Memes (Nour Zomlot) 200711054

Memes, like other products of data communication, require a degree of literacy and totally depend on human agency. According to Gal et al.(2016), memes are a set of artifacts that share mutual features of content, and either or both of formation and stance. Memes "are characterized by both similarity and variation." (Nissenbaum & Shifman, 2015), and are produced or reproduced by a civic engagement which indicates that a meme's success depends on its propagation. Thus, many scholars considered it a cultural capital, which means that it, eventually, could also be easily used for gatekeeping because any passerby, who is not meme literate, will not be able to understand their communication language thus keep up or be accepted by the community. Memes perform as a subculture that contributes to the group of ideas that communities gather and act around (Nissenbaum & Shifman, 2015). Therefore, an individual becoming a part of a meme community depends on their ability to understand, stay updated and contribute to its trending topics. Groups on Facebook can be used as a good example. Some groups are set to be private by the admins -who are supposedly meme lords-, and they have the right to ask questions before letting anyone join them, to maintain the group’s atmosphere. They can be harsh sometimes with their replies or aggressive and no one have the authority to fault them.

References:

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1461444814568784

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1461444815609313