Memes function as collective social practice rather than isolated images
Evidence
A communication scholar Ryan Milner, who has studied memes critically since 2010, defines them as a “social practice” of small and large conversational strands being woven into cultural tapestries through the “creation, circulation and transformation of collective texts” by cultural participants. … This section furthers Milner’s observations by reviewing how meme personalities become entangled with internet celebrity and commerce, and introduces a life cycle of meme celebrities comprising faces of memes, meme personae, and meme celebrities. — Crystal Abidin, Internet Celebrity, 163
Categorization
- XREF: Milner’s participatory-media frame connects to the collective-intelligence and produsage literatures already in the reader’s survey of cultural production. — connects to: Social media users actively produce images rather than passively consuming them — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living with…, 272; Social media constitutes a contextual monoculture that destroys meaning-bearing spatial context — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the…, 548; Collective practice anchors and sustains attention activism — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!: A Manifesto of the…, 327
Broader Connections
- Social media users actively produce images rather than passively consuming them
#complicates(0.75) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 272 - Social media constitutes a contextual monoculture that destroys meaning-bearing spatial context
#complicates(0.72) — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 548 - Collective practice anchors and sustains attention activism
#expands(0.72) — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!, 327