Blog Post #9: Gifs & Memes
Memes have, undoubtedly, become an unavoidable element of internet media, and both articles in this week’s reading have covered that extensively. What I am certainly still confused by, however, is what specifically defines a piece of visual internet media as a meme.
Volpe focuses her article on the image-plus-text format of a meme, which agreeably is a go-to presentation of the content. What confuses me is most notably what Mina labels to be a meme. Explaining the citizen journalist activism tactics being implemented in Beijing to discuss smog levels, Mina references the denizens of Beijing posting photos of the air in the city as “another meme emerg[ing] on the Chinese internet.”
My trouble here is two-fold: first being that Mina does not define a meme at any point earlier in the article, and secondly that, by most social understandings, a simple picture posted in relation to pertinent internet dialogue does not automatically make it a meme.
I believe I may be so harshly criticizing Mina’s presentation of the internet tactics of our Beijing smog fighters as memes because of how I find myself defining the concept. Comically, my high school AP Language & Composition teacher included a unit in the course (after the exam) on the structural logic of memes and how they work to persuade or inform a reader. Of what I remember, the concept hinged on the media produced to be presenting an enthymematic statement, or at least implying one by its presentation in juxtaposition to other media.
Examples of this are, as Volpe references, the Scumbag Steve meme, and many other “classic” memes of that genre/era. On the more implied side of things, we can look at reaction memes, where often times it is just a single picture or gif with no caption or words, but viewed in juxtaposition with the media reacted to, creates an implied enthymematic statement.
From this, my mental definition of a meme may be somewhat narrow. However, Mina’s statement that “people simply began posting photos of the air around them. Some people posted from high-rises, others from down on the ground looking up into the sun. Others posted pictures of themselves wearing masks, and others the walls of their buildings, which showed clear signs of pollution,” does not provide an example of a meme, but of citizen journalists documenting and commenting on the world around them for collective action.
While I definitely agree with both arguments of the articles by Mina and Volpe, that memes can be and are used as methods of social education and activism, I feel the need to put my foot down and say that just because it is an image posted in relation to a trend does not make it a meme.
