Terminology Meme The word
meme was coined by
Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book
The Selfish Gene as an attempt to explain
memetics; or, how ideas replicate, mutate, and evolve. When asked to assess this comparison,
Lauren Ancel Meyers, a biology professor at the University of Texas, stated that "memes spread through online social networks similarly to the way diseases do through offline populations." This dispersion of cultural movements is shown through the spread of memes online, especially when seemingly innocuous or trivial trends spread and die in rapid fashion. This example demonstrates how public figures are turned into viral phenomena. Popular audio and video content on apps like
TikTok are also used as memes of public figures.
Viral The term
viral pertains to a video, image, or written content spreading to numerous online users within a short time period. If something goes viral, many people discuss it. Accordingly,
Tony D. Sampson defines
viral phenomena as spreadable accumulations of events, objects, and affects that are overall content built up by popular discourses surrounding network culture. In
Understanding Media (1964), philosopher
Marshall McLuhan describes photography in particular, and technology in general, as having a potentially "virulent nature." In
Jean Baudrillard's 1981 treatise
Simulacra and Simulation, the philosopher describes
An American Family, arguably the first "reality" television series, as a marker of a new age in which the medium of television has a "viral, endemic, chronic, alarming presence." Another formulation of the 'viral' concept includes the term
media virus, or
viral media, coined by
Douglas Rushkoff, who defines it as a type of
Trojan horse: "People are duped into passing a hidden agenda while circulating compelling content." conducted by Dr. Jonah Berger at The University of Pennsylvania, summarized in his book
Contagious: Why Things Catch On, suggests that content’s shareability can be increased by activating six key S.T.E.P.P.S. (i.e., Social currency, Triggers, Emotion, Public, Practical value, and Stories).
Social currency refers to the fact that people are more likely to share things that make them look good, rather than bad. Consequently, the more sharing something makes people look smart, special, or in the know, the more likely they are to pass it on.
Triggers – top of mind means tip of tongue. Sharing something requires thinking about it first, so the more people are reminded about a particular thing, the more likely they are to share it.
Rebecca Black’s viral hit “Friday” gained traction from the built-in trigger of the end of the week.
Emotion – when we care, we share. The more something activates emotion, particularly high arousal ones, the more likely people are to pass it on. An advertisement that tugs on heartstrings is more likely to be shared than an unemotional one.
Public – built to show, built to grow. People tend to imitate others. But they can only imitate what others are doing if they can see it. So the easier it is to see what others are doing, the easier it is to imitate. Visible colors, patterns, or logos as well as things like "I voted" stickers facilitate imitation.
Practical value – news you can use. People want to help others, so the more useful something is, the more likely people are to share it. Ways to save time and money, or useful advice, are all examples of this.
Stories are vessels, or carriers of information. They bring products, services, and ideas along for the ride. So building a Trojan Horse Story can be a helpful way to encourage something to spread.
Content sharing Early history 's
Ninety-five Theses, which was widely and rapidly distributed in 1517 Before writing and while most people were illiterate, the dominant means of spreading memes was
oral culture like
folk tales,
folk songs, and
oral poetry, which mutated over time as each retelling presented an opportunity for change. The
printing press provided an easy way to copy written texts instead of handwritten
manuscripts. In particular, pamphlets could be published in only a day or two, unlike books which took longer. For example,
Martin Luther's
Ninety-five Theses took only two months to spread throughout Europe. A study of United States newspapers in the 1800s found
human-interest, "news you can use" stories and
list-focused articles circulated nationally as local papers mailed copies to each other and selected content for reprinting.
Chain letters spread by
postal mail throughout the 1900s.
Urban legends also began as word-of-mouth memes. Like hoaxes, they are examples of falsehoods that people swallow, and, like them, often achieve broad public notoriety.
CompuServ Beyond vocal sharing, the 20th century made huge strides in the
World Wide Web and the ability to content share. In 1979,
dial-up internet service provided by the company
CompuServ was a key player in online communications and how information began spreading beyond the print. Those with access to a computer in the earliest of stages could not comprehend the full effect that public access to the internet could or would create. It is hard to remember the times of newspapers being delivered to households across the country in order to receive their news for the day, and it was when
The Columbus Dispatch out of Columbus, Ohio broke barriers when it was first to publish in online format. The success that was predicted by CompuServe and the
Associated Press led to some of the largest newspapers to become part of the movement to publish the news via online format. Content sharing in the journalism world brings new advances to viral aspects of how news is spread in a matter of seconds.
Internet memes The creation of the
Internet enabled users to select and share content with each other electronically, providing new, faster, and more decentralized controlled channels for spreading memes.
Email forwards are essentially text memes, often including jokes, hoaxes,
email scams, written versions of urban legends, political messages, and digital chain letters; if widely forwarded they might be called '
viral emails'. User-friendly consumer photo editing tools like
Photoshop and image-editing websites have facilitated the creation of the genre of the
image macro, where a popular image is overlaid with different humorous text phrases. These memes are typically created with
Impact font. The growth of video-sharing websites like
YouTube made
viral videos possible. It is sometimes difficult to predict which images and videos will "go viral"; sometimes the creation of a new
Internet celebrity is a sudden surprise. One example of a viral video is "
Numa Numa", a webcam video of then-19-year-old Gary Brolsma
lip-syncing and dancing to the Romanian pop song "
Dragostea Din Tei". The sharing of text, images, videos, or links to this content have been greatly facilitated by
social media such as
Facebook and
Twitter. Other mimicry memes carried by Internet media include
hashtags, language variations like intentional misspellings, and fads like
planking. The popularity and widespread distribution of Internet memes have gotten the attention of advertisers, creating the field of
viral marketing. A person, group, or company desiring much fast, cheap publicity might create a hashtag, image, or video designed to go viral; many such attempts are unsuccessful, but the few posts that "go viral" generate much publicity. == Types ==