Fourth International Conference on Communication & Media Studies

Abstract

Knobel and Lankshear (2007) knew that humor is the personality that we all possess, that was why in 2007, they started to classify memes to two dissimilar categories: quirky and sensational humor. With this, humor was linked up with memes in which they both started to manage the various political issues. In order to investigate the emergence of meme as a trend in the world of social media, the researchers investigated on its elements and purpose. The researchers aimed to answer the following questions: a. What are the different themes of memes? b. What are the unintended purpose of memes in social media and c. What are the implications of memes in social media? The researchers made use of structured online interviews to the bloggers whose memes has a popularity in the online world. The researchers analyzed the trending memes in the Philippines and determined its features and implications. As a result, memes are sometimes referred to as viral videos, they have differences. Viral videos are images and clips that easily spread to the public without any meaningful change. These are labelled as viral videos and images because they spread from person to person like an epidemic. Meme videos, on the other hand, requires users to join in with the type of parody, mash-ups or other unoriginal content who takes inspiration from the original video.