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Memes
Diana Daly
Key points
The notion of content going viral suggests it spreads uncontrollably like a virus. However, content sharing is a deliberate act, driven by human agency and motivations.
Spreadability, proposed by Jenkins, Bell, and Green, replaces the viral metaphor. It emphasizes the role of users in sharing content within their networks and explores the dynamic nature of online cultures.
Crowdcultures, emerging from subcultures or art worlds, play a crucial role in making content spreadable. Advertisers must navigate and understand these cultures to create relevant and resonant content.
Ken Bone became an internet sensation during the 2016 presidential debate due to factors like memeability, relatability as a regular guy, offering a national ceasefire, and being an undecided voter – a rare find during a polarized election.
Holt’s analysis of branding in the age of social media highlights the need for continuous innovation, understanding cultural flashpoints, and the challenge of remaining relevant. Diversity is crucial for successful branding, as demonstrated by Pepsi’s 2017 ad failure.
Often when people talk about what works in advertising online, they make it sound like it’s the content itself that decides to spread. This is the idea behind the word viral: It suggests some content is just irresistible and spread by its human hosts almost without their choosing.
The Salt Bae meme, from Turkish chef Nurs_et
Think about this. This virus idea just isn’t how media works. There wasn’t some virus that made you share a meme last year, or a song, or a video. If you shared that Salt Bae meme, it was because you wanted people to see it, and you wanted them to see it coming from you. You have human agency when you share things online, and you invest a piece of your identity in everything you share. You also may have strong reasons for sharing content, whether those reasons are personal, social, political, satirical, or all of these.
Why do larger, experienced companies sometimes falter in making their content spreadable while some gestures, phrases, pics, and videos spread in ways even their creators could not predict and maybe didn’t even want? Misunderstandings abound as humans try to make sense of the relatively new world of social media content trends.
Still, in this chapter, we will brave the pitfalls and offer some explanations and strategies for spreading content online. And we look at a few cases of companies and creators who have succeeded in making content spreadable, along with some spectacular failures.
Section 1: What is spreadability, and why is it important?
The vocabulary used to refer to online sharing trends is unstable, with users adopting and spreading terms by users that may misrepresent what they name. Humans understand new phenomena in the world by comparing them to what we already know – which can be problematic, as the old and new phenomena will not be the same.
Take the word meme, for example. It originated in the work of a biologist (Richard Dawkins, in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene) to describe something that spreads like a gene, only by cultural rather than biological means. However, this definition is based on a metaphor rather than an observation of how content spreads. A better definition is one that acknowledges the qualities of memes – for example, noting that users often modify them as they spread them.
So it is with the concept of the media virus. Users and popular media outlets refer incessantly to media “viruses” and “viral” media. But viruses are biological phenomena. Can cultural phenomena really behave the same way?
The theorists Jenkins, Bell, and Green, have written critically of the notions behind the concept of “viral media;” Instead, they offer the notion of spreadability. This relates to concepts we began discussing in Chapter 2 of this book, in the section on “The People Formerly Known as the Audience.” In the 20th century, advertising depended on one broadcasting outlet keeping the eyes of audiences directly on that broadcaster’s content. In the age of social media, though, users are not looking at that one broadcaster or television station; they are looking at each other. And with limitless choices and content online vying for their attention, to attract views, you have to convince users to share your content with their publics: their families, “friends,” and networking contacts.
One of the crucial points in Spreadable Media is that online cultures work together as agents to make content spread. A company cannot do it alone. Consumers of the media content a company desires to spread must become sharers, and even producers: liking, reposting, sharing with specific publics, meming, creating fanfiction offshoots, and making the content their own. Spreadability is Jenkins, Bell, and Green’s theory of how content spreads online – although it is not a strategy any agent can control. Indeed, spreadability requires some loss of control of content by the creator.
To begin to understand how to make content spreadable in this way, let’s look at an example of content that spread almost inadvertently – without anyone really even planning for it to explode.
Section 2: Ken Bone as meme, truce, and unicorn
Ken Bone during the 2016 presidential debate, from The New York Times
During the second presidential debate in 2016, a man named Ken Bone asked a question and became an internet sensation via #BoneZone. Why?
I always speak with my students about social media news. The day the Ken Bone memes exploded, I asked one insightful group I had why. Why did everyone go nuts over Ken Bone? In the discussion that followed, we went over several factors that helped Ken Bone spread so fast. Here are four of them:
1. Ken Bone was easy to meme.
His sweater was red. His face was small. His glasses were neat rectangles. His shape when cut out was roundy like a cloud. Ken Bone was so memeable he was drawn by Disney before his persona was born. With his collar shirt buttoned up all white and snug, he appeared to have been lovingly dressed by his mom. In Pictionary, it would take at least 60 seconds to draw most people. Ken Bone, maybe 6 seconds. Instant recognition enables easy imitation, making Ken Bone’s image a very spreadable social object. Plus his name only takes up 7 characters. That’s spreadable.
2. Ken Bone was a regular guy – very unlike both 2016 Presidential candidates.
While their backgrounds were different, candidates Trump and Clinton had both long occupied the high halls of the privileged. Watching them battle one another on stage was like watching Godzilla and Mothra. Fascinating… but where were the humans to be tossed around in their struggle? Election cycles have grown so long that the American public’s attention span for the two candidates had begun to peter out. And then came the human caricature, Ken Bone – like switching the channel first to a reality TV show, then a cartoon.
3. Ken Bone was a national ceasefire.
It has been a brutal election battle, with most of the American public in filter bubbles echoing with rage, and occasionally coming into hostile contact with the opposite side. And then came Ken Bone – a Twitter user called him, “a human version of a hug,” which a popular blogger subsequently rephrased as “a hug, personified.” Everyone could like him. He was a safe topic at family gatherings. And maybe he was a messenger dove, cooing in his kind voice that after that awful election, political enemies might eventually be able to talk to each other again.
4. Ken Bone was an undecided voter – a unicorn.
For many, it was difficult to believe any Ken Bones even existed. Viewers marveled when he appeared: There are undecided voters? In this polarizing election? Where do they live? Is it quieter there? Do rivers sparkle with the ether of forgetfulness? Oh my goodness… there’s one now! Bone’s fame only grew when it was discovered that before that pivotal 15 seconds of exposure, he had only 7 Twitter followers – and two were his grandmothers. What a wonderful little public that must be.
The end of Ken Bone’s fame
Of course. the truce between Clinton and Trump supporters could not last. Bone, online searches revealed, had posted things online in the past that not everyone could love. His brand was compromised. If only he’d lasted through Thanksgiving, we might not have needed Adele.
The internet is a dangerous place for unicorns.
Student insights: Early Instagram and Memes (video by Preston Kersting, Spring 2021)
Section 3: Branding on social media
So if you are an advertiser, how do you do what Ken Bone did – combined with what viewers created out of what Ken Bone did – and how do you keep the resulting culture going? How do you make a lasting brand with spreadable content?
In the article, Holt explains branding as “a set of techniques designed to generate cultural relevance.” What this means is that branding requires paying attention to cultures online. Cultures are like publics, except cultures have much deeper roots. Cultures are practices, symbols, meanings, and much more shared by people who have coexisted in a place or other site or context. To brand successfully today you have to learn about the cultures you are marketing to: their inside jokes, trends, taboos, and so much that can be hard to understand to cultural outsiders.
Holt writes that much of the internet is based in crowdcultures, which are cultures around certain concepts, including products. Crowdcultures can come from two sources, subcultures or art worlds. These crowdcultures may be subcultures – people who are deeply devoted to these concepts. Or they may come out of art worlds, with people talented in creating online content and making a culture more attractive and resonant even if it’s all very new. Ken Bone grew out of art worlds, with artistic people quickly meming him into videos and images, which attracted a crowdculture that continued to spread him.
How did those initial art world creators know that Ken Bone would spread quickly? Maybe they didn’t. But if they did, they understood some of the beliefs and interests of the American people who spread him. They knew how to read the culture their crowd would come from.
Holt breaks down the process of reading and marketing to a culture. Below I list each of these steps followed by an explanation. What is important to understand is that your company cannot do it alone; you need the help of users, tastemakers, bloggers, and others to become an internet sensation.
1. Map the cultural orthodoxy.
To read a culture and understand how to market to its members, first ask, “What are the conventions to break from?” If you want to attract the attention of Americans entrenched in pre-election political warfare, you might notice at this point that the cultural orthodoxy around the #debate at that time is intensely negative and partisan.
2. Locate the cultural opportunity.
The cultural opportunity means finding whatever is missing from the current landscape around that culture and seeing how you can fill that gap. If you noticed that election debate viewers are surrounded by negative, partisan media, the cultural opportunity might involve imagining something refreshingly hopeful and nonpartisan.
3. Target the crowdculture.
Once you’ve located the cultural opportunity, you must next locate the tastemakers and hubs for spreading content in that culture. What networks should you plug into once you have content to spread? For example, Buzzfeed found some of the initial user-created Ken Bone memes on social media sites like Twitter and Reddit and then spread them more widely.
4. Diffuse the new ideology.
Your new content piece is the new ideology, and it should “embrace subcultural mythologies” – joining the active conversations already taking place in the networks and cultures you are targeting. Still, you must be careful here to avoid whatever your content is trying not to be. No content mentioning Trump or Clinton spread in the Ken Bone meme. Talk of the candidates had been the orthodoxy, and everyone was tired of them! Referring to previous internet memes, however, might reactivate meming internet cultures.
5. Innovate continually, using cultural flashpoints.
This is where many brands face challenges for continued success; new flashpoints are essential. Chipotle (as seen in the video embedded above) got the content part right long enough to do very well as a brand of healthy, natural food. But over time they struggled to remain relevant, and several outbreaks of foodborne illnesses drew into question Chipotle’s wholesome branding.
The internet is full of content sensations that never became brands. #BoneZone and many other Ken Bone memes were initially unstoppable! But Ken Bone did not last long as a highly successful brand…which may have been ok with him as he never endeavored to be a brand in the first place. Remaining relevant in the age of social media requires constant monitoring of the cultures you must entice to promote your brand with you. And if you’re a countercultural meme (or even a countercultural brand), you can only last as long as your icon resists being taken over by the mainstream.
Section 4: Failing at branding: Pepsi’s 2017 “Black Lives Matter” ad
In one of the worst advertising mishaps in recent years, a large company attempted to follow the steps for cultural branding – but severely misread the targeted cultures and their own product. In a 2017 commercial, the Pepsi corporation tried to capitalize on widespread attention to the Black Lives Matter movement (discussed in Chapter 6), while failing to hear all of the demands of the protestors at the center of that culture. The immediate backlash led them to take the ad down within 24 hours.
How could Pepsi, a multinational corporation with decades of marketing experience, have gotten it so wrong?
It is easy to speculate some of what Pepsi was going for. From the imagery in the ad, we can reasonably assume that Pepsi ad executives were inspired by dramatic images of real Black Lives Matter protesters that struck chords with online publics. And Pepsi execs may also have been trying to match the massive success their competitor Coca Cola had achieved with their Hilltop Ad, in which their product idealistically bonds young, attractive people across national, racial, and ethnic boundaries.
But that Hilltop ad was in 1971. And those dramatic images of Black Live Matter protestors involved real people putting themselves at risk to address persistent, thorny issues. Black Lives Matter had indeed gathered a formidable crowdculture – but a can of Pepsi had no place in their conversations. Placing a white woman with a Pepsi as the problem solver at the center of an explosive racial issue was deeply insulting to many people. Whichever Pepsi executive dreamed up the 2017 ad, it was a bad idea.
This brings up a more important question: How did such a bad idea make it out of the drawing board room? Eric Thomas, a LinkedIn Brand Specialist, connects what happened in that room to a lack of diversity:
“This is what happens when you don’t have enough people in leadership that reflect the cultures that you represent. Somewhere in the upper levels where this commercial was approved, one of two things happened. Either there was not enough diversity — race, gender, lifestyle, age or otherwise — or worse, there was a culture that made people uncomfortable to express how offensive this video is.”
Internet cultures can dupe also advertisers in multiple ways. First, the level of bias and cultural appropriation online within connected publics may make fool advertisers into seeing widespread acceptance of these culturally insensitive practices. A recent exploration of “digital blackface” by New York Times journalist Amanda Hess captures one example of a common online practice big advertisers would be wise to avoid.
The other misleading quality is that brands today are far more global than in the past, so branding is particularly tricky. Reading cultures well requires teams of people who acknowledge their own biases and think deeply about social issues. The takeaway from Pepsi’s spectacular failure, then, may be this: Diversity is essential in successful branding in the digital age. We have to welcome, listen to, and become all the voices at the table to get it right – or at least avoid spectacular wrongs.
Section 5: Losing Control of the Narrative: That Polar Bear and the Hot Mess of Spreadable Science Memes
From National Geographic’s YouTube Channel
You probably saw it.
A “viral” video of an emaciated polar bear in 2017 led to significant chatter about climate change on social media. Yet there is another heating climate that has my colleagues and I worried as Information Scientists. Social media is a hotbed for videos, images, and memes about science: not just climate change but news on NASA activities, the EPA, vaccinations, and many other fiery topics for the American public. In this hot mess, our concern was – and remains – how difficult it has become, to tell the truth.
Why shouldn’t science be packaged and spread online? In recent years there has been an understandable push by scientists and those who fund our work to make our findings accessible. This has meant moving beyond peer-reviewed journals and science-focused publications, creating flashy media that will interest non-scientists, and unleashing it on social networks. These strategies seem reasonable: Our work is funded by the public, so it should be accessible to the public. More importantly, to fight human-caused phenomena like climate change we need to inspire shifts in human behavior on a massive scale. Social media seem designed for the mass appeal that our mission to educate requires.
The problem arises when we chase public attention at the expense of good science. Yes, it is essential that scientists tell engaging stories – but the stories have to be about our findings, not just our observations. The video of the polar bear filmed by a photographer for SeaLegacy was first spread with no text on the video itself, separating the project’s observations from deeper analysis.
Is it worth burning past steps in the scientific method to spread our message? Even in a warming world, we don’t think so. A 2016 Pew study found that less than a third of Americans believed scientists on the causes of climate change, and under one fifth trusted scientists in general “a great deal.” More than half selected the second-highest option, saying they trusted scientists “a fair amount.” When we allow one video of one bear to take the place of analyzed findings, we trade a fickle public’s attention for the more valuable asset of public trust. In August 2018 National Geographic published an acknowledgment that they “went too far” in reducing the bear’s condition to the effects of climate change.
We estimate that an astonishing 2.5 billion people were reached by our footage. The mission was a success, but there was a problem: We had lost control of the narrative. The first line of the National Geographic video said, “This is what climate change looks like”—with “climate change” highlighted in the brand’s distinctive yellow. ~ SeaLegacy photographer Cristina G. Mittermeier, in the 2018 issue of National Geographic Magazine
Today’s scientists must all be good media producers. We need to understand the climate not only of the Earth we live on, but of the world that receives, spreads, and memes that media. We need to transcend tribalism and understand how our messages spread, to those who trust us and those who do not. Most importantly, we need to apply the same rigor to our media production that we apply to our studies. Seeing a starving polar bear on snowless terrain did make some social media users sweat over their own energy use. But it also burned a little more public trust in scientific research and institutions.
Student insights: Social Trends (video by iVoices Media Lab Student, Spring 2021)
Spiritual Narcissism — Social Media and Ourselves podcast
Spiritual Narcissism
Release Date: June 1st 2022
In this episode, Jacquie explores how religious figures known for their hate and intolerance affect society through social media. Join her to see the impact one nationalist monk had on Myanmar, one preacher had on a past president’s safety, and one minister who reminds us preaching just scripture isn’t enough to spread true tolerance and love.
To learn more about the hateful preachers in this episode as well as many others, please visit preachersofhate.com
Respond to this podcast episode…How did the podcast episode “Spiritual Narcissism” use interviews, student voices, or sounds to demonstrate a current or past social trend phenomenon? If you were making a sequel to this episode, what voices or sounds would you include to help listeners understand more about this trend, and why?
One particularly ingenious image showcases an orca posed as a sickle crossed with a hammer. The cheeky caption reads, “Eat the rich,” a nod to the orcas’ penchant for sinking lavish yachts.
Memes conjure her in a beret like the one donned by socialist revolutionary Ché Guevara. In one caption, she proclaims, “Accept our existence or expect resistance … an otter world is possible.”
My scholarship centers on animal-human relations through the prism of social justice. As I see it, public glee about wrecked surfboards and yachts hints at a certain flavor of schadenfreude. At a time marked by drastic socioeconomic disparities, white supremacy and environmental degradation, casting these marine mammals as revolutionaries seems like a projection of desires for social justice and habitable ecosystems.
A glimpse into the work of some political scientists, philosophers and animal behavior researchers injects weightiness into this jocular public dialogue. The field of critical animal studies analyzes structures of oppression and power and considers pathways to dismantling them. These scholars’ insights challenge the prevailing view of nonhuman animals as passive victims. They also oppose the widespread assumption that nonhuman animals can’t be political actors.
So while meme lovers project emotions and perspectives onto these particular wild animals, scholars of critical animal studies suggest that nonhuman animals do in fact engage in resistance.
Nonhuman animal protest is everywhere
Are nonhuman animals in a constant state of defiance? I’d answer, undoubtedly, that the answer is yes.
The entire architecture of animal agriculture attests to animals’ unyielding resistance against confinement and death. Cages, corrals, pens and tanks would not exist were it not for animals’ tireless revolt.
Even when hung upside down on conveyor hangars, chickens furiously flap their wings and bite, scratch, peck and defecate on line workers at every stage of the process leading to their deaths.
If they didn’t mind having their infants permanently taken from their sides, dairy cows wouldn’t need to be blinded with hoods so they don’t bite and kick as the calves are removed; they wouldn’t bellow for weeks after each instance. I contend that failure to recognize their bellowing as protest reflects “anthropodenial” – what ethologist Frans de Waal calls the rejection of obvious continuities between human and nonhuman animal behavior, cognition and emotion.
The prevalent view of nonhuman animals remains that of René Descartes, the 17th-century philosopher who viewed animals’ actions as purely mechanical, like those of a machine. From this viewpoint, one might dismiss these nonhuman animals’ will to prevail as unintentional or merely instinctual. But political scientist Dinesh Wadiwel argues that “even if their defiance is futile, the will to prefer life over death is a primary act of resistance, perhaps the only act of dissent available to animals who are subject to extreme forms of control.”
Philosopher Fahim Amir suggests that depression among captive animals is likewise a form of emotional rebellion against unbearable conditions, a revolt of the nerves. Dolphins engage in self-harm like thrashing against the tank’s walls or cease to eat and retain their breath until death. Sows whose body-sized cages impede them from turning around to make contact with their piglets repeatedly ram themselves into the metal struts, sometimes succumbing to their injuries.
Critical animal studies scholars contend that all these actions arguably demonstrate nonhuman animals’ yearning for freedom and their aversionto inequity.
Sharing memes that cheer on wild animals is one thing. But there are more substantive ways to demonstrate solidarity with animals.
Legal scholars support nonhuman animals’ resistance by proposing that their current classification as property should be replaced with that of personhood or beingness.
Nonhuman animals including songbirds, dolphins, elephants, horses, chimpanzees and bears increasingly appear as plaintiffs alleging their subjection to extinction, abuse and other injustices.
Citizenship for nonhuman animals is another pathway to social and political inclusion. It would guarantee the right to appeal arbitrary restrictions of domesticated nonhuman animals’ autonomy. It would also mandate legal duties to protect them from harm.
Everyday deeds can likewise convey solidarity.
Boycotting industries that oppress nonhuman animals by becoming vegan is a powerful action. It is a form of political “counter-conduct,” a term philosopher Michel Foucault uses to describe practices that oppose dominant norms of power and control.
I believe quips about the marine mammal rebellion reflect awareness that our human interests are entwined with those of nonhuman animals. The desire to achieve sustainable relationships with other species and the natural world feels palpable to me within the memes and media coverage. And it’s happening as human-caused activity makes our shared habitats increasingly unlivable.
Solidarity with nonhuman animals is consistent with democratic principles – for instance, defending the right to well-being and opposing the use of force against innocent subjects. Philosopher Amir recommends extending the idea that there can be no freedom as long as there is still unfreedom beyond the species divide: “While we may not yet fully be able to picture what this may mean, there is no reason we should not begin to imagine it”.
Something culturally significant - a concept or a form of media - that spreads from person to person, often being modified as it does so
The affordance that it's nearly effortless to share content posted online; the ability for media to be spread to many people, who may then choose to use, modify, and/or spread it further
A (digital) culture built around certain concepts, which could include products
An inspired, collaborative competition among artists and content creators
A branding strategy that tries to exploit existing crowdcultures and/or build new crowdcultures
Dr. Diana Daly of the University of Arizona is the Director of iVoices, a media lab helping students produce media from their narratives on technologies. Prof Daly teaches about qualitative research, social media, and information quality at the University of Arizona.
definition
Something culturally significant - a concept or a form of media - that spreads from person to person, often being modified as it does so
The affordance that it's nearly effortless to share content posted online; the ability for media to be spread to many people, who may then choose to use, modify, and/or spread it further
A (digital) culture built around certain concepts, which could include products
An inspired, collaborative competition among artists and content creators
A branding strategy that tries to exploit existing crowdcultures and/or build new crowdcultures