Memeology

Greene, Viveca S.; Rasmussen, Makena; Clark, Dutch

doi:10.21810/jicw.v4i2.2962

Cited by 4 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…Further, people perceive humor differently from serious discourse and apply different rules when processing it (Bryant & Zillmann, 1984). Journell (2019) argues that memes appeal to preexisting beliefs, strengthen group identity and bonds through sharing, and plant ideas in users' minds that are difficult to counteract, drawing distinct lines between insiders and outsiders (Greene et al, 2021).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Social media texts should be taken seriously as a source of public opinion (Deng et al, 2017), even memes that may seem trivial (Shifman, 2013) or nonsensical (Merjian & Rugnetta, 2020) because they push mental work onto the reader by forcing them to decide whether the content is justified, humorous, or both (Greene et al, 2021). When brought to issues of maintenance and repair, these discursive approaches are effective at making the invisible politics of repair and maintenance more legible and engaging for citizens.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Potholes and Power: A Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis of “Look At This F*ckin’ Street” on Instagram

Turvy

2023

Social Media + Society

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The condition of road infrastructure in New Orleans is recognized among citizens as unacceptably poor. This problem is one in a long list of problems with the municipal government and city services that have combined to create an atmosphere of distrust and deep frustration. On Instagram, “Look At This F*ckin Street” (LATFS) exists to document failing local infrastructure and has over 94,000 followers and an active culture of crowdsourced user submissions and regular engagement in comments and reposts. In this article, I utilize Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis to explore all of the relevant discursive modalities seen in the account in order to uncover how they work to challenge and ultimately undermine power. Via an open coding process, I identify three main strategies employed by the anonymous account manager and the participating followers: Shaming, Mocking, and Exposing. Within each of these strategies, I explore the specific techniques observed within these discourses that contribute to the effectiveness of these strategies. I argue that LATFS is an effective and powerful participatory platform for exposing a broad range of systemic problems and their causes, allowing residents to take back the narrative of their city’s infrastructure challenges, diminish and demean the powerful interests responsible, and ultimately attempt to reclaim the power lost to negligent or even bad-faith municipal authorities in New Orleans.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Potholes and Power: A Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis of “Look At This F*ckin’ Street” on Instagram

Turvy

2023

Social Media + Society

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Security and the Human Infrastructure

Kelshall,

David,

Harron

2024

Advanced Sciences and Technologies for Security Applications

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Satirical strikes and deadpanning diplomats: Stiob as geopolitical performance in Russia–US relations

Hemment

2022

PoLAR

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This article examines humor as geopolitical performance in the context of Russia–US political communication. Humor has featured prominently in the mass‐mediated performances of Russian state actors since 2012. Public officials such as Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov have engaged in ambiguous play and satirical borrowings via the circulation of memes and other political theatrics. “Russiagate”—the scandal about Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election—proved to be a particular flashpoint. I draw on recent scholarship in anthropology and media studies as well as prior ethnographic work to account for these humorous performances and consider the work that they do. Dominant analyses view this humor in militarized terms, regarding it as part of a deliberate “hybrid war” strategy. I contend that deadpanning diplomats like Lavrov are produced when a transformed Soviet‐era humorous form, stiob, intersects with a hybridized and transnationally dialogic global media context, resulting in a volatile form of geopolitical communication. In taking this state propagated humor and the confusion it generates as ethnographic objects, I contribute to anthropological interrogations of the politics of post‐truth.

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Memeology

Cited by 4 publications

References 0 publications

Potholes and Power: A Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis of “Look At This F*ckin’ Street” on Instagram

Potholes and Power: A Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis of “Look At This F*ckin’ Street” on Instagram

Security and the Human Infrastructure

Satirical strikes and deadpanning diplomats: Stiob as geopolitical performance in Russia–US relations

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