Look at Us, We Have Anxiety: Youth, Memes, and the Power of Online Cultural Politics

Abstract

Childhood is often defined by social marginalization— by a denial of access to public space and voice, and the circumscription of what interests, issues, and discourses are open to young people. The internet, as a space of expression that has lowered barriers to entry and confounded attempts at social control, is one of the primary spaces in which 21st-century youth are able to resist adult efforts to regulate their agency and expression. However, it is not only the technological tools of the online world that help them to resist marginalization from public discourse in these spaces, but also its symbolic and cultural resources—shared ideas, practices, and vocabularies particular to online communities. As part of larger projects on teens’ and young adults’ use of online communities to engage with cultural politics, I have been investigating the use of memes—patterns of formulaic content that rise and fall in popularity in short periods of time—in social critique, ideological discourse, community building, and identity representation. This paper examines the impact of memes on cultural discourse and, indirectly, on institutional politics, exploring their potential as an empowering channel of expression as well as their ongoing use as a tool of manipulation by larger political forces. I argue that understanding the cultural power of memes and other aspects of online remix culture is vital to theorizing contemporary politics, to analyzing the experiences and identities of contemporary youth, and to preventing the worst eventualities the increasing significance of online cultural politics may enable.

Young Adults’ Distress About Police Brutality Following the Death of George Floyd

“…While social media usage may contribute to young adult stress, it is also central to how young adults’ engage with critical sociopolitical issues (Burton, 2019; Kahne & Bowyer, 2018; Pruitt, 2017; Velasquez & LaRose, 2015). Many of the discussions witnessed on, and events organized through, social media exemplify key stages of critical consciousness development, as described by Diemer et al (2006).…”

The Research on the Happiness Brought by Chinese Short Video Software Douyin to Chinese College Students

“…Brown, Pini and Pavlidis put forward that when social event occurs, TikTok (international version of Douyin) gives young people space to show complex feelings through humor, whimsy, and juxtaposition, which makes it a platform for them to express themselves [2]. Besides, Burton shows that young people use Douyin to "define themselves and their experiences in relation to specific perceptions of the state of the world around them [3]." Schulz and Guynn give an idea that many young people use TikTok as a search engine [4].…”

Memes as Potential Resources for Supporting Critical Literacy Teaching Through Literary Texts in the Efl Classroom

“…The statistics suggest that social media might have a widereaching impact on people's online behaviors. However, this impact might go beyond people's experiences on social media and have a profound social, cultural and political effect on their lives (Burton, 2019).…”

“…Empirical research has investigated the impact of Internet memes on social movements (Milner, 2013;Moussa, Benmessaoud & Douai, 2020), on civic engagement (Mihailidis, 2020;Zhang & Pinto, 2021), and on cultural politics (Burton, 2019). Some studies have addressed the use of memes in education for promoting digital literacy (Mihailidis, 2020) and critical media literacy (Harvey & Palese, 2018;Elmore & Coleman, 2019).…”