This study proposes a theoretical framework for understanding how and why certain memes prevail as a form of political discourse online. Since memes are constantly changing as they spread, drawing inferences from a population of memes as concrete digital artifacts is a pressing challenge for researchers. This article argues that meme selection and mutation are driven by a cooperative combination of three types of communication logic: wasteful play online, social media political expression, and cultural evolution. To illustrate this concept, we map Shepard Fairey’s Obama Hope Poster as it spreads online. Employing structural rhetorical analysis, the study categorizes Internet memes on branching diagrams as they evolve. We argue that mapping these variations is a useful tool for organizing memes as an expression of the values and preferences embedded in online communities. The study adds to the growing literature around the subversive nature of memetic diffusion in popular and political culture.

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Evolutionary psychology suggests that the human mind consists of evolved cognitive mechanisms that developed through evolution by means of natural selection. These mechanisms evolved to solve long standing problems in the human ancestral environment. Cooperation in small foraging tribal communities of hunters and gatherers, and its use to gain reproductive advantages, was one of the problems the human mind has adapted to. Thus, this article argues that adopting evolutionary psychology as a framework for strategic communication research can improve understanding of why strategic communication exists in human societies and how it works. The idea of the modularity of mind suggests that separate modules inside the mind evolved during our evolutionary history to solve ancestral challenges. Some of these modules embody human fundamental motives, which can by triggered by strategic communication. By tapping into fundamental motives such as the longing for status, affiliation, and kin-care, strategic communication is able to exploit ancestral stimuli in today's information society. Thus, a research program based on evolutionary psychology could be a valuable contribution to the field's growing body of knowledge. Recently, Nothhaft called for a consilient synthesis in the field of strategic communication, i.e., "to reconnect strategic communication research to the rapidly progressing and highly relevant hybrid disciplines such as cognitive science and evolutionary psychology"

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Corporate communication increasingly evolves into newsroom-like forms. In such structures, traditional approaches of functional differentiation (i.e., internal coms, media relations, public affairs, etc.) give way to topic-and content-centered approaches to corporate communication. Megatrends like globalization, digitalization, mediatization, and the decline of journalism have facilitated these developments. This study provides insights on agile content management gathered from 32 semi-structured expert interviews with communication professionals working in 13 business organizations in Germany and Austria. Results indicate that on the strategic level, communication management reacts to rising communicative demands in organizational environments by implementing agile-like concepts in communication departments, which are content-driven and not based on departmentalized specialization. Accordingly, the importance of competent and largely autonomous content managers increases, with these experts subsequently serving as conductors of inclusive, collective storytelling that reaches far beyond the communication department, into every relevant stakeholder group. Thereby, business organizations cope with the challenges of increasing complexity in the information society of the 21 st century.