EXPLORING POLITICAL                   MEMES & MASHUPS

For this project I have chosen to focus my research on two movements that impact us all in a very heavy way. My first focus will incorporate “Gun Law Memes” and the second will include the “Black Lives Matter” movement, which both relate to politics and how we chose our stand against violence. I will be exploring these topics through the use of memes which to me can be a powerful way to get a message across to a large group of people with very few words.

 

As I began exploring my knowledge on the term meme, I found that the Limor Shifman’s book “Memes in Digital Culture” very informational. This book in my opinion can be a little difficult to understand. However, Shifman is very organized and offers a lot of wordy advice then begins to breaks down the term meme and what it really is. For instance he begins by telling us that “the term “meme” was coined by Richard Dawkins in 1976 to describe small units of culture that spread from person to person by copying or imitation. The term “meme” has been widely adopted in many disciplines, including psychology, philosophy, anthropology and linguistics. For the most part however, it has been utterly ignored in the field of communication. Until the twenty-first century, mass communication researchers felt comfortable overlooking memes.” So what is a meme?

           

We could say that memes are simply user generated content, or a meaningful picture with some words attached. A more sophisticated definition might be the one described by Limor Shifman who states that an internet meme is “(a) a group of digital items sharing common characteristics of content, form and/or stance, which (b) were created with awareness of each other, and (c) were circulated, imitated, and/or transformed via the Internet by many users.” He also goes on to discuss how memes are like many web applications, memes diffuse from person to person, but shape and reflect general social mindsets. The term describes cultural reproduction as driven by various means of copying and imitation, practices that have become essential in contemporary digital culture.

 

According to Dawkins analysis, memes that spread successfully incorporate three basic properties, longevity, fecundity and copy fidelity. All three are enhanced by the internet. Three main attributes ascribed to memes are particularly relevant to the analysis of contemporary digital culture are: a gradual propagation from individuals to society, second: reproduction via copying and imitation and diffusion through competition and selection. I’m sure we have all witnessed a meme that has gone viral. Maybe when scrolling through social media you see the same meme over and over. Whether they agree with what the meme is saying or not it is clear that it had a significant impact on a lot of people. I will attempt to reveal through the choice of my memes what I feel impact our community as a whole. What ideas are out there, that don’t just affect one person but a large group of people.    

 

Furthermore, digging deeper into a book that makes us all think twice about how we are using the internet and specifically Youtube is the book “Reading YouTube” which states: “YouTube may be many things, a platform, an archive, a library, a laboratory, a medium. It may be a form of complex parasitical media or a networked individualism, but I see it as a modern-day bard, a story teller for the digital age, a provider of modern-day myths, all rolled into one.”  To me it makes perfect sense to call it a story board.

 

YouTube has a very different culture than most social media outlets. You can literally view almost any topic. In fact one statement that “Reading YouTube” makes is that “Politics and YouTube intersect in a number of ways, which minimally include the distribution of videos and associated campaign material, as constitutive element in the work of social media and using narrative technique common to YouTube in the work of political celebrity.” The comparison between Shifman's take on “Memes in Digital Culture” and Kavoori’s “Reading Youtube” is interesting. I can make the conclusion that there are similar ideas behind the digital age. We are in a sense affected by the mass overload of digital content on a daily basis. You can use Youtube to upload just about any content that you want, just like you can create a meme about anything that is important to you and send it out across all of your social media boards, with little regard to what other people think. It’s your opinion and your story you can create it anyway that you please.   

 

As I begin to place emphasis on my topic of gun laws I was researching and found some interesting material that I feel deals directly to the topic. For example: The 2nd amendment reads as follows-"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed." There are three basic interpretations of the 2nd amendment: “The civilian militia interpretation-The 2nd Amendment is no longer valid today because a militia system does not exist. It's simply an archaic and obsolete passage in the bill of rights. The individual rights interpretation-The right to carry a gun is an individual right, and should be held in the same order as free speech or trial rights. The median interpretation-Gun control and gun rights is an individual issue, but the 2nd Amendment slightly restricts it by implementing such rights only for militia purposes.”

 

Secondly, I feel that the Black Lives Matter movement also fits well within the scope of gun laws and violence. Digging around and finding some research on the movement I came across a site that lays out pretty plainly what it is and how it has evolved. According to their site the “Black Lives Matter” movement is an ideological and political intervention in a world where Black lives are systematically and intentionally targeted for demise.  It is an affirmation of Black folks’ contributions to this society, our humanity, and our resilience in the face of deadly oppression. Rooted in the experiences of Black people in this country who actively resist our de-humanization, #BlackLivesMatter is a call to action and a response to the virulent anti-Black racism that permeates our society.Black Lives Matter is a unique contribution that goes beyond extrajudicial killings of Black people by police and vigilantes.

 

This project of exploring politics and memes has opened my eyes to the world of cultural difference and how we all view things differently. We are exposed to a vast amount of information every day, what we do with it is our choice. We may choose to use it to make a meme, or a video or maybe even a blog post. Whatever we choose should reflect who we are and our stand point on the topic. Please view my website with an open mind and know that the memes I have chosen reflect views from both sides of each topic.

 

http://gun.laws.com/2nd-amendment

http://blacklivesmatter.com/guiding-principles/