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Meme Studies

  • 18-04-2019 8:20am
    #1
    Registered Users Posts: 4,519 ✭✭✭


    Looking up courses in Memeogy / Memeory

    As there are none, considering becoming a lecturer in Memes

    Imaging year 1 as the teacher ....

    OK class settle down ... this month we will be looking at Cat Memes and some of today’s content will be comming up in the test ...


Comments

  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 47,212 CMod ✭✭✭✭Black Swan


    UC Berkeley announces new Meme Studies Department for fall 2018.


  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 47,212 CMod ✭✭✭✭Black Swan


    Cambridge to offer short course in meme studies.

    A course is available at Brown University, and it's called "Memes and the Language of the Internet."


  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 6,306 Mod ✭✭✭✭mzungu


    Black Swan wrote: »
    Cambridge to offer short course in meme studies.

    A course is available at Brown University, and it's called "Memes and the Language of the Internet."

    At the root of that, there would be interesting investigations into what makes one meme go viral and another go nowhere. I know if I had the chance I would pick it as a module!


  • Registered Users Posts: 18,996 ✭✭✭✭gozunda


    mzungu wrote: »
    At the root of that, there would be interesting investigations into what makes one meme go viral and another go nowhere. I know if I had the chance I would pick it as a module!

    Boards own Cool Pics & Videos Forum should be an invaluable learning resource for future academics ...
    ;)


  • Registered Users Posts: 18,996 ✭✭✭✭gozunda


    Fathom wrote: »
    Qualitative research studies. Content analysis?

    Possibly more as a study of proverbial monkeys with typewriters tbh .. ;)

    https://web.archive.org/web/20080805231814/http://siliconrepublic.com/news/article/11118/digital-life/using-a-decade-of-online-irish-banter

    Check out boards on wikipedia as well


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  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 6,306 Mod ✭✭✭✭mzungu


    gozunda wrote: »
    Possibly more as a study of proverbial monkeys with typewriters tbh .. ;)

    https://web.archive.org/web/20080805231814/http://siliconrepublic.com/news/article/11118/digital-life/using-a-decade-of-online-irish-banter

    Check out boards on wikipedia as well

    A meme in itself?

    mr-burns-monkeys-typewriters1-640x381.jpg


  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 6,306 Mod ✭✭✭✭mzungu


    Fathom wrote: »
    Picture memes worth a thousand words?

    Some of them, most definitely. Others, not so much.


  • Registered Users Posts: 18,996 ✭✭✭✭gozunda


    For every thread - there is a meme ...

    1h7zpj.jpg

    Is now also a game ...

    https://www.boardgamer.ie/577-what-do-you-meme.html


  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 6,306 Mod ✭✭✭✭mzungu


    Fathom wrote: »
    What generation was the meme gen? Gen-X? Millennials? Generation Z? Or?

    Richard Dawkins first coined the term in 1976 in his book The Selfish Gene. He explains it as the way in which cultural information spreads. The internet meme concept was coined by Mike Godwin (he of 'Godwin's Law' fame!) in a June 1993 issue of wired.

    Taken from Wiki:
    In 2013, Dawkins characterized an Internet meme as being a meme deliberately altered by human creativity—distinguished from biological genes and his own pre-Internet concept of a meme, which involved mutation by random change and spreading through accurate replication as in Darwinian selection. Dawkins explained that Internet memes are thus a "hijacking of the original idea", the very idea of a meme having mutated and evolved in this new direction. Furthermore, Internet memes carry an additional property that ordinary memes do not: Internet memes leave a footprint in the media through which they propagate (for example, social networks) that renders them traceable and analyzable.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_meme


  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 6,306 Mod ✭✭✭✭mzungu


    Fathom wrote: »
    Like this: "In 2013, Dawkins characterized an Internet meme as being a meme deliberately altered by human creativity."

    Aye, or as he says himself that "anything that could be the basis for an evolutionary process is a meme, simply by becoming more frequent in the population, in the meme pool, in the same way the gene becomes more frequent in the gene pool."


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  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 6,306 Mod ✭✭✭✭mzungu


    Fathom wrote: »
    Evolutionary analogy. Darwin's differential reproduction? Or Spencer's survival of the fittest?

    The former is more focused on variation of the offspring as opposed to the evolutionary change over time found in the latter?


  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 6,306 Mod ✭✭✭✭mzungu


    Fathom wrote: »
    Variation in a populations. Questions if such variation can only be applied to biology? What about behavior? In this particular case meme behavior?

    They certainly display the characteristics of evolution and digital communications are a product of the human race. So on some level it could be possible.


  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 6,306 Mod ✭✭✭✭mzungu


    Fathom wrote: »
    The biology of behavior? Balanced nature vs. nurture?

    Do you mean in a digital sphere?


  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 6,306 Mod ✭✭✭✭mzungu


    Fathom wrote: »
    Virtual. Digital. Metaphor.

    A product of human ingenuity that exists in a separate space.


  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 6,306 Mod ✭✭✭✭mzungu


    Fathom wrote: »
    Geometrically expanding. Generational linked.

    Across all phenomena?


  • Registered Users Posts: 18,996 ✭✭✭✭gozunda


    mzungu wrote: »
    Across all phenomena?

    No just boards :D


  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 47,212 CMod ✭✭✭✭Black Swan


    Folklore Studies, Faculty of Arts, University of Helsinki studies memes. Interesting programme.


  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 47,212 CMod ✭✭✭✭Black Swan


    We meme studies be a passing fad, or something sustainable?


  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 6,306 Mod ✭✭✭✭mzungu


    Black Swan wrote: »
    We meme studies be a passing fad, or something sustainable?

    As a module in a degree I would think it would be both sustainable and interesting. But basing a degree/masters around it would be stretching it IMO.


  • Registered Users Posts: 4,519 ✭✭✭worded


    Skeptical


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  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 6,306 Mod ✭✭✭✭mzungu


    Fathom wrote: »
    Free edX course: "How to Do Things with Memes."

    Certificate for $26! :P

    To be fair, course content would fit in nicely into a media studies course and imo would be a welcome addition.


  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 6,306 Mod ✭✭✭✭mzungu


    Fathom wrote: »
    Surprised that they can produce the optional and additional certificate for a mere 26 bucks. Maybe you don't talk to a live person? Computer generated?

    I would say you are right. Probably all online and very "no frills" too I would imagine.


  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 6,306 Mod ✭✭✭✭mzungu


    Fathom wrote: »
    May try a free class. No certificate.

    I'm sure lectures and study materials would be available online. Best way to do it really.


  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 47,212 CMod ✭✭✭✭Black Swan


    Reminds me of a couple of free edX classes I want to take, but not in meme studies, the latter being fun.


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