John Benjamins Publishing Company
Internet memes we live by (and die by)
Abstract
In the internet age, memes are at once products and driving forces of social practices. A meme contains a memetic message and a meme output, and boasts, if guided by a pragmatic way of thinking, several features, including, but not limited to, salience, frequency, adaptability, argumentativity, sociality, embeddedness, embodiedness, locality, relativity, emotionality and dynamicity. The current global COVID-19 pandemic serves as a fitting and timely touchstone to testify how human beings are surrounded by numerous good and evil memes in the online world, and how internet memes, as can be seen from the illustration of two specific memes, namely, the ‘stay home, stay safe’ meme and the ‘wear a mask’ meme, are impacting human life-worlds, online and offline, with their transformative power, be it constructive or destructive. Moreover, researching how memes plays a decisive part in internet-mediated interaction provides a lens of insight through which ‘deep states’ of human nature of both self and others can be uncovered and through which what Nietzsche (2002, 2017) called “a revaluation of values” is possible.
Abstract
In the internet age, memes are at once products and driving forces of social practices. A meme contains a memetic message and a meme output, and boasts, if guided by a pragmatic way of thinking, several features, including, but not limited to, salience, frequency, adaptability, argumentativity, sociality, embeddedness, embodiedness, locality, relativity, emotionality and dynamicity. The current global COVID-19 pandemic serves as a fitting and timely touchstone to testify how human beings are surrounded by numerous good and evil memes in the online world, and how internet memes, as can be seen from the illustration of two specific memes, namely, the ‘stay home, stay safe’ meme and the ‘wear a mask’ meme, are impacting human life-worlds, online and offline, with their transformative power, be it constructive or destructive. Moreover, researching how memes plays a decisive part in internet-mediated interaction provides a lens of insight through which ‘deep states’ of human nature of both self and others can be uncovered and through which what Nietzsche (2002, 2017) called “a revaluation of values” is possible.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Introduction 1
- Internet memes we live by (and die by) 7
- Stylistic humor across modalities 36
- Memes and the media narrative 64
- On the interaction of core and emergent common ground in Internet memes 85
- Exploring local meaning-making resources 122
- Internet memes as multilayered re‑contextualization vehicles in lay-political online discourse 145
- Index 182
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Introduction 1
- Internet memes we live by (and die by) 7
- Stylistic humor across modalities 36
- Memes and the media narrative 64
- On the interaction of core and emergent common ground in Internet memes 85
- Exploring local meaning-making resources 122
- Internet memes as multilayered re‑contextualization vehicles in lay-political online discourse 145
- Index 182
