The SAGE Encyclopedia of the Internet

Internet Memes

Contributors: Noam Gal

Edited by: Barney Warf
Book Title: The SAGE Encyclopedia of the Internet
Chapter Title: "Internet Memes"
Pub. Date: 2018
Access Date: June 9, 2018
Publishing Company: SAGE Publications, Inc.
City: Thousand Oaks,
Print ISBN: 9781473926615
Online ISBN: 9781473960367
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781473960367.n151
Print pages: 529-530
©2018 SAGE Publications, Inc.. All Rights Reserved.
This PDF has been generated from SAGE Knowledge. Please note that the pagination of
the online version will vary from the pagination of the print book.
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Internet memes are digital texts—verbal, visual, or audial—that share common attributes and
undergo variations by multiple users. They are created with awareness of one another, and
they require prior acquaintance for proper production and consumption, as the repetitive (or
memetic) element of the text often incorporates coded cultural information essential for proper
interpretation. The term meme has been ascribed to the repetitive component of these texts,
to each version based on that constant component, or to the entire corpus of texts comprising
the different versions. Although the term predates its online incarnation by several decades,
the Internet (Web 2.0 in particular) constitutes a fertile ground for the proliferation of the
memetic practice. This entry opens with a brief etymological overview of the evolution of the
term Internet memes, followed by a description of its popular and academic uses. It concludes
with a discussion of the significant dialectics between the memetic practice and the Internet,
and the social roles of Internet memes within participatory culture.

The Evolution of the Term

The term meme was coined by Richard Dawkins in his groundbreaking 1976 book The Selfish
Gene. It preceded the popular online-related use of the term by more than three decades,
and it referred to cultural units that spread from person to person through imitation. Their
manifestation spanned the range from popular melodies to the concept of god. The term is
derived from the Greek mimema, meaning “something imitated,” and also echoes both the
French même (meaning “the same”) and the English memory. Dawkins adapted these to
resemble the word gene (hence meme). According to Dawkins, memes are the cultural
equivalents of genes. They undergo processes of variation, competition, selection, and
retention. Accordingly, a meme survives and propagates if it is compatible with the culture in
which it operates and undergoes sustainable revisions through time and societies with
correlation to changes in its cultural ground.

As a theoretical concept, the meme was adopted by some scholars and slandered by others.
The main disputes revolved around the ambiguity of the term, the close analogy it suggests
between biology and culture, and the diminution of human agency in the processes to which
it points. But with the emergence of Web 2.0, and social media in particular (especially
Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube), a revised version of the term gained renewed currency. As it
shifted from academic to popular discourse, the term meme transformed, in its new
incarnation as Internet meme, from a rather ambiguous metaphor into a concrete textual
genre. Typical to memetic processes, some of the term’s previous features were preserved,
while others were neglected.

Manifestations of Internet Memes

The term meme was widely deployed by Internet users during the first decade of the 21st
century, mainly to describe recurring images or videos of which users created multiple
variations. These texts usually include an invitation for creative involvement inherently
encoded into them—for example, the use of an already known memetic text as their basis, the
creation of a simple text that can be easily imitated, or the choice of a participatory platform
that affords active engagement with the text.

This engagement results in variants of the original text, including changing verbal messages
(e.g., “Grumpy Cat” images or “Hitler Rants” videos), remixes and parodies (e.g., “Gangnam
Style” videos), and other modes of manipulation conducted on the original texts. Many of

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these texts include a central humorous stance, either for the sake of pure entertainment or as
a means to convey a serious critical message. For example, “pepper spraying cop” images
and “#cosbymeme” were top-down attempts to initiate the creation of humorous memetic
content hijacked by users to convey a subversive critical message.

As apparent from these examples, memetic content can vary from pop culture to political
critique. Moreover, although popular discourse mostly makes use of the term meme to refer to
humorous texts, scholars have broadened its use to include other kinds of repetitive digital
texts, such as participatory online campaigns, such as the “ALS Ice Bucket Challenge,” “It
Gets Better Project,” and “We Are the 99%.” Internet memes can be utilized for both
reaffirmation and subversion of social order, and typical to grassroots modes of
communication indeed do both.

Memes and Participatory Culture

Digital technologies in general, and the Internet in particular, facilitate the creation,
dissemination, and consumption of memes. Unlike viral content, memes are not merely
disseminated but are also altered by users. They thus demand creative involvement and
acquaintance with previous texts, both relatively accessible in digital online arenas. In terms of
the production of such texts, digital technologies allow manipulation of the original text (e.g.,
duplicating, adding verbal text, and editing) so that the creation of variations do not require
high technological literacy. In terms of the distribution and consumption of Internet memes,
search engines like Google, as well as participatory platforms such as social media, allow
both the display of and easy access to these texts, both as individual texts and as a group.
The aggregation of texts into groups enhances the collectivization of Internet memes and
amplifies their presence online. Importantly, however, the memetic practice is not merely a
circumstantial byproduct of online digital affordances. It also follows, and in some senses
constructs, the social logic of participatory culture.

In her book Memes in Digital Culture, Limor Shifman suggests that although Internet memes
are created and disseminated at the microlevel, they operate on the macrolevel, as they
design social discourse and even participate in the consolidation of collectives. This idea also
relates to her argument regarding the cultural ground of the current proliferation of Internet
memes. Alongside the opportunities afforded by digital media and the Internet to easily
create, disseminate, and consume Internet memes, the cultural logic of participatory media is
deeply correlated with the memetic practice. This practice facilitates, on the one hand, the
expression of originality and creativity, and, on the other, a sense of belonging to a cultural
collective. In this sense, the memetic practice meets both the demand for individualism and
the yearning to belong characteristic of participatory culture. Memes’ success within this
cultural arena indeed obeys the Dawkinsian logic of sociocultural (and in this case also
technological) compatibility, and thus, in some sense, the memetic practice conveys a
metamessage about the cultural logic of participatory culture.

Memetic activity has become a significant factor in collective identity work and in the
consolidation of communities within the participatory culture of Web 2.0. Generic literacy, in
both the consumption and the production of Internet memes, often acts as a marker of
cultural belonging (e.g., “LOLCats” memes). In addition, the negotiation over social norms is
often conducted through the choices of imitation and variation manifested through Internet
memes (e.g., the “It Gets Better Project”). The result of such negotiation may be a memetic
corpus highlighting the contours of existing and emerging cultural communities.

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Thus, although the term meme predates the Internet, its renewed currency within the
participatory culture of Web 2.0 reflects its mutual compatibility with this cultural ground and
points at the fertile dialectics between memes and the Internet. As a result, Internet memes
both proliferate and play a significant social role within this cultural arena.

See also Facebook; Internet Activism; Social Media; Twitter; Web 2.0

Noam Gal
http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781473960367.n151
10.4135/9781473960367.n151
Further Readings
Blackmore, S. (1999). The meme machine. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Burgess, J. (2008). All your chocolate rain are belong to us? Viral video, YouTube and the
dynamics of participatory culture. In G. Lovink & S. Niederer (Eds.), Video vortex reader:
Responses to YouTube ( p p . 101–109). Amsterdam, Netherlands: Institute of Network
Cultures.
Dawkins, R. (2015). The selfish gene. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. (Original work
published 1976)
Gal, N., Shifman, L., & Kampf, Z. (2016). “It gets better”: Internet memes and the construction
of collective identity. New Media & Society, 18(8), 1698–1714.
Knobel, M., & Lankshear, C. (2007). Online memes, affinities, and cultural production. In M.
Knobel & C. Lankshear (Eds.), A new literacies sampler (pp. 199–228). New York, NY: Peter
Lang.
Milner, R. M. (2012). The world made meme: Discourse and identity in participatory media
(Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Kansas, Lawrence.
Shifman, L. (2012). An anatomy of a YouTube meme. New Media & Society, 14(2), 187–203.
Shifman, L. (2013). Memes in digital culture. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Shifman, L. (2013). Memes in a digital world: Reconciling with a conceptual troublemaker.
Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 18(3), 362–377.

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