Reviving icons to death: when historic photographs become digital memes

Abstract

Iconic photographs possess broad social and symbolic significance, are widely replicated over time and circulated across media platforms, and fuel public discussion. In an era of digital memes, they have become generative resources for memetic performances that not only can draw on these images’ historic authority but can also undermine it. Based on the analysis of the ‘Accidental Napalm’ memes, our research leads to a fourfold taxonomy, from memes that expand or expound the meaning of the original picture to those that narrow and potentially destroy its significance. Assessing Hariman and Lucaites’ contention that appropriations of iconic images enhance civic engagement and public culture, we argue that some memes may actually dissolve the original significance of iconic photographs and potentially degrade, rather than enhance, public culture.

Refugees as icons: Culture and iconic representation

“…When images become iconic, they turn into motifs and memes for the production of other images. Such was the case with the famous photograph of the “napalm girl” (Boudana, Frosh, & Cohen, ), but maybe even more so with the icons of the Abu Ghraib scandal (Apel, ; Binder, , pp. 428–440).…”

Constructing, confirming, and contesting icons: the Alan Kurdi imagery appropriated by #humanitywashedashore, Ai Weiwei, and Charlie Hebdo

“…They constitute a genre in their own right, which often introduces a critical-reflexive dimension to icons and their reception. This critical edge forms a contrast to the usual communicative mode of visual icons, distinguished by simplicity, emotional appeal, and semantic openness, as research in this field has recurrently emphasized (Brink, 2000;Hariman and Lucaites, 2007;Mortensen, 2013;Boudana et. al., 2017).…”

Affective economy of national-populist images: Investigating national and transnational online networks through visual big data

“…In social science, the circulation of images, both still and audiovisual images, has been investigated from numerous perspectives. Some studies view image circulation as a prominent use of media (Carah, 2014; Highfield and Leaver, 2016), and others scrutinise circulation of memes, often following reversioning of certain themes (Bayerl and Stonov, 2016; Boudana et al, 2017; Kligler-Vilenchik and Thorson, 2016; Topinka, 2018). Many studies treat image circulation as platform politics from the user’s perspective: the researcher seeking images related to a particular public case analyses the material that platforms offer (see Matamoros-Fernandez, 2017; Sumiala and Tikka, 2011).…”