Twelfth International Conference on The Inclusive Museum

Abstract

Amanda Brennan has a peculiar job title. “Content and community associate” at Tumblr, Brennan in most commonly known as a “meme librarian”. And she is not alone. All over the world initiatives such as the tweet archives of the Library of Congress and the Brazilian Meme webmuseum (#MUSEUdeMEMES) maintained by one of Brazil’s top universities are certainly bringing the “Internet is serious business” slogan to a whole new level of seriousness. In the age of Twitter politics, Russian bots and meme activism, what’s to become of museum collections? How is mass media impacting the public sphere? How can museums reflect the contemporary dynamics of digital culture? How to collect born digital documents? How to present then? Memes: does it belong in a museum? We believe so. This paper explores these questions through singled-out study cases.