavoie

    Memes have multiple potential functions beyond entertainment, including the reinforcement of boundaries and stereotypes, the maintenance and subversion of hierarchies, and the creation of solidarity within groups (Drackett et al, 2018). In this respect, scholars have explored how memes can draw on and reify existing gendered dynamics in ways that are problematic (Brooke, 2019; Lagerwey and Nygaard, 2020). At the same time, feminist scholars have documented how memes are also mobilised as a way of challenging sexism and engaging in feminist consciousness raising within digital communities (Massanari, 2019; Rentschler and Thrift, 2015). 

    In what follows we interrogate the latter, by examining how gender norms (particularly feminine stylistic conventions) are subverted through memetic practices in ways that open up new possibilities for understanding gender, identity and embodiment. We do so by focussing on three strategies for challenging normative femininity and deconstructing restrictive gender roles, broadly categorised as; the ugly, the ironic, and the embodied. In each case, we provide meme accounts (from Instagram) which exemplify the strategy we are discussing. 

    The ugly (Leslie)

    There is an underlying sprezzatura to meme making. Given the versatility of templates and image macros, as well as the potential for increasingly intricate references, it appears as though memes that were made with especial attention diverge from the standard brute forced, digestible, visceral message. Meticulous composition becomes a feminizing gesture: clean, polished, pastel/neutral-toned, minimalist multi-slide memes, now the prevailing visual language of (corporate) infographics, are associated with misguided motivational quotes (an upscale live laugh love) and virtue signalling.

    These aesthetic forms, which may take on stereotypically feminine traits — daintiness, softness, domesticity, pleasing color palettes — stand in contrast to an Internet Ugly aesthetic that is intentionally unsightly, messy, chaotic, and confusing. “Graphic design is my passion” embodies this, where design choices (or the apparent lack of them) are interwoven with irony: juxtaposition, intertextuality, layering, and deep frying, for instance, signal an amateurish, messy process that’s ultimately authentic. (Douglas, 2014).

    @djinn_kazama draws on several visual cues across this spectrum, as does @_hoe_cakes_, which subverts the polished, so-beautiful-it’s-fake aesthetic impulse of health food (perhaps an #instafood equivalent to the Instagram infographic). On a more logical extreme, @monday parodies larger “awareness-raising” accounts such as @soyouwanttotalkabout, almost to the point where the question “is this satire?” is replaced with “does it even matter?”

    It may be helpful to also note the way in which social media handles draw on the (charmingly) ugly: several meme accounts reference topics that may be deemed taboo in a more conservative space — see @menstrualcramps666, @5d.4n4l.53x, @hor_ney_outer_spa_ce_posting — how might we experiment with built-in IG features (stories, tagging, the bio section) and norms of social media use (as political echo chamber or a stan account, for example); how can we use these apps for ourselves? 

    The ironic (Danielle)

    Irony and détournement are used to communicate meanings through satire and dissent that are different from the expected ones (Rentschler & Thrift, 2015). In the case of wellness memes, the notions of health and happiness are often mocked as being superficial or frivolous (as seen in the recent fame of such accounts as @afffirmations, which has been documented in news outlets such as Vice and Elle). In the case of this meme by @spriteismadebyfairies, the trend of mindfulness affirmations popularized by the recent social media uptick in “manifesting” is turned on its head through the process of détournement, resulting in an ironic statement on Wellness Culture. This type of meme may be indicative of a critique against the larger governmentality (Foucault, 1975) that underlies the neoliberal aspects of wellness culture: the incessant pursuit of “feeling better” regardless of one’s actual health status. 

    Another meme by @menstrualcramps666 riffs on the popular meme “My last two brain cells…” also serves the same end of commenting on the norm of productivity at all cost. Undoubtedly presenting a type of normative femininity, the subjects in the meme struggle to accomplish the task at hand. This type of meme communicates the difficulties of keeping up with the productivity expected of subjects within capitalist wellness culture.  

    While these memes may seems at first glance to have little in common, the common thread is the use of common tactics of refuting the societal expectations of capitalist/patriarchal ideals of what constitutes a healthy/productive/functional person. In terms of affect, feminine memes about anger are a particularly interesting artifact: cuteness as a disarmament of anger, as per the “no talk me im angy” meme, may be perceived as a delegitimization of the existence of female/femme-presenting anger.   

    The embodied (Hester)

    While researchers have long moved beyond conceptions of the internet as a ‘disembodied’ space (Hine, 2015), the focus remains on how images (online) come to effect experiences of bodies (IRL). Moreover, there is a tendency for such work to concentrate on the negative potential digitally mediated images hold for women’s body image. For example, researchers in this field consider the ways in which social media filters (think, the “glow” filter on TikTok) and image editing create unrealistic ideals for women’s bodies and their capabilities. 

    However, memes are a communicative tool through which feminists are able to interrogate and deconstruct some of the normative assumptions held by this body of literature. @cyborg.asm’s Instagram account is an example of this kind of practice. 

    In this meme, @cyborg.asm calls into question the assumed ‘nature’ of (especially women’s) bodies and their image. By drawing on feminist philosopher Donna Haraway’s (1991) ‘A Cyborg Manifesto’, @cyborg.asm creates memes which reflect the profound entanglement of bodies and technologies, and in doing so challenges notions of the ‘authentic self’, uncorrupted by objects and processes deemed unnatural/synthetic. 

    References

    Brooke, S. (2019). “There are no girls on the Internet”: Gender performances in Advice Animal memes. First Monday, 24(10). https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v24i10.9593

    Douglas, N. (2014). It’s supposed to look like shit: The internet ugly aesthetic. Journal of Visual Culture, 13(3), 314–339. https://doi.org/10.1177/1470412914544516

    Drakett, J., Rickett, B., Day, K., & Milnes, K. (2018). Old jokes, new media – Online sexism and constructions of gender in Internet memes. Feminism & Psychology, 28(1), 109–127. https://doi.org/10.1177/0959353517727560

    Foucault, M. (1975). Surveiller et punir: Naissance de la prison. Gallimard.

    Haraway, D. (1991). A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century. In: Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, New York: Routledge, 149–82.

    Lagerwey, J., & Nygaard, T. (2020). Tiger King’s Meme-ification of White Grievance and the Normalization of Misogyny. Communication, Culture and Critique, 13(4), 560–563. https://doi.org/10.1093/ccc/tcaa028

    Massanari, A. (2019). “Come for the period comics. Stay for the cultural awareness”: reclaiming the troll identity through feminist humor on Reddit’s /r/TrollXChromosomes, Feminist Media Studies, 19(1), 19-37, DOI: 10.1080/14680777.2017.1414863

    Rentschler, C. A., & Thrift, S. C. (2015). Doing Feminism in the network: Networked laughter and the ‘Binders Full of Women’ meme. Feminist Theory, 16(3), 329–359. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464700115604136

  • Event Alert!

    We are happy to announce that Dr Bradley Wiggins will be joining us for a talk about the discursive power of memes on July 29, 2021 at 3PM BST.

    This talk will be based on his 2019 book The Discursive Power of Memes in Digital Culture: Ideology, Semiotics, and Intertextuality published by Routledge.

    To register for the event, please fill out this form. The link to the talk will be sent out a day before the event.

    “Bradley E Wiggins, PhD has been associate professor and department head of Media Communications at Webster Vienna Private University since July 2015. His research interests include digital culture, new media, games and simulations, and intercultural communication. His scholarship has been published in competitive journals, such as Simulation & Gaming, New Media & Society, International Journal of Communication, and International Journal of Game-Based Learning. He has presented his scholarship at the National Communication Association, International Communication Association, Popular Culture Association, and at conferences in Switzerland, Germany, and Turkey”. 

  • Diary of a Meme Reader Co-Editor: Navigating the Ethics of Meme Copyright

    By Chloë Arkenbout 

    Twitter: @ArkenboutChloe


    “I previously ran into some issues with [an] academic journal […] with regards to copyright. I was not able to publish images of memes because I didn’t have the exact source or permission from the creator. This seems ridiculous since memes don’t have authors. I’d like to reference images in my text, but want to make sure with you beforehand. Are there any specifications with regards to how the meme is cited?” 

    As the co-editor of the Institute of Network Cultures (INC) Reader about critical meme research, this is the first time in my career as a Researcher & Editor where I’m working on a publication where memes are so prominently involved. Prior to this question we received from one of our contributors, I had given meme copyright not much thought, if I am being honest. 

    My first instinct was to agree with the contributor; not publishing memes in a reader about memes does sound ridiculous. Everyone involved in the reader agreed immediately; we will publish memes. For a moment I suspected that the publisher they mentioned must have been rather conservative and they probably lack substantial knowledge on the nature of memes, as memes are meant to be copied, remixed, shared. Memes cannot be owned. 

    Right? 

    I realized rather quickly, however, that this train of thought would be too simplistic. At INC we constantly criticize and develop alternatives for revenue models in the media and art world and we believe that artists should be fairly credited and compensated for their work. As I also specialize in media ethics, I know things are never as simple as they seem. That is why I decided to dive into the complex nuances of meme copyright. 

    Usually there are four different components that a meme exists out of that are relevant when it comes to their copyright. The image, the text, the new image that is created by the combination of these two, and the various adaptations that are then created by multiple other people based on that new image. This construction alone raises multiple questions about ownership. 

    If person b adds text to an image that is owned by person a to create a meme, which is then adapted with new texts by person c, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, o, and p, can person a claim for damages? And to whom exactly? Person b? The rest of the alphabet? Legally; perhaps. Practically; unlikely. And what if person q, r, s, t, u, v, w, x and y use the text by person b with another image which is owned by person z, can person b then claim them for damages? It’s safe to say that copyright lawyers probably will not have unambiguous answers to these questions. 

    There are additional questions of authorship that move beyond legal copyright claims, as they have to do with artistic recognition. If person b in the previous example wants to be credited for being ‘the first to create the meme’ that went viral afterwards, how do they prove that they were, in fact, the first? Or what if person e is the person who creates the meme that makes it go viral, do they owe something to person b, c, and d? Or person a? Or are there no artistic individual ego’s involved in meme creation and do memes lead a collective life of their own? 

    These are all valid questions. For now, however, I would like to focus on the context of the original question that started this essay; how to proceed, as an editor, when there is an essay to be published that includes memes? 

    When an author wants to publish a meme in their article and they know who the creator of that meme is, or when it is relatively easy to find out who it is, things are relatively uncomplicated. Meme Studies Research Network founder and critical meme reader contributor Idil Galip explains in an interview I had with her, that a lot of memes in certain communities have such a strong aesthetic, that you can usually tell by who it is made. “You have to do your best to find out who made [the meme you want to use] – that’s every researcher’s duty; to follow the memetic thread.” According to Idil it would be too easy to assume that you can never find out who made a meme, ‘just because it is a meme’. I agree with her completely. 

    So just ask. If the meme creator in question grants you permission that is fantastic. If they do not, you either do not publish that meme or you pay them if you have the budget to do so. Simple. What about those more generic memes you find in the endless depths of Reddit threads, though, where it is substantially more difficult to track down the creator? 

    Since we’re talking about intellectual property rights here, I decided to consult an information specialist. He told me that, in principle, memes are protected by copyright law. The fact that the original creator and the copyright holder might not be able to be tracked down does not make memes an exception to this rule; the use of a meme as an illustration constitutes an infringement of copyrights. It is only allowed to use a meme with permission (and possible payment) from the creator.  

    It is possible to quote memes, however, with the following conditions (which are legally mandatory):

    1.They are as small as possible (they should not be illustrations);
    2. They are directly related to text (the text must discuss the meme);
    3. They have a source indication (if possible). 

    As co-editor, I would not want to go as far as not being able to use a meme, if the author cannot find the source to ask for permission. I also do not want to make them as small as possible in the layout. Perhaps it is the anarchist spirit of the INC  that is embodied in me, but settling for this was not going to do.The universalistic Kantian approach to ethics, where there is no room for exceptions in certain situations or for nuances, has never had my preference anyway. Using the same copyright laws for memes for other images does not make sense to me, as there is no room for the context of the ontological nature and the essence of the meme. 

    There must be a middle ground. 

    I would prefer a virtue ethics approach; a healthy balance between two options that both seem to be rather extreme. When it comes to finding the source of the meme, laziness and carelessness would mean having to discredit the meme creator. Being anal about it and  following every tiny little rule would be limiting, to say the least. As an editor, being respectful of the meme artists and being as thorough as possible is the balance I strive for. 

    Where does the moral responsibility lie when it comes to the ethics of meme copyright then? Here’s what we told our contributors: do your ultimate best to find the source and ask for their permission – if you really cannot find a source, gather as much information as possible about when and where you found the meme; the date you saved it, on what platform, in what thread, what user posted it, the url, etc. We trusted our contributors with this responsibility to be thorough.

    Thus, in the end, it comes down to an utilitarian approach. By taking a little risk for a relatively small number of people (a handful of meme creators that might not be amused if they see their uncredited work in our reader – with all related possible financial consequences), we make a larger amount of people happy (everyone reading the lovely reader). And that is a risk I am willing to take. 

  • New reading group!

    Danielle and Madeleine from the network are organising a critical media studies reading group. They will be starting with Lev Manovich’s Cultural Analytics (2020).

    If you’d like to join and/or have book recommendations, you can get in touch with Danielle Rudnicka-Lavoie or Madeleine Hunter on the Discord server, or through memestudiesrn@gmail.com with the subject line “reading group”.

  • The HaHa of Digital Deterritorialization: Looking at Memes through the lens of Dada Laughter

    Natalia Stanusch, John Cabot University

    Twitter: @NataliaStanusch

    At their core, memes are provokers of laughter. You like or share a meme because it made you lol (regardless as to whether it was real laugh out loud or just a fleeting endorphin rush). Before you continue scrolling down, a meme makes you pause for a moment; it makes you laugh at the cuteness in a cat photo, the absurdity of a political promise, or the hopelessness of another lockdown. By using laughter, memes have the power to destabilize and deconstruct the human condition. In their use of laughter, memes share an affinity with the spirit of the Dada art movement. In this blogpost, I would like to compare the laughter memes produce to the laughter of Dada. I will not dive into all the complexities of Dada, but rather focus on using Dada as a point of comparison for talking about how the formal characteristics of memes direct the way we laugh at them.

    Dada was an avant-garde movement born out of the turmoil of the First World War that often took the form of cultural re-appropriation: using symbols and expressions taken from mainstream culture in a way that disrupted the semiotic circuit. It was mischievous, wry, and provocative. Built upon a distrust of modernity, Dada was cynical about political and cultural norms of respectability. In its deep self-consciousness, it was even skeptical of its own modernity.

    There have been several attempts to analyze Dada’s use of humor and how Dadaists practiced laughter in their art. One of the most useful of such attempts was made by art historian Daffyd W. Jones in his book Dada 1916 in Theory (2014), which looks at the role of “Dada laughter” in Dada formation. Jones characterizes the laughter produced by Dada as reveling in the absurd, both destructive of modern values and critical of this same destruction. It was cynical, unconstrained, expressive, and ambiguous. Jones’ “Dada laughter” can help us understand the hilarity and subversive potential of memes by breaking his idea down into three types of laughter that I will argue characterise meme laughter: 1) mocking and pointing; 2) laughter as weapon, and 3) laughter as process and not the goal. 

    Meaning Goes Everywhere: Visual Deterritorialization in Dada and Memes

    Both memes and Dada rely on deterritorialization of meaning to create laughter, so let’s take a look at the deterritorialization of meaning as a concept and how it applies to both Dada and memes.

    Image source: https://www.instagram.com/p/CDWaG8PDt31/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

    Deterritorialization implies an action of movement, of hijacking a cultural text and displacing it. For this analysis, a particularly useful characteristic of deterritorialization is that it is not only about displacing a cultural text, but also forcing it to enter a new field of relations. Rather than taking any cultural object away from its original context, deterritorialization implies a more emphatically deliberate attempt to force relations, for example, by making an image interact with a new constellation of imagery.

    Image source: https://imgur.com/gallery/65p9bfw

    Following the theme of imagery, let’s have a look at Dada collage as a kaleidoscope of visual deterritorialization. Dada collage incorporates mass media texts and alters their meaning by mixing them with other texts. It exploits the cultural production of the industrialized media, stealing from advertisements, newspapers, photography. Let’s start with a visual example, such as Hanna Höch’s Cut with the Kitchen Knife through the Last Epoch of Weimar Beer-Belly Culture in Germany (1919).

    Hanna Höch, Cut with the Kitchen Knife through the Last Epoch of Weimar Beer-Belly Culture in Germany (1919). Image source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hoch-Cut_With_the_Kitchen_Knife.jpg

    The core of this work is a juxtaposition of image (mostly printed photographs) and texts (either as single words or phrases in print). Both the photographs and texts are quite literally cut-out from their original contexts and are forced into new relations on this seemingly chaotic plane. But the image is not accidental. Its structure provides a clear hierarchy of sizes and a compositional rhythm. It is capable of encompassing the collision of photomontage and collage, political criticism and cultural commentary, cynical laughter, and disjoined attack. The meaning seems stuck within itself, unable to escape, left partially undefined and unresolved, as if waiting for the viewer to act upon its unleashed potential.

    A helpful way of understanding the force of Dada collage is to think of the background or pictorial field as an open space upon which the artist can place disparate, dissonant, and diverse images. It is a field of play in which images whimsically collude and collide, reinforce and deconstruct each other without challenging the viewer to decipher any specific, predetermined interpretation.

    While the interpretive possibilities of a Dada collage may be rich and multiple, the collage itself is a fixed object, a finished work, in contrast to the digital meme which is always in flux, always in the process of morphing into something else. In Dada collage, there is no possible further expansion of the object after it is declared a finished artwork. Dada collage involves an open-ended form that results in the production of a closed-circuit object.

    While memes are temporally free and constantly mutating, they are spatially highly constricted by the size of the screen on which the viewer encounters them. Therefore, it is not surprising that the collision and collusions of memes are often sequential rather than spatial. Only a few images can be legibly placed on the screen at one time, but images can be inserted into a virtually infinite sequence of images. That is why memes are relatively compact in their form. Compared to Dada collage, meme forms are deliberately simple; there is usually only one-image-one-text relation or juxtaposition required for a meme to signify. The content and form become one unit of meaning. This simplicity is crucial, for memes’ punch has to be quick to grasp: a meme has to handily allude to a genre of memes it belongs to among the flux of scrolling and refreshing of feeds to make you ‘haha.’

    Image source: https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1881877-oh-no-anyway

    As opposed to Dadaist photo-collage, memes are opened-ended. Memes are inherently transitory, manipulable, and transformable.  Hito Steyerl calls the phenomenon of remixing and sharing “circulationism,” meaning “not the art of making an image, but of postproducing, launching, and accelerating it.” The modification of content is not limited by anything, making memes potentially powerful psychologically and socially. When a meme is born, nobody is safe.

    1. Laughing as Mocking and Pointing

    The laughter of Dada oscillates between hilarity and disgust, or at least confusion. As Jones notes, Dada laughter nudges; it points, it mocks, and even surpasses its mocking target, remaining untamed by the circumstances in which it occurred laugher (181). Dada laughter was prescribed in Dada’s recipe for the production of texts, images, and performances. To remain in the realm of visual examples, let’s see how Dada laughter is present through mocking and pointing in Marcel Duchamp’s L.H.O.O.Q (1919).

    Marcel Duchamp, L.H.O.O.Q (1919). Image source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Marcel_Duchamp,_1919,_L.H.O.O.Q.jpg

    L.H.O.O.Q is a postcard reproduction of Mona Lisa upon which Duchamp added mustache, beard, and a pun title ‘L.H.O.O.Q,’ which, in French, phonetically can be understood as “She has a hot bottom.” The text-image relation is central for the pun to make sense, but is not explicit. The deterritorialization clearly occurs, but its intended readings remain ambiguous. It is left up to the viewer to decipher the pun and to wonder about the target of the laugh: is it Mona Lisa, commodified art, the institution of museum, modern artists, or the museumgoers themselves?

    While Dada laughter mocks all it approaches, memes tend to be more direct in their pointing and nudging. The example of an art-meme below is a twist on an iconic painting from the period of Romanticism. The laugh is directed at the grandeur of art canon, but, more significantly, it is the used/viewer who is supposed to relate to the situation proposed by image-text juxtaposition. The laughter occurs within a very definitive, simple, and ‘personal’ situation. However, both in Dada laughter and meme laughter, the viewer/user is invited to laugh along. In both Dada and meme laughter, the core of the laugh is to mock, but also to make the viewer/user participate in the mocking.

    Twist on Caspar David Friedrich’s Wanderer above the Sea of Fog (1818). Image source: https://www.instagram.com/p/Bqx9wOLhg1E/?igshid=naexht3i2wgc
    2. Laughter as a Weapon

    Dada laughter is both aggressive and ambivalent, both obtrusive and nuanced. With its roots in the First World War, Dada’s aggression was sparked by the resistance to the widespread violence of the war. This did not, however, stop the Dadaists from embracing military-like tactics or from searching to attack the mainstream culture, politics, and society at large. This attack was as much an offense as a defense against the terrors and disturbances of the early twentieth century, both in terms of war and mass industrialization. In her book, Dada Bodies: Between Battlefield and Fairground (2019), Elza Adamowicz argues that laughter was “a survival strategy” for the Dadaists, and that “through laughter – a harsh mix of derision, scepticism and vitality – the Dadaists freed themselves from the despair of war, and their collective actions were acts of defiance, forms of self-defensive regression against the insanity of war” (32). From this point of view, Dada laughter is a crisis laughter: laughter that can function as a weapon and a shield.

    Image source: https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1807466-covid-19-pandemic

    While memes are not necessarily intrinsically aggressive, they do often share their ‘crisis factor’ with Dada laughter. “Crisis memes,” a term used by Sean Rintel in his 2013 article, have a social role in providing the public with a “voice” in crisis situations. But it is their laughter which provides the ‘public’ with more than just a voice or expression; it is the laughter which maintains a sense of common engagement in anxiety and uneasiness. The laughter of memes which relate to the COVID-19 pandemic relies heavily on satirical humor, or a ‘laughter through tears.’ The memes of lockdown are silly, nihilistic, absurd, and pointless. They tend at once towards hyperbole denigration in their engagement with the global/personal situation at stake. They provide a shield and a weapon of laughter against the reality which is at once too delusive and too dreadful to grasp.


    Image source: https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1807466-covid-19-pandemic
    3. Laughter as the Process-not-the-goal

    But what if Dada laughter was laughter for laughter’s sake? Jones suggests that in Dada laughter there was little to no attention to any measure of success or a sensation of a goal-to-be-achieved. Rather, Dada laughter was a form of critical and cynical engagement with modernity. This engagement was performed both on the side of Dadaists (through their actions) and on the side of any (voluntary of not) participants which represented the ‘society.’ Dada was embracing a set of tactics of deterritorialization, but instead of attempting to seize or usurp any ‘space,’ they burst out laughing. By ‘space’, I am referring to the concept of cultural and political space, understood as the site where meaning production takes place. Dada laughter, in this understanding, functions outside of any fixed set of rules and instead moves freely for the sake of movement, or rather, for the sake of stirring within the space it was made to exist.

    Does meme laughter move as freely as Dada laughter? In her book on memes, Limor Shifman makes a parallel between memes and a ritual model of communication introduced by a classic essay of James Carey, A Cultural Approach to Communications (1989). Shifman proposes that memes follow the same logic as ritual communications. Ritual communication provides an environment of shared space for meaning production. Rather than the direct transmission of a message as a fixed unit of information with a set starting and arrival point, the ritual model of communication implies that meaning is negotiated within community and the result of an individual and communal mediation. The laughter of memes is also negotiated within a common ‘space.’ While each meme laughs at a defective situation (political or personal), it can be renegotiated as it moves freely in the space of continuous deterritorialization.

    Memes: the Ha Ha of Dada?

    The answer to mass anxiety is often humor. This was part of Dada’s nihilist reaction to the Great War, to answer trenches and tear gas with dark, subversive hilarity. The Internet Age’s closest analogy to Dada art is the meme. The last twelve months offered an abundancy of anxious and disturbing events, which were swiftly translated into memes. Through the analysis of ‘meme laughter’ we can better understand how memes work. In terms of both its origins and functions, it is possible to see ‘meme laughter’ as a not-so-distant cognate of Dada laughter. Absurd, cynical, and aggressive laughter is achieved in both memes and Dada through the deterritorialization of meaning. In our reading of memes we should be open for further questioning and laughing.

    Image source: https://breakbrunch.com/2020-is-a-good-year-for-memes/

    Sources:

    Adamowicz, Elza. Dada Bodies: Between Battlefield and Fairground. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2019.

    Carey, James. “A Cultural Approach to Communication.” Communication as Culture: Essays on Media and Society. Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989. http://web.mit.edu/21l.432/www/readings/Carey_CulturalApproachCommunication.pdf

    Jones, Dafydd W. Dada 1916 in Theory: Practices of Critical Resistance. Liverpool University Press, 2014. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt18mbcnc.

    Rintel, Sean. “Crisis Memes: The Importance of Templatability to Internet Culture and Freedom of Expression.” Australasian Journal of Popular Culture 2 (2)2013: 253-271. DOI: 10.1386/ajpc.2.2.253_1.

    Shifman, Limor. Memes in Digital Culture. MIT, 2014.

    Steyerl, Hito. “Too Much World: Is the Internet Dead?” e-Flux, (49)2013. https://www.e-flux.com/journal/49/60004/too-much-world-is-the-internet-dead/.

  • From a pile of “stuff”

    Meme Bulletin Issue 3

    Junio Aglioti Colombini

    Twitter: @Flegoz

    Junio is a PhD researcher at the MediaLaB, University of Pisa.

    The image is a meme. The picture represents a scene from the movie “The devils wear Prada” where an assistant shows to her boss, Miranda Priestly, two belts that looks alike. The bottom text is a subtitle from the movie that states “It’s a tough call. They’re so different”. Two memes are positioned on the belts: on the left the image of Pepe the Frog, on the right is another Pepe the Frog where Pepe is portrayed as Donald Trump.

    A memetic lesson from Miranda Priestly. They look the same but on the left there is the original Pepe (source: https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/95218-feels-good-man) and on the right “You can’t stump the Trump” (source: https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1028964-donald-trump).

    Miranda Priestly: Something funny?

    Andy Sachs: No, no, nothing. Y’know, it’s just that both those belts look exactly the same to me. Y’know, I’m still learning about all this stuff.

    Miranda Priestly: This “stuff”? Oh, okay. I see. You think this has nothing to do with you.

    If you replace the word “belts” with the word “memes” you would get a fundamental lesson (from the iconic director of Runway no less) about memes: memes are not “just memes”, they are statements. Just like choosing the best belt in this scene of The Devil Wears Prada, the meme you chose to share says something about you and, most important, says something to others.

    It’s hard to converge on a unique definition, but what we can surely say is that memes are mediums for communication. More precisely, memes are (digital) artifacts composed by multiple cultural elements that are inserted into humorous frames and use collective knowledge or shared experiences to convey a message, express a point of view or, more generally, communicate. (Börzsei 2013, Shifman 2014).

    Each element mixed in a meme refers to its context of origin and brings with it its specific backgrounds and values that are essential to correctly decode all the meme’s layers of meaning.

    Having in mind this complexity makes it easier to understand how ideological and political contents can often lay (or hide) in the tangle of these layers and why, whether we realize it or not, every time we share a meme we also share all the values and the references embedded to it, activating mental processes of simplifications, memorizations or associations between them.

    Being able to condense a great complexity into fast consuming and highly spreadable objects, makes memes very attractive for political actors and social movements whose main communicative need is to simplify complex political issues in order to gain public attention, foster participation or vehiculate forms of propaganda.

    Political memes come in so many shapes and from so many places that it would be really hard to condense the countless existing varieties that exist in only few paragraphs; nonetheless, the communicative context of the elections can be considered as a productive starting point to observe how pervasive memes are becoming into mainstream political discourse and how each political actor participate to this process of “memefication of politics”.

    The US presidential elections of 2016, for example, was one of the first time that memes were so much involved into the political public discourse and played an important role in the political outcomes, to the extent that it has gone down in history as the “great meme war” (Schreckinger 2017).

    During that presidential election, in fact, we witnessed storms of memes that invaded our timelines for every statement or event involving one of the candidates. Every meme used a different ironic frame with the aim to narrate a political event, to ridicule or call out the leaders’ mistake, or to attack him/her on a political or a personal level (Heiskanen 2017, Ross and Rivers 2017). Every time a meme was shared, it contributed to the spreading of the information narrated in it as well as the point of views that it contained, such as the inconsistency between a public statement and personal life of one candidate or the doubt about the moral compass of the other.

    Example of memes that circulated during the 2016 Presidential Elections. On the left, a an ironic meme about Trump’s statements about equal marriage (source: https://makeameme.org/meme/i-believe-in-8s3e2q). On the right, a meme with Clinton that refers to the email scandal that hit her during the campaign (source: https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1023813-hillary-clinton-email-controversy)

    Sometimes, when the LOL turns into LULZ, the fun element fades in the back and memes can also be heavily weaponized against someone to delegitimate or foster fake news and accusations. In Clinton’s case that was mostly done by exploiting gender stereotypes against her (Nee and De Maio 2019, Ross and Rivers 2017).

    A more recent and direct example of getting advantage of memes for political campaigning is when a fly sat on Pence’s head during the 2020 vice-president debate (Corasaniti 2020). The event immediately set off a process of memefication in the public debate that led Biden’s team to decide selling fly swatters on their online shop as a form of fundraising. By doing so, the candidate positioned himself as a participant of the memetic discourse but also gave to the whole memetic process a political stance where the “flywillvote” became an occasion to channel support towards Biden.

    The image is a screenshot from a tweet by Marcus Gilmer. In the tweet he writes “Biden team was quick. You can also buy Biden branded flyswatter for $10”. In the tweet he attached a screenshot from the website "Biden Victory Fund" where the Fly Sweater was sold for $10.

    Screenshot from Biden’s Victory Fund website where the Fly Sweater was sold for 10$ (source: https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1910488-mike-pence-fly)

    Whether it’s clearly visible or it’s well hidden between ironic layers, every time a meme is shared the stance and the frame contained in it spread between users, contributing to the replication of ideologies and political views linked to it. Sometimes they replicate stereotypes, sometimes they spread misinformation, sometimes they even slowly set unconscious associations between concepts and values, in a sneaky form of invisible propaganda. But, sometimes alternative representations, progressive political statements or weapons against oppression can flourish within memes’ layers of meaning, as social movements are getting more and more familiar with them (Mina 2019, Moreno-Almeida 2020, Baker, Clancy, and Clancy 2019).

    What it is important to know is that behind the humorous layer in the meme you are sharing there is so much more. When you start digging into its layers you might find that what you once thought was blue, well it’s actually cerulean.

    Recommended reading

    Baker, James E., Kelly A. Clancy, and Benjamin Clancy. 2019. “Putin as Gay Icon? Memes as a Tactic in Russian LGBT+ Activism.” In LGBTQ+ Activism in Central and Eastern Europe: Resistance, Representation and Identity, 209–33. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20401-3.

    Börzsei, Linda K. 2013. “Makes a Meme Instead: A Concise History of Internet Memes.” New Media Studies Magazine 7 (March): 1–29. http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1003&context=linda_borzsei%5Cnhttp://works.bepress.com/linda_borzsei/2.

    Corasaniti, Nick. 2020. “The Fly on Pence’s Head, Memes and Tweets from the Vice Presidential Debate.” The New York Times, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/08/us/politics/fly-pence-harris-debate.html.

    Heiskanen, Benita. 2017. “Meme-Ing Electoral Participation.” European Journal of American Studies 12 (2). https://doi.org/10.4000/ejas.12158.

    Mina, An Xiao. 2019. Memes to Movements : How the World’s Most Viral Media Is Changing Social Protest and Power. Beacon Press.

    Moreno-Almeida, Cristina. 2020. “Memes as Snapshots of Participation: The Role of Digital Amateur Activists in Authoritarian Regimes.” New Media and Society, 7–8. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444820912722.

    Nee, Rebecca Coates, and Mariana De Maio. 2019. “A ‘Presidential Look’? An Analysis of Gender Framing in 2016 Persuasive Memes of Hillary Clinton.” Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media 63 (2): 304–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/08838151.2019.1620561.

    Ross, Andrew S., and Damian J. Rivers. 2017. “Digital Cultures of Political Participation: Internet Memes and the Discursive Delegitimization of the 2016 U.S Presidential Candidates.” Discourse, Context and Media 16: 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcm.2017.01.001.

    Schreckinger, Ben. 2017. “World War Meme – POLITICO Magazine.” Politico. 2017. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/03/memes-4chan-trump-supporters-trolls-internet-214856/.

    Shifman, Limor. 2014. Memes in Digital Culture. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.

  • That meme belongs in a museum…

    Meme Bulletin Issue 2

    Arran J. Rees

    Twitter: @arranjrees

    Two critical museological memes using the image of one of the people involved in the storming of Capitol Hill in January 2021. Memes shared by @sydneystewartr and @BrutishMuseum on Twitter although both acknowledge they were not the creators and do not know where they originated. @N-Nielsen4 is generally understood as being the first person to comment on the image comparing it with European cultural heritage professionals removing cultural goods from other countries in the 19th century.

    For some, the word ‘museum’ conjures up images of dusty mummies, stuffy galleries and artefacts of a bygone era, frozen in time – but that couldn’t be further from the truth for many museums around the world. I’m not just talking about contemporary art museums either, I mean your local social history museum and subject specialist museums too.

    I’ve spent the last four years talking to a range of different curators, digital specialists and exhibition managers in museums, making the case for why museums should be interested in collecting and displaying memes.

    Museums have, for a long time, been interested in documenting contemporary culture as well as delving into the world’s history and traditions. Today, museums often refer to new artefacts acquired from the past 25 years as their contemporary collections, but before that they were more readily referred to as their folklore collections.

    This folkloric lineage of contemporary collecting in museums today provides a direct link to memes as objects of contemporary digital folklore. Memes as digital folklore has been well addressed by scholars such as Philips, Milner and de Seta.

    This relationship has been recognised through a variety of museum activities that have seen memes displayed in exhibitions, created through meme-led social media programmes and also, in one or two cases, be considered for acquisition into museum collections.

    Exhibiting memes

    The Museum of the Moving Image in New York was one of the first museums to begin recognising a shift toward GIFs and memes as communicative tools and the work of their New Media Curator (at the time), Jason Eppink set the bar.

    In 2014 the museum exhibited 37 Reaction GIFs on a large media wall accompanied by their ‘commonly understood meanings’ drawn together by a community of Reddit users. The museum then worked with knowyourmeme.com to celebrate two decades of internet memes in 2018, and has numerous smaller displays using memes and GIFs since.

    I think we can all agree that memes look excellent on the white walls of a gallery space.

    Left – The Reaction GIF exhibition at the Museum of the Moving Image, New York. CC BY 3.0 (Jason Eppink). Right– Two Decades of Memes exhibition at the Museum of the Moving Image, New York. Image by Marisa Gertz, sourced from https://www.vice.com/en/article/j54897/memes-have-finally-made-it-to-the-museum (accessed 25/01/2021). 

    Museums making memes

    Museums are great places to find raw, memeable content – many have thousands of images of their online collections search portals and some of the older ones have a wonderful array of creepy displays and awful taxidermy…

    One of the more legendary museum memes (amongst us museum people anyway) has to be the Museum of English Rural Life’s Absolute Unit. Tweeted in April 2018, Museum Social Media Manager Adam Koszary applied an image of a hefty Exmoor Ram from their archives to the already established Absolute Unit meme.

    Building on the success of this, August 2018 saw the inaugural #MuseMeme day launched by social media engagement group CultureThemes. It resulted in hundreds of new museum-themed memes and a little media attention too. #MuseMeme has taken on a life of its own and has become a critical and creative outlet for many museum professionals.

    Collecting memes

    Finally, it is worth touching on collecting memes in museums. This is my particular area of interest and it raises a number of interesting contradictions between many museums’ desire to be digitally adept and some of the traditional attitudes surrounding collecting that are rooted in the idea of museum object being physical material things.

    Key to being able to collect memes in museums is a more relaxed approach to establishing their provenance and having a firm understanding of who ‘owns’ them. Coupled with this is a need for a more nuanced understanding of copyright and how it applies to memes.

    Keep your eyes peeled – there should be some more interesting material about museums collecting memes available soon…

    Museums and contemporary collecting

    Rhys, Owain, and Zelda Baveystock (eds.). 2014. Collecting the Contemporary: A Handbook for Social History Museums. Edinburgh: MuseumsEtc.

    Memes and digital folklore

    de Seta, Gabriele. 2019. ‘Digital Folklore.’ in Jeremy Hunsinger, Lisbeth Klastrup and Matthew M. Allen (eds.), Second International Handbook of Internet Research. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.

    Espenschied, Dragan, and Olia Lialina. 2009. Digital Folklore. Stuttgart: Merz & Solitude.

    Phillips, Whitney, and Ryan M Milner. 2017. The Ambivalent Internet: Mischief, Oddity, and Antagonism Online. Cambridge: Polity Press.

    Museums and memes

    Eppink, Jason. 2014. “The Reaction GIF: Moving Image as Gesture.”  https://jasoneppink.com/the-reaction-gif-moving-image-as-gesture/ (accessed 25/01/2021)

    Hawes, Anisa, and Catherine Flood. 2018. ‘Curating and Collecting Digital Posters handbook’. https://ccdgp.co.uk/colophon.html (accessed 25/01/2021)

    Koszary, Adam. 2018. ‘look at this absolute unit.’ https://medium.com/@adamkoszary/look-at-this-absolute-unit-763207207917 (accessed 25/01/2021)

    Rees, Arran J. 2019. ‘Are memes worth preserving?’ https://www.acmi.net.au/stories-and-ideas/are-memes-worth-preserving/ (accessed 25/01/2021)

    Memes and Copyright

    Bonetto, Giacomo. 2018. ‘Internet memes as derivative works: copyright issues under EU law’. Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice. 13 (12): 989 – 97. doi.org/10.1093/jiplp/jpy086  

    Marciszewski, Mark. 2020. ‘The Problem of Modern Monetization of Memes: How Copyright Law Can Give Protection to Meme Creators’. Pace Intellectual Property, Sports & Entertainment Law Forum. 9 (1): 61-109. https://digitalcommons.pace.edu/pipself/vol9/iss1/3

  • Seizing the Memes of Production: the hidden cost & control of making the Bernie Sanders meme

    Dr Liam McLoughlin, Birkbeck – University of London

    Twitter: @Leelum

    Email: L.McLoughlin@bbk.ac.uk

    Once again, Bernie Sanders is asking you to make him into a meme. In the midst of one of the most famous transitions of power, surrounded by pomp and circumstance, famous guests, glamour, and vogue sat Bernie Sanders. While everyone else in attendance dressed to be seen by the whole world, there was former Presidential candidate Bernie – winter jacket, patterned mittens, cross legged, and honestly, dressed and looking like he would rather be somewhere else.

    In reality, his fashion choice is more heart-warming. The famous mittens were made by one of his constituents, an elementary school teacher who makes them out of recycled wool, which is rather sweet. Nevertheless, as we know with memes, you can be the happiest go lucky person on the planet, but one (or even a couple) images of you looking slightly uncomfortable can go on to define your existence.

    It was an instant meme. Cut out, Bernie was extracted from the inauguration and photoshopped into a myriad of spaces and contexts. The image at first symbolised that of the unwelcome audience member, from being serenaded by Justin Bieber, to being a member of the Yalta Conference, or the cold and harsh realities of Game of Thrones universe, with Bernie replacing Bran Stark in his wheelchair.

    The meme soon evolved. Shifting to finding humour in putting Bernie in random and unlikely spaces. From the wild west to scenes from the film Ghost.

    https://twitter.com/FirenzeMike/status/1352257049032273921

    Enter NYU student Nick Sawhney. Nick made the website Bernie Sits (https://bernie-sits.herokuapp.com/) which went viral and expanded the reach of the meme significantly.  The website allows you to enter any address or location and the site returns an image from Google Street View, but with Bernie sat in the bottom right. Rather than load up something like Photoshop, people were making and posting the meme within seconds.

    Not long after the website went viral is where the issues for Nick, and his website, began. He built the website on two key technologies, Heroku, a cloud platform which both hosts and processes applications; and Google Maps API, which searches for locations, and returns the image from Street View. Both have free tiers, but with limits. The website quickly blasted through the free Heroku credits, but luckily an employee of the platform reached out and seemingly provided assistance to keep it afloat.

    However, the bigger expense of the two was the Google Maps API. Each time someone enters a location search into the website, it was costing Nick money. The cost, according to Google, is $7 for every 1,000 searches. At first might not seem like much, but assuming everyone who liked the original tweet does three searches each, that is more than $4,900 in credits alone … ouch. It can be assumed actual use, and therefore costs, will be higher. 

    Other viral websites based on Google Maps API have had similar financial issues. The website GeoGuesser which popular back in 2013 being one example. The game puts users in a random place on Google Street View and asks them to guess the location. Due to the costs of using the Map API, the website owner was forced to turn the website into a paid service, limiting access to many, and causing a bit of an outrage by fans.

    In the meantime, the Bernie Sits website is kept open thanks to a Buy Me a Coffee link which allows people to donate to Nick, which he puts towards funding the website. So far, he has received over 2,150 donations. However, the websites’ lifespan is defined entirely by how much a MSc student can fund it and users’ willingness to continue donations.

    So, what are the greater implications here? Questions should be raised by researchers into the continued accessibility to create the platforms which allow for these memes to propagate. To most social media users, memes are seemingly free. Either they copy (often without credit) and share pre-made images, or use easy to access online platforms such as Meme Generator, Kapwing, or apps like Elsewhere. For more recent trends towards audio-visual meme types, users turn to the in-built functionalities of social media platforms themselves – such TikTok and Instagram Reels – which are not available elsewhere. Locking these memes and their forms to these platforms.

    In the grand scheme of things most social media users do not make their own static memes on a desktop with software such as Photoshop, GIMP or Paint.NET, or have access to video editing software (or the skills necessary to use them). Those that make them are certainly in the minority.

    There are certainly many examples of where a particular meme could only ever be created and hosted on specific platforms. Take the famous meme by Nathan Apodaca – who was launched to fame by a video of him casually sipping cranberry juice and listening to Fleetwood Mac while riding a skateboard. What made this meme so popular was the music. Yet, music-based memes can only be hosted on platforms that have struck deals with the relevant rights holders and have agreements to pay royalties. Try to create the same meme on YouTube without such a deal, and you will have the meme copyright claimed. Try to host it on your own website, and you should be expecting a takedown request soon after.

    This goes back to the old theoretical question within media studies: Who owns and controls the media? The trends within current meme creation suggest that the pool of potential people who can host or provide the functionalities behind new and virial memes is decreasing. The technological and hosting involvement behind meme creation alone makes it harder for “everyday” users to control content without some outside involvement. This is especially the case for memes which contain audio-visual elements, or those that rely on backend technologies. Likewise, as memes tune into popular culture and music, rights-holders are become more skilful at protecting their content – limiting memes to users of particular platforms or apps.

    The Bernie meme, and specifically the Bernie Sits website, is a demonstration that more and more users are being pushed away from the means to produce memes. As researchers of this important medium, we should be keeping a close eye to the risks to artistic freedoms, what this means for the format, and the variety of content produced.  

    Edit: Nick, the creator of the The Bernie Sits website got in touch with us – He’s actually really nice! He pointed out that he’s an MS student not an MA (fixed in the text). Nick also told us that the website has now been taken down citing costs and told us that 9,849,938 Bernie memes were created using the site! At the standard rate, we worked out that the website would have cost $68,949 in Google API fees alone.

  • Meme Studies is canon

    Meme Studies is canon


    Meme Bulletin Issue 1

    Meme Studies Research Network

    İdil Galip 

    Trying to define memes is a frustrating task. 

    Articles, books, reports about internet memes will often start with an obligatory reference to Richard Dawkins’s 1976 work The Selfish Gene. In these texts, you will see something along the lines of “a meme is a piece of culture that mutates and morphs as it is disseminated from human to human” followed by a brief note about the term’s etymological origin: “meme comes from mīmēsis in Greek, meaning to imitate”.

    The Dawkins reference provides us with a clean cut Genesis of the term “meme” as we know it. It establishes a sort of popular academic genealogy for the study of memes. We say “okay, here is the term, here is the man who coined the term, and here is the book he coined the term in. Now let’s move on to more interesting discussions”. 

    Beyond tracing a lineage, it also works in favour of our biologically loaded understanding of how memes become “viral”, how they “spread” and “mutate” on the internet. 

    We could even argue, to a point, that this natal deference to natural sciences endows the much maligned communication and media studies with a sense of legitimacy. I’m sure that many social researchers have had to begrudgingly explain that studying topics such as internet communities, jokes, folklore, humour, fan and pop culture is not indeed a frivolous undertaking but a study of the “human condition”, to unsympathetic hard sciences folk. 

    These uncomfortable discussions and forced justifications can sometimes push us towards a search for “properly scientific” validation. If we can only connect the inception of our field to biology, evolution, the Big Bang, to these grander things that go beyond “whimsical” and mundane parts of human life, then maybe meme research can be deemed a legitimate scientific field of study by the cynics. But in our pursuit to affirm a supposedly conclusive origin to the terms we use, and our hunt for the most “objectively scientific” field to align ourselves with, we might be cutting our epistemological explorations short. We might forget that philosophers, theorists, folklorists, linguists and artists have been writing about the reproducibility and dissemination of culture for millennia. 

    Pre-modern thinkers such as Aristophanes, Plato and Aristotle were concerned with the imitation of reality within theatre, poetry and paintings. While Plato expressed a distaste for anything that sought to imitate truth (like art), Aristotle was more interested in how artists represent reality in theatre and the emotional release, or katharsis, that follows a tragic spectacle. Artists and writers have been trying to represent and caricaturise mundane reality since forever. Reproducible imitation of the comedy and tragedy of everyday life has been discussed long before the conception of “Bad Luck Brian”. 

    Both the meme studies research network and the bulletin are, thus, attempts at widening our perspectives and wrangling ourselves free from habitual or accepted ways of knowing what memes are and how they have come to be. Meme studies, as a potential field of research, should not default to Dawkins as its founding father, instead should be as sprawling as its object of study. 

    This first issue therefore deals with a different beginning. It is an exercise in understanding the internet meme as part of a wider canon. Taking the etymological root of the word meme, it follows a preliminary thread of the term mīmēsis carrying it from Hellenic philosophy to critical theory, sociology and communication studies. 

    The list starts chronologically with Plato’s Republic and tracks mīmēsis from pre-modernity in Aristotle’s Poetics to modern philosophy via Benjamin and Adorno. The journey ends (and starts, in ouroboros fashion) with contemporary discussions about internet memes seen through the eyes of trailblazing scholars such as Limor Shifman, Ryan Milner and Whitney Phillips.  
     

    The imitation of reality in Hellenic philosophy


    Plato. The Republic. Translated by Benjamin Jowett. The Internet Classics Archive MIT. http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.html.

    Aristotle. Poetics. The Internet Classics Archive MIT. http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/poetics.1.1.html.

    Mamary, Anne J. 2001. ‘Redeeming Mimesis’. Méthexis, no. 14: 73–85. https://www.jstor.org/stable/43738648.
     

    Modern discussions of mimesis


    Rabinbach, Anson. 1979. ‘Introduction to Walter Benjamin’s “Doctrine of the Similar”’. New German Critique, no. 17: 60. https://doi.org/10.2307/488009.

    Benjamin, Walter, and Knut Tarnowski. 1979. ‘Doctrine of the Similar (1933)’. New German Critique, no. Special Walter Benjamin Issue: 65–69. https://doi.org/10.2307/488010.

    Jan, Steven. 1999. ‘The Selfish Meme: Particularity, Replication, and Evolution in Musical Style’. International Journal of Musicology 8: 9–76.

    Donovan, Josephine. 2019. ‘Ethical Mimesis and Emergence Aesthetics’. Humanities 8 (2): 102. https://doi.org/10.3390/h8020102.
     

    Contemporary connections and Internet memes


    Nooney, Laine, and Laura Portwood-Stacer. 2014. ‘One Does Not Simply: An Introduction to the Special Issue on Internet Memes’. Journal of Visual Culture 13 (3): 248–52. https://doi.org/10.1177/1470412914551351.

    Shifman, Limor. 2014. Memes in Digital Culture. MIT Press Essential Knowledge. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.

    Milner, Ryan M. 2016. The World Made Meme: Public Conversations and Participatory Media. The Information Society Series. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.

    Phillips, Whitney, and Ryan M. Milner. 2017. The Ambivalent Internet: Mischief, Oddity, and Antagonism Online. Cambridge, UK ; Malden, MA: Polity.

    Applegate, Matt, and Jamie Cohen. 2017. ‘Communicating Graphically’. Cultural Politics 13 (1): 81–100. https://doi.org/10.1215/17432197-3755204.

    Zulli, Diana, and David James Zulli. 2020. ‘Extending the Internet Meme: Conceptualizing Technological Mimesis and Imitation Publics on the TikTok Platform’. New Media & Society, December, 146144482098360. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444820983603.

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