The ‘Internet Meme’

The meme in its most commonly recognized format is online media including images with text overlays, video media, audio, animated .gif images and other forms of media. Various elements within these memes or the surrounding culture can also become memes unto themselves which can lead to the creation of spin of or even very different memes. The process of creation and viral spread of memes that we experience online can be described as being slightly different to the scientific terminology coined by Dawkins.

The internet meme is typically deliberately altered by human ingenuity whereas the scientific meme involves random change and accurate copying. Internet memes can also be researched and tracked through their presence on internet media such as social media, scientific memes however have no physical form or signature. Although Dawkins has stated that the internet and scientific meme are obviously connected and related strongly to one another. Nissenbaum and Shifman (2015) describe the internet meme as a digital artifacts with similar themes or ideas that are then imitated or ‘reiterated’ throughout internet communities, message boards, forums or any other online media or social interaction. As Nissenbaum and Shifman (2015) describe, there have been prior studies that have analyzed memes as often being the product of a digital community, which requires ‘subcultural literacy’ and can be used as a gate-keeping practice. Nissenbaum and Shifman (2015) also describe prior works that associate internet memes with ‘cultural capital’, which describes the mastery of cultural knowledge as a way to achieve a superior, more knowledgeable or intelligent status within a social construct or group.

Another important aspect of the internet meme is the element of ‘going viral’. This is a somewhat confusing point as there is likely some confusion as to whether the reiteration of an internet meme is the same as something going viral. As described by Shifman (2014) the primary difference between internet memes and viral items or phenomenon relates to variability. Shifmman (2014) states “Whereas the viral comprises a single cultural unit (such as a video, photo, or joke) that propagates in many copies, an internet meme is always a collection of texts”.

Therefore the main difference is that if a digital item such as a video or image is to go viral, it can normally be identified and understood by itself without any surrounding knowledge or experience. The meme on the other hand can be understood as a collection or collective base of knowledge which gives rise to various elements that contribute to the meme. Therefore an individual image or video could help form or contribute to an internet meme but the reiteration of spread of a meme is not necessarily the same as a digital item going viral.