Identity-related issues in meme communication

Internet memes are an example of the trend of replicability and spread of discourses through the Net within today’s participatory culture. On paper, memes are instances of humorous discourse that abound on the internet, are replicated or altered, and then transmitted to other users. However, in this paper the focus is not on its humorous side, but on how every single stage of meme communication entails a greater or lesser impact on the user’s self-concept, self-awareness and overall identity. The paper addresses five stages of meme communication and possible ways in which these stages influence the user’s identity

‘I did my bit’: Terrorism, Tarde and the Vehicle-Ramming Attack as an Imitative Event

This paper charts the rise in prevalence of ramming attacks and how this wave of attacks challenges many of the assumptions and approaches we have about terrorism, its causes, and policies to address it. Such approaches tend to concentrate on either the ‘psychology’ of individual terrorists, or wider structural issues, such as religious ideology and the role of terrorist organisations in converting and recruiting people to violence. This paper will take a different approach, one which focusses less on structure and individual psychology, and more on the act itself, as something that is not merely an expression of an individual or an ideology, but something that has a lure and force of its own, as something that travels through our contemporary mediascape, to be internalised and imitated by an increasingly varied set of subjects with varying motivations, psychologies, ideologies and circumstances

The Business of the Girl: Celebrity and the Professionalization of Girlhood in Early Twenty-First Century Media Culture

The achieving “can-do” girl, who thrives in her personal, academic, and aspirational endeavors, emerged in response to self-help crisis literature of the 1990s urging mothers to manage their daughters’ low self-esteem. However, even as media industries have adopted the successful girl subject in popular film, television, and digital marketing campaigns, public conversations of tween and teenage girls still identify rising levels of anxiety and self-doubt that diminish girls’ confidence well into adulthood. Responding to what critics call the “confidence gap,” girl culture of the twenty-first century has organized itself around the affordances of social media and digital celebrity in the creation of a professionalized girl self-brand. This project addresses the media discourses of confidence and anxiety that shape expectations of girlhood achievement and examines the use of celebrity as a tool of professionalization in the reproduction of race and class hierarchies under neoliberal capitalism. This project explores four modes of cultural production that demonstrate what I call “the professional lifestyling of the self” that invoke the practice of celebrity and branding in the construction of the professional girl subjectivity: lifestyle media featuring mothers managing their daughters’ entertainment careers; girl prodigies and performers competing on reality talent shows; girl influencers building their business on YouTube and Instagram; and girl activists negotiating humanitarian agendas in networked microcelebrity spaces. Critical to each mode is how celebrity reinforces confidence, authenticity, and relatability in the creation of a professionalized girl subject who acts as a point of stabilization during uncertain economic times. The chapters survey the progression of girlhood in her professionalization, from her initial appointment as daughter carrying on the mother’s postfeminist legacy, to agent of social change navigating the pressures of promoting her cause in a commodity culture. Along the way, the girl learns to brand personal obstacles, insecurities, and anxieties as part of her authentic journey to professional achievement. I argue that this procession, as it operates within the surveillance framework of media convergence, reveals that attaining confidence is a commercial endeavor rather than a feminist one that promises social and economic independence while maintaining structural inequalities. This dissertation seeks to understand digital celebrity not just as “a pedagogical tool in the discursive production” of the girl, as P. David Marshall has argued, but as a professional aid in the construction of the gendered, racialized, and classed girl who can prosper in the shifting labor economy of the early twenty-first century. Girlhood relies on the technologies of branding and promotion to reimagine, rather than close, the confidence gap by assigning cultural value to traits like low self-worth that were previously blamed for holding girls back. This project ultimately interrogates how the commercial industries conceptualize the girl as a business whose confidence and anxiety are managed and whose work is crucial to the regulation of a capitalist society

Newfags don't remember Lörs lärä : Internet memes on an anonymous imageboard

The goal of this thesis is to examine Internet memes on Ylilauta.org, a Finnish discussion forum. Internet memes are catchy pictures, videos, sound, or text that spread on the Internet from person to person via different channels. One of their features is viral, virus-like, spreading. Internet memes often spread through repetition and imitation, and people often modify them. Ylilauta is a Finnish, anonymous Internet discussion forum or an imageforum. Another term for this kind of image-focused forum is imageboard and it is used of an Internet forum that has formed a special purpose for images and special kind of anonymous culture. Ylilauta is the Finnish version of the famous imageboard, 4chan. The research questions studied in this thesis are: 1. What kind of image content circulates on Ylilauta? 2. How or in what kind of ways do people use images on Ylilauta? 3. What kind of meme images get modified or how do users modify them on Ylilauta? The research method used in this thesis is netnography, also known as virtual ethnography. The research data were collected in November to December 2015, from /satunnainen/, the random discussion board on Ylilauta. Satunnainen is not a topic- based board so the discussion there is various. Discussion threads are collected and images in their context analyzed using a qualitative typology. The results show that reaction images are an important part of the discussion culture of Ylilauta. Irony is often used, and remixed and parodied content is a big part of participation and meme content production. Also, various memes were found from the data set, for example Röökijäbä, Lörs lärä, Sad frog, and Spurdo spärde

Memetic Theory, Trademarks & The Viral Meme Mark, 13 J. Marshall Rev. Intell. Prop. L. 96 (2013)

This Article proposes that memetic theory is a useful lens through which to view trademarks, particularly as there has been a rise in the number of applications for culturally-driven words and catchphrases in the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Memetic theory, or memetics, is a scientific field related to how units of information evolve and replicate. These units of information, called memes, undergo a process of natural selection comparable to that of genes. To survive as trademarks, memes must not only exist in the proper form, but they must also subsist in an environment where replication, variation, and selection exist in appropriate measure. Under current trademark jurisprudence, over-protection and over-enforcement of trademarks pose a threat to the natural selection environment. The recent phenomenon of trademark applications for culturally driven words and catchphrases is but one manifestation of the interaction between memetic theory and trademark law. Applying memetics to trademark law calls for a reassessment of current legal standards. This Article concludes by offering further insight into where to explore the intersection between this incipient science and trademark law

Investigating Online Electioneering in the UK General Election of 2010

This research project is an analysis of the use of digital propaganda by the three major parties in the UK 2010 General Election. In addition to this empirical aim, the study also employs the discipline of memetics to generate a theoretical and methodological approach with which to study digital propaganda. Memetics is an evolutionary theory of culture based around the concept of the ‘meme’ or cultural replicator. This study contends that propaganda can be understood as an evolutionary phenomenon, with the ethical implications of its use specifically addressed in each instance, rather than assumed as part of its definition. The memetic ‘methodological toolkit’ which is used to analyse the data on the 2010 election is a means by which key concepts from within the literature on memetics can be practically deployed. As part of the study this ‘toolkit’ is presented and the testing of it is continually evaluated in order to improve upon the initial design, something which also has implications for the use of memetic concepts within thematic textual analysis. The election itself was not an ‘Internet election’ in the way that the 2008 Presidential Election in the USA might be characterised. Such an election can be identified by a convergence of factors from within the party campaign structures and the wider political environment on a specific subject or individual – commonly a candidate for office – resulting in a high degree of spontaneous online participation and organisation amongst citizen supporters. This study argues that the UK 2010 election did not produce such a convergence due to low levels of voter enthusiasm, uneven social and financial resources and an inability by the major parties to capitalise on the potential opportunities for digital campaigning which arose

What is the role of emotions on football fans in affecting online video virality? (Case study of Salford City FC)

Viral video marketing is an expensive process and there is limited scholarly research about what makes video content go viral. A few online communities such as football clubs are keen to explore video virality to engage their audiences. One such club is the Salford City Football Club (FC) who have sponsored this research. Consequently, this study aims to identify the key factors that drive the virality of online video content. To answer the research questions the STEPPS model by Jonah Berger, the Social Sharing of Emotions Theory (SSET), the Social Identity Theory (SIT) and Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) were some of the dominant models and theories in understanding the constructs of online video virality. A predominant variable that the STEPPS and SSET highlighted is emotional response from the video viewer, and thus, was primarily used as the theoretical basis for this work. The primary data in this thesis comprised 60 respondents, of which were 32 football fans and 28 non-football fans. The Facial expression recognition software (Noldus 6.0) was used in combination with an online self-reporting web questionnaire to understand the emotions associated with the propensity to share content. In conjunction with emotions the thesis also investigated the role of groups (I.e. football fans and non-football fans) by analysing their effect on sharing which depicted variations on how both sets of groups respond to viral video and non-viral video stimuli. Subsequently, the following are the original contributions to knowledge: 1)The research made theoretical advancements by examining specific emotions, arousal intensity and fan group dynamic using facial expression analysis on viral video stimuli. The results from the thesis indicate that certain emotions are intrinsically viral and have a higher intention to share. The research indicated that fan group dynamics also have a direct role to play into the extent a video is shared and should be considered as an important variable. The research explored the existence of triggers which are specific events of importance that highlight the exact phase a video is most likely to be shared.2)The research made a methodological advancement in virality studies by developing a unique method for predicting online videos in real time using emotional viewing patterns. Related studies in virality prediction uses statistical algorithms to predict virality, this research took a different approach using the emotionality elicited from viewers obtained from facial expression analysis data. 3) The research made methodological advancements in understanding which method is more concurrent for measuring users’ emotions when watching a video stimulus by comparing facial expression analysis data with self-report. The thesis concludes facial expression analysis is a more robust approach for measuring emotions however not for subjective norms like the “intention to share”

Spreadable Media, Citizens, and Participatory Culture : Uses and Effects of Political Internet Memes

Internet memes are increasingly visible in political contexts and are believed to be a tool for people to express opinions, values, and experiences in a digital public sphere. This research project was undertaken to learn more about Internet meme users by exploring the uses for Internet memes and the effects of Internet meme use in political settings. Across three studies, this dissertation thus presents an exploration of the political relevance of Internet meme use. The first study dealt with the central motives for using Internet memes, and the role that users attribute to political Internet memes. In a Delphi-method interview study with meme users (N=25), participants discussed why they seek out Internet memes. A qualitative content analysis revealed that political meme use is driven by an interplay of self-expression, social identity, and entertainment motives, and Internet memes are seen as an instrument for political engagement. To focus on the political attitudes and behaviors of meme users, the second study used an online survey (N=333) to assess the antecedents and consequences of political Internet meme use. Hierarchical regression analyses showed that the use of political Internet memes can be significantly predicted by political interest and by political meme efficacy, or the belief that memes are an efficacious political activity. Further, meme use significantly predicted higher levels of engagement in conventional and unconventional political activities, even when controlling for political interest. The third study was therefore aimed at uncovering mechanisms of possible mobilizing effects of political Internet meme use. In a controlled laboratory setting, participants (N=104) were randomly assigned into one of three conditions. Subsequent prosocial behavior tendencies were not found to differ across the conditions, although marginally significant interaction effects related to cost were found, along with a result related to a measure of selfish tendencies. Implications of the overall results and recommendations for future research are discussed