Motivations of using memes in intragroup communication a multiple case study

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERATION STUDIES FACULTY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHER EDUCATION FACULTY OF LINGUISTICS AND CULTURES OF ENGLISH SPEAKING COUNTRIES GRADUATION THESIS MOTIVATIONS OF USING MEMES IN INTRAGROUP COMMUNICATION: A MULTIPLE CASE STUDY Supervisor: Hoàng Thị Hạnh Student: Đặng Thu Phương Course: QH2016.F1.E1 HÀ NỘI – 2020 ĐẠI HỌC QUỐC GIA HÀ NỘI TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ KHOA SƯ PHẠM TIẾNG ANH KHOA NGÔN NGỮ VÀ VĂN HÓA CÁC NƯỚC NÓI TIẾNG ANH KHÓA LUẬN TỐT NGHIỆP ĐỘNG LỰC SỬ DỤNG MEMES TRONG GIAO TIẾP NHÓM: NGHIÊN CỨU TRƯỜNG HỢP Giáo viên hướng dẫn: Hồng Thị Hạnh Sinh viên: Đặng Thu Phương Khóa: QH2016.F1.E1 HÀ NỘI – 2020 I hereby state that I: Dang Thu Phuong, class 16E1, being a candidate for the degree of Bachelor of Arts (English Language Teacher Education program) accept the requirements of the College relating to the retention and use of Bachelor’s Graduation Paper deposited in the library In terms of these conditions, I agree that the origin of my paper deposited in the library should be accessible for the purposes of study and research, in accordance with the normal conditions established by the librarian for the care, loan or reproduction of the paper Signature Dang Thu Phuong Date May 9, 2020 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This graduation thesis is the product of several months of intensive work, which would not have been feasible without the guidance and support of many people I would like to express my gratitude to my supervisor Ms Hoang Thi Hanh for her expertise, encouragement and academic stimuli Your advice and feedback were invaluable to helping me express my ideas and put them into a research point of view I would also like to thank all the lecturers in the Faculty of Linguistics and Cultures of English-speaking countries for supporting the supervisees to finish their theses and offering constructive comments on our works Special thanks to my best friends, Ngoc Mai and Thuy Anh, for your laymen’s opinions and ever-lasting support to drag me out of my desperation Finally, to my partner, Alex, who motivated me so much during the process that I eventually managed to complete my thesis with pride i ABSTRACT When thinking about memes, laymen often associate them with simple pictures with texts inserted in, serving as youngsters’ banal humor Although scholars have realized the effectiveness of memes in communication, the motivations behind using different genres of memes were overlooked, especially in smallscale, private groups As a result, this study aimed to address the question: “What are the motivations behind the usage of memes in intragroup communication among social media users?” Multiple approaches to data analysis, including thematic content analysis, semiotic analysis, and discourse analysis, were applied to examine the memes used of five cases The study finds that Internet memes are tools for users to express their political engagement and citizenship; to reflect their daily concerns and struggles in lives, and to perform their intercultural identity Thus, memes are not just trivial and insignificant humor as common biased perception, but they are also a semiotic means to communicate personal, cultural, and political matters in a critical way KEYWORDS: Internet-memes, user-generated-humor, image-macro-memes, motivations, intra-group-communication, in-group-communication ii Table of Contents ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS i ABSTRACT ii LIST OF FIGURES iii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Statement of problem 1.2 Scope of the study 1.3 Significance of the study CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Memes 2.1.1 Definition of memes 2.1.2 Image-macro memes 2.1.3 Features of memes 2.2 Functions of memes 2.2.1 Agenda melding 2.2.2 Political engagement 2.2.3 Identity construction 10 2.2.4 Civic engagement 11 2.3 Model of sharing 12 2.4 Memes and group membership 13 2.5 Memes in group communication 14 CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY 16 3.1 Data collection 16 3.1.1 Research Design 16 3.1.2 Research Instrument 16 3.1.3 Procedure 16 3.2 Participants 17 3.3 Data analysis 19 CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS 21 4.1 Political engagement 21 4.1.1 Serious political discussions 21 4.1.2 Light-hearted political humour 30 i 4.2 Personal issues 33 4.3 Intercultural identity 41 CHAPTER 5: DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION 50 5.1 Discussion 50 5.2 Implications 52 5.3 Limitations and recommendations 53 REFERENCES 54 APPENDIX 60 ii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Image-macro Meme Sample Figure 2: Model of Sharing (Miller, 2012) 12 Figure – Disappointed Dad 22 Figure – World’s disastrous events 2020 23 Figure – Netizens’ speculation 24 Figure – UK, Brexit and the EU 26 Figure – Justin Trudeau as Blackface 27 Figure – Fake news about Wuhan 29 Figure – Theresa May as bacteria 31 Figure 10 – Mogg’s disrespect in the House of Commons 31 Figure 11 – Sad mushroom without a roller coaster 33 Figure 12 – Depression High-five 34 Figure 13 – Barbie and intrusive thoughts 36 Figure 14 – Sad Pug 37 Figure 15 – Baby Yoda’s new hair-cut 38 Figure 16 – English vs dinosaurs 39 Figure 17 – Kpop idol 40 Figure 18 – Iran wordplay 42 Figure 19 – Rhinos being “horny” 42 Figure 20 – Underage banana 43 Figure 21 – Asian and good grades 44 Figure 22 – Lucky money culture in Vietnam 45 Figure 23 – Dressing to the nines for Tet 46 Figure 24 – Family gatherings during Tet holiday 47 Figure 25 – Pho as a hangover food 48 iii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Statement of problem The Internet is widely known as the most popular communication medium consisting of a set of objects, materials and ideas, and it has become a reservoir for information to be dispersed (Cortesi & Gasser, 2014) It is in this cyberspace that the global contemporary population interacts with one another Thus, the Internet is constantly dynamic, reproduces already created messages endlessly and constantly adds more content (Górka, 2014) Moreover, since the advent of social media (e.g Facebook, Twitter, Instagram), netizens (i.e people using the Internet) have found a tool for their pursuit of satisfaction and mood-sharing in a community culture where distance is irrelevant and personal identification is unnecessary This culture is regarded a viral phenomenon as many Internet users, especially those using social networks, actively and effectively imitate each other’s culture, mindset and behavior (Górka, 2014); hence, memes were born as a logical progression of this phenomenon Social media has played a pivotal role in spreading memes in the online community Thanks to the Internet’s nature, memes are now copied with higher fidelity (exact imitation), fecundity (in greater amount), and longevity since information can be easily stored on online platforms (Brunello, 2012) Though there are numerous definitions of memes, a meme will hereby be understood as a content item, namely jokes, rumors, videos, or websites propagated among Internet users (Shifman, 2013) Besides, the word “meme” is used by netizens to illustrate the swift uptake and dissemination of “a particular idea presented as a written text, image, language ‘move,’ or some other unit of cultural stuff” (Knobel & Lankshear, 2007, p 202) Memes can be represented in multiple forms such as images, hyperlinks, videos, websites or hashtags Two ways in which a meme can be spread are through the sharing of its exact copy, or with slight alteration However, memes with iterative versions are far more favored by meme users (Cortesi & Gasser, 2014) Since memes carry a whimsical gist and are strongly connected to modern pop culture (Segev et al., 2015), they are often considered a superficial and trivial aspect of this culture (Shifman, 2013) Memes’ contribution to the society is not observable to the naked eye, making them understudied from a scholarly viewpoint (Brunello, 2013) There have been several denunciations of the prevalence of memes (Shifman, 2013) Firstly, too many concepts of memes were proposed; however, a clear-cut definition of memes has not been reached In addition, memes are too simple to be classified as a result of sophisticated human behaviors and there are no additional benefits to the understanding of memes (Shifman, 2014) Another reason is that the analysis of memes is abstract and controversial (Shifman, 2013); thus, this poses a challenge in determining the values of memes However, in a time of swift content flow on multiple media platforms (Jenkins, 2006), memes have served more meaningful purposes rather than just for simple laughs They help construct users’ personalities in online communities, contribute to public discourse and perform as a mediator for “citizens to participate in public, collective actions, while maintaining their sense of individuality” (Shifman, 2014, p 129) Besides, they are capable of conveying very emotional and highly contextualized information (Reime, 2017) and, beyond their use as tools of entertainment and humor, they can express informative and controversial messages (Veerasamy & Labuschagne, 2014) A meme is not simply memetic, but it requires users to use familiar ideas and previous knowledge, either from real life or already generated memes, to create unfamiliar combinations in a novel and interesting way (Brunello, 2012) Therefore, memes are the results of individuals purposefully utilizing memetic elements to create something else with aesthetics To be more detailed regarding each meme, the first one has two annoyed Squidward Tentacles – a fictional character in SpongeBob SquarePants animated TV program – drinking tea This is because during Tet holiday, children or teenagers usually get lucky money from adults Thus, many kids wish the guests the best to receive a good amount of money Yet, according to the text on the meme, the guests said “You’re too old for lucky money”, hence why the two sisters are angry Figure 23 – Dressing to the nines for Tet The second one uses the image of three girls who wear revealing clothes, shaking and freezing in the snow The text refers to them as ‘the chicks going out in Tet holiday in this season.’ The meme is meant to laugh at those putting on their best outfits outside regardless of the weather Manh remarked: “Even though Tet holiday is usually cold and wintery, people still want to be dressed to the nines when they attend social events” Thus, it is funny for him just to think about these girls freezing and suffer physically just to “look pretty in their clothes” 46 Figure 24 – Family gatherings during Tet holiday In Figure 24, a singer from Korean boy band BTS is staring at his fingers or nails and contemplating During family gatherings, children are sometimes not allowed to use cell phones because it can be distracting at best and disrespectful to others at worst Therefore, it is tedious to just listen to unrelatable discussions So like the boy in the meme, they start doing trivial and silly activities to feel less bored such as counting their nails and realizing there are equal numbers of nails and fingers on the same hand The meme is funny yet nostalgic as Manh recalls days when he had unions with his family during Tet holiday in Vietnam Despite being “bored to death” - Manh said, he wished to come back to this time just to be with his family again 47 Figure 25 – Pho as a hangover food Last but not least, for Figure 25, Tom (the cat) is tired and wearing a duvet over him while Jerry (the mouse) is making soup like when an old lady cooks Pho after midnight for a drunk person Manh shared this meme because he has encountered similar incidents All four memes used Western content, such as SpongeBob and Tom & Jerry cartoons or K-pop; however, the unique thing about this meme is that it uses English to refer to Vietnamese culture which reveals that Manh identifies with both cultures – Vietnamese and Canadian/ Western Using English in Canada daily makes him familiar with memes in this language Nevertheless, he uses it as a way to identify himself as a Vietnamese who eats Pho as a hangover food This intentionally odd fusion somehow creates an intercultural experience for Manh and it also acts an agent to help him perform his intercultural identity Besides being relatable to Manh’s experiences and humorous, there is more to spreading this Vietnamese culture memes, particularly those about Tet: Well obviously they were relevant recently as it was Tet holiday a few weeks ago and you know the memes are funny things about Tet holiday that all of my friends can relate to And at this time of year it’s easy to miss family and friends, and all of my friends and I stayed in Canada for Tet holiday so for me I guess sharing Tet memes kinda allow us to feel like we’re still a part of that culture even though we’re in a different country [My friends] They found it amusing and they also shared some Tet related memes in the group chat And also sharing those memes can be a part of our conversation about Tet and allows us to kinda reminisce about our childhoods Despite being an expat in Canada, Manh still recalls the memories he had when he was still in his home country All members in his group chat share this and they can all relate to aspects of Vietnamese traditions They need to all stay in Canada for Tet holiday since the calendar there is different from Vietnam’s and Canada does not have the Lunar New Year Hence, it is unrealistic to return 48 to Vietnam to enjoy this valuable and memorable holiday This indicates why a lot of Vietnamese people like Manh residing abroad feel more upset and lonely during Tet because they cannot reunite with their family members Memes’ design and employment are shaped by “culturally variable values, practices, norms and beliefs” (Cheong, Martin & Macfadyen, 2012, p 13) to serve users’ communicative preferences Because culture meaning is inextricably intertwined with the creation and transformation of memes, comprehension of both a meme’s literal meaning and the implicit cultural message is of importance when interpreting a meme or to be a part of its discourse (Ding, 2015, p 40) Analyzing these memes in their own essence and interpreting Manh’s responses reveal that Manh might be homesick and sharing memes about Vietnam or in Vietnamese expresses his cultural identity This type of meme highlights Manh’s and his friends’ identity as Vietnamese, establishing their connection to the group chat and to the broader cultural community (Huntington, 2017) Both participants are Vietnamese; however, their preferences of memes can differ which might be attributed to their education background, but it also results from their whereabouts While Hong prefers Western culture memes in English with the view to demonstrating her cultural and linguistic competences, Manh appreciates multiple memes about Vietnam in his mother tongue for a sense of belonging, but memes in both cases serve as an agent that helps their users perform their intercultural identities – Asian/ Vietnamese and Western 49 CHAPTER 5: DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION 5.1 Discussion Based on the languages and the contents of the memes shared, the researcher hereby attempts to put the participants into two categories This classification is only tentative since the chosen meme sharers are far from representative Therefore, further studies with more participants are needed to reach a betterrounded conclusion In terms of similarity, no participants sent memes they knew are unrelatable to their peers because memes capitalize on common knowledge and the group culture to lay the foundations of successful communication (Mazambani et al., 2015) For a meme to be funny and further circulated, it should be as specific and relatable as possible to the in-group members (Dainas, 2015) Thus, at least the receiver(s) must relate to the memes (in Manh’s meme about Vietnamese parents and Ngan’s case about the K-pop idol) or at most every member in the group (senders included) When it comes to the differences among these meme sharers, the language of the meme’s text reflects what culture(s) the users most self-associate with Specifically, Adam and Hong only share memes in English and have more interaction with Western culture compared to other participants This reveals that spending three years in Vietnam does not render Adam more engaged with humor in Vietnamese culture and he is still only concerned with the political and social situations in the UK Interestingly, although Hong only shares memes in English, there is one meme about Asian stereotypes Hong not only shows tendency towards exhibiting her knowledge of the English language and Western cultural values, but still relates to being a Vietnamese staying in her home country In contrast to Hong, Manh mostly shares memes in his mother tongue about Vietnamese culture and there is even one meme using English to refer to a 50 Vietnamese cuisine This indicates that while performing an intercultural identity, he identifies with being a Vietnamese the most despite staying in a different country for three years An and Ngan both share memes in two languages as well Their similar topics of interest are diverse, ranging from mental illnesses to self-values, all in English memes Those in Vietnamese that An and Ngan share are about socio-political events and pop culture respectively To sum up, it is revealed from the findings that all Vietnamese participants, whether staying abroad or not, display different levels of intercultural identity On the contrary, the British participant seems only interested in his national political and cultural values, and within this data, only performs British identity Through the analysis built on different facets of Internet memes, these findings build on the existing evidence that memes have the ability to construct individuals’ identity, to enhance their political engagement and to make citizenship more accessible, pleasurable and inclusive which results in a democratizing effect Beyond that, the data fills a niche in understanding and following political and social affairs presented in the memes Acknowledging that memes are humorous does not automatically undermine the value of memes as public commentary (in the case of satirical memes) Thus, the study has discredited the fallacious view that memes as a tool of entertainment create passive audiences (Van Zoonen, 2015) In terms of collective identity, previous studies focus on big groups with numerous members and how different group statuses facilitate the content of memes being shared They also offer a nuanced depiction of members’ selfpositioning on the axis of conformity and subversion to group norms However, this research took a different turn when it provides a new insight into the intimate social relation of small-scale groups It is revealed from the data that sharing memes in conversations can strengthen the bonds among group members, thereby reinforcing their empathy and friendship Especially when memes about 51 personal issues are shared, namely depression and body insecurities, they reflect young people’s concerns and difficulties in lives In addition, the findings suggest that individuals share culture-related memes to identify themselves with certain values Lastly, the agenda setting is somewhat corroborated by participants’ political engagement when they express their viewpoints and start discussions among group members Even though the memes were not used intentionally to drive the whole conversation towards an issue, they somehow both introduced a topic and initiated the subsequent exchange of opinions Therefore, memes in this case set the agenda for discussions However, since the participants share memes to express certain social engagement and for fun, but not to lead and campaign, evidence of agenda melding is not found in this set of limited data with these five cases 5.2 Implications The results of this study expect to be helpful in increasing participants’ and readers’ social and online literacy This includes gaining a thorough understanding of different genres of memes, knowing what elements in memes stand for and being aware of the motivations behind sharing them Through this process, Internet users are expected to think about and view memes more critically Memes are a genre of online humor and everyday creativity that caters for engrossing dialogues between senders and receivers Memes are not just trivial as common biased perception, but they are a semiotic means to communicate personal, cultural, and political matters in a critical way Hence, studying this media construct is essential to grasping rhetorically effective communication This has positive results for language studies beyond memes, specifically for humor and figurative speech 52 5.3 Limitations and recommendations Regarding the study’s methodology, since interviews and participants’ selfreports were selected as the instruments, the ability of investigating all the memes an interviewee used was limited Moreover, private conversations following the sharing of their memes are not revealed to the researcher Thus, only the oral reports provided were analyzed It will be more ideal if further research adopts a quantitative approach first for a wider range of memes, then selects participants with an intentional and meaningful meme use for interview and in-group observation afterwards Besides, although the chosen participants come from two different cultural backgrounds with intercultural experiences, they come from the researcher’s limited social circles and cannot represent all meme users from Vietnam and Britain Thus, various participants representing different ages, races, ethnicities, education and socio-economic backgrounds should be taken into a comparative consideration as factors that can affect an individual’s intention behind sharing memes This can ensure that the data are more generalizable and comprehensive Finally, it is beyond the scope of this study to investigate whether there is a hierarchy in a group communication among members since only one individual of the group was interviewed A future study could be conducted using focus groups which include all members separately since individuals can have hidden feelings not shared with others Additionally, even though each group has its own dynamics and norms, members can have distinctive reactions and intentions of sharing memes Thus, finding out how they decide what memes to share in their groups, how they respond to memes sent to them and how they resolve conflicts caused by memes will be beneficial to the current body of literature 53 REFERENCES Aunger, R (2002) The electric meme New York: Free Press Bauckhage, C (2011) Insights into Internet memes International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media, North America Bennett, W L., Freelon, D., & Wells, C (2010) Changing citizen identity and the rise of a participatory media culture In L R Sherrod, J Torney-Purta & C A Flanagan (Eds.), Handbook of research on civic engagement in youth, 393-423 Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons Inc Bimber, B (2012) Digital media and citizenship In H A Semetko & M Scammell (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of political communication, 115-126 Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications Inc Blackmore, S The meme machine 1st pub Oxford: Oxford University Press, (1999) xx, 264 s Brunello, J (2012) Internet-memes and everyday-creativity: Agency, sociability and the aesthetics of postmodernism Retrieved from https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Internet-memes-and-everydaycreativity-Agency-,-and/b6118fbe7bb4ec84658e55c8d0e2169cc3ac973f Buchel, B B (2012) Internet memes as means of communication (Master’s thesis, Masaryk University) Retrieved from http://is.muni.cz/th/384995/fss_m/Buchel_thesis.pdf Burgess, J., Foth, M and Klaebe, H (2006) Everyday Creativity as Civic Engagement: A Cultural Citizenship View of the Media In Proceedings communication policy & research forum, Sydney Cameron, K., ed (1993) Humor and history Oxford: Intellect Books 54 Cheong, P H., Martin, J N., & Macfadyen, L P (2012) New media and intercultural communication: Identity, community, and politics New York: Peter Lang Cortesi, S., & Gasser, U (2015) Youth Online and News: A Phenomenological View on Diversity Retrieved from https://cyber.harvard.edu/publication/2015/youth-online-and-newsphenomenological-view-diversity Dainas, A (2015) Keep Calm and Study Memes Retrieved from https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Keep-Calm-and-Study-MemesDainas/09c039d60b49d20e52f68de78ca74798ed5fa4fc Dawkins, R (1976) The selfish gene Oxford: OUP Dietel-McLaughlin, E (2009) Remediating democracy: Irreverent composition and the vernacular rhetorics of Web 2.0 Article for Computers and Composition Online: Special Web 2.0 Edition Retrieved from http://www2.bgsu.edu/departments/english/cconline/Dietel/Remediating%20 Democracy.pdf Ding, Z (2015), ‘The Internet meme as a rhetoric discourse: Investing Asian/Asian Americans’ identity negotiation,’ Master Thesis, Bowling Green University Erlingsson, C., & Brysiewicz, P (2013) Orientation among multiple truths: An introduction to qualitative research African Journal of Emergency Medicine, 3(2), 92-99, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.afjem.2012.04.005 Friedlander, J., and Riedy, C (2015) The Meme is the message: Engaging the social media audience in a meat reduction advocacy campaign Retrieved from https://theieca.org/conference/coce-2015-boulder/presentations/mememessage 55 Gil de Zuniga, H., Jung, N & Valenzuela, S (2012) Social media use for news and individuals’ social capital, civic engagement and political participation Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 17, 319-336 doi:10.1111/j.1083-6101.2012.01574.x Gill, P., Stewart, K., Treasure, E et al (2008) Methods of data collection in qualitative research: Interviews and focus groups British Dental Journal 204, 291–295 doi:10.1038/bdj.2008.192 Górka, M (2014) The meme as an example of carnivalized Internet communication Retrieved from http://cejsh.icm.edu.pl/cejsh/element/bwmeta1.element.desklight-cadecbb21336-4e18-83f9-f88ea251a647 Gray, J., Jones, J.P., and Thompson, E (2009) Satire TV: Politics and comedy in the post-network era New York: New York University Press Guadagno, R.E., Rempala, D.M., Murphy, S and Okdie, B.M (2013) What makes a video go viral? An analysis of emotional contagion and Internet memes Computers in Human Behavior, 29(6), pp.2312-2319 Hristova, S (2013) Occupy Wall Street meets Occupy Iraq on remembering and forgetting in a digital age Radical History Review, 117, 83-97 doi:10.1215/01636545-2210473 Huntington, H E (2015) Pepper Spray Cop and the American Dream: Using synecdoche and metaphor to unlock Internet memes’ visual political rhetoric Communication Studies, 67(1), 77–93 doi: 10.1080/10510974.2015.1087414 Huntington, H E (2017) The affect and effect of Internet memes: Assessing perceptions and influence of online user-generated political discourse as media (dissertation) Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10217/183936 56 Jenkins, H (2006) Convergence culture: Where old and new media collide New York, NY: New York University Press Knobel, M., & Lankshear, C (2007) A new literacies sampler New York, NY: Peter Lang Madden, M (2007) Online video report Pew Research Center Retrieved from http://www.pewinternet.org/files/oldmedia//Files/Reports/2007/PIP_Online_ Video_2007.pdf.pdf) Mazambani, G., Carlson, M A., Reysen, S., & Hempelmann, C F (2015) Impact of status and Meme content on the spread of Memes in virtual communities Human Technology: An Interdisciplinary Journal on Humans in ICT Environments, 11(2), 148–164 doi: 10.17011/ht/urn.201511113638 Miller, I D (2012) The Social transmission of user-generated Memes Retrieved from https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/bitstream/1807/67214/6/Miller_Ian_D_2012 11_MA_thesis.pdf Nasri, G (2012, Oct 19) Presidential candidates don’t always meme what they say Retrieved from http://www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/memesandelections/#!bOntBM Owens, S (2012) How Internet memes went corporate Retrieved from http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2012/04/25/how-internet-memeswentcorporate Page, R E., Barton, D., Unger, J W., & Zappavigna, M (2014) Researching language and social media: A student guide London: Routledge Plevriti, V., Johnston, S., & Bennett, O (2014) Satirical user-generated memes as an effective source of political criticism, extending debate and enhancing civic engagement Retrieved from: 57 https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/scapvc/ccmps/research/publications/madiss/ccp s_13-14_vasiliki_plevriti.pdf Ragas, M.W., & Roberts, M.S (2009) Agenda setting and agenda melding in a horizontal and vertical media: A new theoretical lens for virtual brand communities Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, 86(1), 45-64 Segev, E., Nissenbaum, A., Stolero, N., & Shifman, L (2015) Families and networks of Internet memes: The relationship between cohesiveness, uniqueness, and quiddity concreteness Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 20(4), 417–433 doi: 10.1111/jcc4.12120 Shao, G (2009) Understanding the appeal of user-generated media: A uses and gratification perspective Internet Research, 19(1), 77 – 25 Shifman, L (2013) Memes in a digital world: Reconciling with a conceptual troublemaker Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 18(3), 362– 377 doi: 10.1111/jcc4.12013 Shifman, L (2014) Memes in digital culture Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press Tay, G (2012) Embracing LOLitics: Popular culture, online political humor, and play MA Dissertation University of Canterbury Van Zoonen, L (2005) Entertaining the citizen: When politics and popular culture converge Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littefield Vickery, J R (2014) The curious case of confession bear: The reappropriation of online macro image memes Information, Communication & Society, 17(3), p 301-325 Ward, I (1997) How democratic can we get: The Internet, the public sphere, and public discourse Journal of Advanced Composition, 17(3) 58 Wunsch-Vincent S and Vickery, G (2007) Participative Web: User-generated content OECD Yus, F (2018) Identity-related issues in meme communication Internet Pragmatics, 1(1), 113–133 doi: 10.1075/ip.00006.yus Zajonc, R (1960) The process of cognitive tuning in communication The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 61 (2), 159 59 APPENDIX Interview Questions Have you shared/ used memes? Could you please tell me about your sharing memes? What types of memes you usually share? How you share them? What you think about the memes you share? What feelings/ reactions have you got with those memes? Could you tell me about that? (When the interviewees show certain memes that the interviewer considers interesting) What are your opinions of these memes? How you use or interact with them? Do you have any meanings/ intentions when you share them? How you feel personally about these memes and your sharing? How people react to your sharing (of certain memes)? How you feel about those reactions? What you usually after each type of reactions? How you feel about other people in your group sharing memes? 60 ... behind the usage of memes in intragroup communication among social media users?” Multiple approaches to data analysis, including thematic content analysis, semiotic analysis, and discourse analysis,... the animated show SpongeBob SquarePants, and the character in the meme has his face painted with black This intentional drawing is a parody of Justin Trudeau in his recent scandal as Manh narrated:... researcher investigate meme usage of a culturally diverse population within their unique group communication 3.3 Data analysis Multiple approaches to data analysis, including thematic content analysis,