Internet memes are recognised for their role in creating community through shared humour or in-group cultural knowledge. One category of meme uses historical art pieces, coupled with short texts or dialogue, as a form of social commentary on both past and present. These memes often rely on a (mis)reading of the emotions of those represented in such artwork for humorous purposes. As such, they provide an important example of transhistorical engagement between contemporary society and past artifacts centred on the nature of emotion. This Element explores the historical art meme as a key cultural form that offers insight into contemporary online emotional cultures and the ways that historical emotions enable and inform the practices of such culture. It particularly attends to humour as a mode which helps to mediate the disjuncture between past and present emotion and which enables historical emotion to 'do' political and community-building work amongst meme users.
Internet memes are recognised for their role in creating community through shared humour or in-group cultural knowledge. One category of meme uses historical art pieces, coupled with short texts or dialogue, as a form of social commentary on both past and present. These memes often rely on a (mis)reading of the emotions of those represented in such artwork for humorous purposes. As such, they provide an important example of transhistorical engagement between contemporary society and past artifacts centred on the nature of emotion. This Element explores the historical art meme as a key cultural form that offers insight into contemporary online emotional cultures and the ways that historical emotions enable and inform the practices of such culture. It particularly attends to humour as a mode which helps to mediate the disjuncture between past and present emotion and which enables historical emotion to 'do' political and community-building work amongst meme users.
Taking “Gangnam Style” seriously: what Internet memes can tell us about digital culture. In December 2012, the exuberant video “Gangnam Style” became the first YouTube clip to be viewed more than one billion times. Thousands of its viewers responded by creating and posting their own variations of the video—“Mitt Romney Style,” “NASA Johnson Style,” “Egyptian Style,” and many others. “Gangnam Style” (and its attendant parodies, imitations, and derivations) is one of the most famous examples of an Internet meme: a piece of digital content that spreads quickly around the web in various iterations and becomes a shared cultural experience. In this book, Limor Shifman investigates Internet memes and what they tell us about digital culture. Shifman discusses a series of well-known Internet memes—including “Leave Britney Alone,” the pepper-spraying cop, LOLCats, Scumbag Steve, and Occupy Wall Street's “We Are the 99 Percent.” She offers a novel definition of Internet memes: digital content units with common characteristics, created with awareness of each other, and circulated, imitated, and transformed via the Internet by many users. She differentiates memes from virals; analyzes what makes memes and virals successful; describes popular meme genres; discusses memes as new modes of political participation in democratic and nondemocratic regimes; and examines memes as agents of globalization. Memes, Shifman argues, encapsulate some of the most fundamental aspects of the Internet in general and of the participatory Web 2.0 culture in particular. Internet memes may be entertaining, but in this book Limor Shifman makes a compelling argument for taking them seriously.
As the leadership field continues to evolve, there are many reasons to be optimistic about the various theoretical and empirical contributions in better understanding leadership from a scholarly and scientific perspective. The Oxford Handbook of Leadership and Organizations brings together a collection of comprehensive, state-of-the-science reviews and perspectives on the most pressing historical and contemporary leadership issues - with a particular focus on theory and research - and looks to the future of the field. It provides a broad picture of the leadership field as well as detailed reviews and perspectives within the respective areas. Each chapter, authored by leading international authorities in the various leadership sub-disciplines, explores the history and background of leadership in organizations, examines important research issues in leadership from both quantitative and qualitative perspectives, and forges new directions in leadership research, practice, and education.
The book Online Virality, edited by Valérie Schafer and Fred Pailler (C2DH, University of Luxembourg), aims to provide a comprehensive examination of online virality. It explores the many ways we can think about this modern phenomenon and analyse the circulation, reception, and evolution of viral born-digital content. Virality and content sharing always intertwine material, infrastructural, visual and discursive elements. This involves various platforms, stakeholders, intermediaries, social groups and communities that are constantly (re)defining themselves. Regulation, curation and content moderation politics, as well as affects and emotions (fears, humour, empathy, hatred...), are also at the core of online virality. The publication offers an interdisciplinary overview on online virality by including different types of scientific inputs, such as precise case studies, various methodological approaches (including close and distant reading, visual studies, discourse analysis, etc.), as well as historical and socio-technical analyses. The book is organised around three main topics: Expressions and Genres; Mobilisations and Engagements; Circulation and Infrastructures. The first part explores the semiotics of virality, the diverse and creative forms of expression, specific genres, the relation to other media, and the affective side of virality, such as using humour or provocation. The second part focuses on the political dimension of memes and viral content and their use in the context of controversy or political and ideological opposition. Finally, the third part delves into the often understudied but essential side of virality, by examining the role of platforms and their curation, in short, the infrastructural dimension of virality. These three parts allow us to question such fundamental notions linked to virality as, among others, circulation, reception, economy of attention, instrumentalisation and affect. This volume brings together authors from various disciplines, including semiotics, history, information and communication sciences, computer science, digital humanities, media studies. In addition, the contributors approach the question via case studies that allow for a perspective that is not exclusively US and European-centred. Some chapters explore virality in Brazil, Chile, while the book also examines a wide variety of platforms (YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, video game platforms, etc.).
This Element describes the development of an affective economy of violence in the early modern Dutch Republic through the circulation of images. The Element outlines that while violence became more controlled in the course of the 17th century, with fewer public executions for instance, the realm of cultural representation was filled with violent imagery: from prints, atlases and paintings, through theatres and public spectacles, to peep boxes. It shows how emotions were evoked, exploited, and controlled in this affective economy of violence based on desires, interests and exploitation. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
How memetic media—aggregate texts that are collectively created, circulated, and transformed—become a part of public conversations that shape broader cultural debates. Internet memes—digital snippets that can make a joke, make a point, or make a connection—are now a lingua franca of online life. They are collectively created, circulated, and transformed by countless users across vast networks. Most of us have seen the cat playing the piano, Kanye interrupting, Kanye interrupting the cat playing the piano. In The World Made Meme, Ryan Milner argues that memes, and the memetic process, are shaping public conversation. It's hard to imagine a major pop cultural or political moment that doesn't generate a constellation of memetic texts. Memetic media, Milner writes, offer participation by reappropriation, balancing the familiar and the foreign as new iterations intertwine with established ideas. New commentary is crafted by the mediated circulation and transformation of old ideas. Through memetic media, small strands weave together big conversations. Milner considers the formal and social dimensions of memetic media, and outlines five basic logics that structure them: multimodality, reappropriation, resonance, collectivism, and spread. He examines how memetic media both empower and exclude during public conversations, exploring the potential for public voice despite everyday antagonisms. Milner argues that memetic media enable the participation of many voices even in the midst of persistent inequality. This new kind of participatory conversation, he contends, complicates the traditional culture industries. When age-old gatekeepers intertwine with new ways of sharing information, the relationship between collective participation and individual expression becomes ambivalent. For better or worse—and Milner offers examples of both—memetic media have changed the nature of public conversations.
Millennials have heard all of the cultural criticisms and backlash; we are bemoaned a generation of entitlement and nicknamed monikers such as Gen Why?, Internet Generation, MyPod Generation, and the Boomerang Generation. As a Millennial, I can tell you that yes, our value systems have changed, our beliefs have expanded to be more inclusive, and our career goals have shifted to prioritize happiness and self-fulfillment over workplace cubicles in gray-scale offices. We may not be homeowners with 2.5 children grasping mid-rung on a corporate ladder, but we are cat owners and we are adaptable to change, creatively crowdfunding ways to support our projects and goals. In this book learn about the mentality of Millennials and where we stand when it comes to racism, LGBT+ rights, body image, and other divisive issues all while surviving as delayed adults.
Many of our questions about religion, says the internationally renowned anthropologist Pascal Boyer, were once mysteries, but they no longer are: we are beginning to know how to answer questions such as "Why do people have religion?" and "Why is religion the way it is?" Using findings from anthropology, cognitive science, linguistics, and evolutionary biology, Boyer shows how one of the most fascinating aspects of human consciousness is increasingly admissible to coherent, naturalistic explanation. And Man Creates God tells readers, for the first time, what religious feeling is really about, what it consists of, and how it originates. It is a beautifully written, very accessible book by an anthropologist who is highly respected on both sides of the Atlantic. As a scientific explanation for religious feeling, it is sure to arouse controversy.
