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Meme Characteristics

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MEMES
The times we live in now can be described in at least few different terms: the information age, the computer age, digital age or new media age. All of these terms express that our world is governed by technologies and especially the Internet. During the rise of World Wide Web, users have witnessed very interesting phenomena: the Internet meme. The idea of a meme is not as new as many people think, however, the Internet meme with its distinctive characteristics is one of the forms I will focus on in this work.
Definition of a meme
If at first we look at the definition of a meme provided in Merriam-Webster online dictionary, the first entry we find is the idea expressed by an English biologist Richard Dawkins. In his book “The Selfish Gene” …show more content…

(R. Dawkins, P. Davison, H. Bjarneskans, B. Grønnevik, A. Sandberg, L. Schifman) Patric Davison has picked out three main parts that make a meme: the manifestation, the behaviour, and the ideal of a meme. The first component is the physical exterior of the meme, the form it takes: a picture, a video, etc. The second element is the action taken by the host to create the meme: taking a picture, editing it, and sharing it. The last part, the ideal, is the encoded message in the meme: the idea which the creator wants to express. First, the person has a thought in his mind which he wants to express, then using various tools he creates the meme, and finally a product is made which becomes material even if virtual. According to Patric Davison, the meme is imitated, until one of these parts is kept, even if the others were changed. („The social media reader“ The language of internet memes“ Patric Davison p. 123, 2012). The most often case that is seen on the internet is when the same picture has many different versions, like a set of Bernie vs. Hillary memes, where the picture usually stays the same, but the text is altered, though still expressing the same idea. Finally, in order to create a catchy meme, it is not enough to have an idea, there are some rules regarding the template and the category of the content, which need to be followed. Therefore, a person has to have an understanding of what the particular series of memes is about, what is the joke being conveyed. (L. Schifman, 2014) If an idea is expressed using a picture which is famous online, it is edited according to a set of rules and the joke is understandable by other social media users, then it has a great chance of being spreadable and

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