William Cope
Nithin Kalorth
Jako Olivier
Ida Brandão
Mitchell PetersMultimodal Literacies MOOC’s Updates
Internet memes as multimodal texts
One important site of multimodal communication in both my life and that of my students’, which I am particularly intrigued by, is the Internet meme. Internet memes are groups of digital items sharing certain similar qualities, that are subsequently widely shared by Internet users (Shifman, 2013).
Internet memes, as digital discursive artefacts, are multimodal texts that often use a combination of text, image and sometimes video to convey a message. They are part of the social worlds of my students as many of them are active on social media and engage in practices such as sharing and liking Internet memes. Internet memes include parodies of music videos, which my students also regularly watch. Catchphrases and “memetic vernacular” are also popularized by Internet memes, which students tend to subsequently use in their daily lives. Some examples of Internet memes include the parodies of the popular Korean music video “Gangnam Style”; also in Asia, an Internet meme gaining popularity is called the (rather inexplicably) popular “PPAP” song. Phenomena like LOLcats are examples of early Internet memes. Some Internet memes can be analyzed as pieces of “low” or “popular” Art in the tradition of Warhol. Image macros, like the popular LOLcat series, have been analyzed and compared to silent films, which also use “caption” (intertitles) and visuals.
I think it would be interesting to look at what kinds of communicative loads (Bateman, 2014) are taken on by Internet memes, what makes it popular, and whether there are differences between Internet memes that are popular globally and those that are popular in local contexts.
Traditional notions of literacy would probably not take into account the epistemological practices that underlie the creation and consumption of digital artefacts like Internet memes. Internet memes often contain subversive and anti-hegemonic messages so children need to be equipped with the right skills to “read”. Critical multimodal literacy would also probably aid them in their understanding of Internet memes.
The Internet Meme has become quite the phenomenon over the past few years. If you spend as much time on Facebook as I do, you will find quickly that there’s a meme for pretty much any topic, from religious to political, from pop culture to business, and beyond.Memes are all over the place. They go viral. People love them.
It’s great that you put this up for discussion! I agree with you of the complexity in “memes” and how they construct meaning. Being in a symposium about discourse and new discourses, one of the big questions was how to classify and analyse memes as they are quite complex in how they are created, on the one side, and the multiple and diverse factors that come into play when interpreting them, on the other; this makes me think that there is also a big challenge for us teachers and the necessity of integrating this form of discourse (can be called a genre?) in classrooms.
On the other hand, though I agree that memes in some cases contain anti-hegemonic discourse, one of the factors that make memes so popular, in my perspective, is that is available for people of many different ideological positions to transform them and create meanings according to their own interests; in some cases, they even reinforce hegemonic discourses, such as what happens with feminism; I tried googling “feminist memes” and most of them were against feminism and how it is supposedly “pointless”.
This said, I strongly agree with you on the importance of teaching literacy from a Critical Multimodal perspective; as you put it, to deepen their understanding of them, also, I think, would be an important tool in developing agency in students as possible and future creators of these discourses. Finally, I see memes as a medium for deeper discussions not only about “what they mean”, but, what’s their purpose and what and whose interests are mobilized through them.
Internet Memes, what a great choice of multimodality. Some memes really are incisive and topical. Maybe one day meme creators might be the cartoonists of the future?
It is true that online contents have its character. The internet is light-weighed compared to conventional world.
Very interesting update Pavithra, thanks for sharing it here. It is actually my first time to learn about Internet meme. It looks like Internet meme is a great example on multimodality. Just wondering, what age group is using this software and in what subject? Also, it would be great if you can share any image, screenshot or video about this software to better visualize it?