Forums / Discussion / Meme Research

Dear meme fans,

I thought it would be interesting to have a list of academic publications here in order to facilitate future academic research on the topic.

Please only include research on INTERNET MEMES, not on memes in general (in Richard Dawkins' sense).

Cheers!

Knobel, M., & Lankshear, C. (2007). Online memes, affinities, and cultural production. A new literacies sampler (pp. 199-227). New York: P. Lang.
http://literacyandtech.pbworks.com/f/Text.pdf#page=11

Downes, S. (1999). Hacking memes. First Monday, 4(10).
http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/rt/printerFriendly/694/604

(On similar topic)
Heylighen, F. (1996). Evolution of Memes on the Network: from chain-letters to the global brain. In G. Stocker & C. Schöpf (Eds.), Ars Electronica Festival 96. Memesis: the future of evolution. (pp. 48-57). Vienna: Springer.
http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/Papers/Memesis.html

Technically, I do believe that any of the research performed by the former and current internet scientists of this website count as academic research.

Click the "Episodes" tab.

The episodes are awesome! There is a lot of information overall on this site and I believe that it is a great starting point for further research.

I am looking for literature from the fields of media studies, sociology, etc. that places the phenomenon of internet memes into broader theoretical discussions involving art, creativity, postmodernism, social functions, motivations etc.

BTW I am writing my master thesis on the topic of internet memes and creativity from a postmodern standpoint – wish me luck :)

cheers

I am going to write my bachelor's thesis about the connection between internetmemes and literature (: (Hopefully! Am still in the 1st phase of researching etc. So I still have to see where that is going lead me..)

It is nice to read that more people are currently looking for/doing academic research on memes, as it is quite a novel subject, and I suspect it is not going to be the easiest task to find relevant literature about it, haha. Either way, your thesis topic sounds very interesting – good luck writing!

good luck for you as well!!! Will let you know if I find more useful lit ;)

I tought the episodes weren't really that scientific, as they haven't provided any evidence to confirm that what they say is true, they just told the version of history that is correct according to them.

Just so you know, this post is not to hate on Forest and the rest (actually, I really enjoy the episodes ^^), just to say that the episodes aren't scientific. Oh, and that they're awesome.

hey! i am writing my research on memes as well)
i know all the studies you've listed, check this out!
http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/conf/memepap/marshall.html
• Jonathan L. Zittrain ,The future of the Internet and how to stop it, Yale University Press, 2008
• McTavish,Alexandra,essay, Culture in the face of Anarchy. Writing in a memetic Enviorment on line, 2011
• Shifman, Limor, Assessing Global Diffusion with Web Memetics the spread and evolution of a popular joke

Also, i have some books that might help you in your research, coz hey, they are helping me ) if you are interested, you can e mail me at lenagangan2@gmail.com

Wow! I just stumbled across this forum, and I am quite pleased. I am writing my Honors thesis for my bachelor's degree about Internet memes, and I've been trying to figure out some research question. While trying to think of a question, I wanted to see what other researchers had done/are doing, and this is a great resource for me! Thanks!

Davidson Patrick, The Language of (Internet) Memes, in The social media reader, edited by Michael Mandiberg, New York : New York University Press, c2012. x, 289 p. : ill. ; 24 cm.

i have the article in Word if you are interested, just send me a message (blagsdeath@gmail.com)

I apologize, i miswrote the name of the author in my last post. Is Davison, not Davidson. I'm so sorry if that caused you trouble to find his research.

http://www.mediafire.com/view/?o572tqow7ejls52

Uhh… This is something that I made back from 2 years ago from grade 10. I did this as the school required 'personal projects' (lol International Baccalaureate). In a sense, this is quite academical as I wanted to show general understanding on what are Internet Memes.

It is 'Indonesianized' because my school is from Indonesia, and perhaps would include Indonesian Memes inside.

It really lacks in credible sources, proper formatting for citations as well as the fact that it might be lacking in knowledge of Internet Memes due to lack of experience back then. As much as I wanted to edit this so that I can turn this to be more 'serious', I can't as I've lost the original Publisher file. :(

Well, take a look at this crap, if you may.

Guys, i am a new member here in Know Your Meme. Actually, I joined this site out of academic purposes. I'm wondering if you could help me in my thesis proposal? My topic is about internet memes; their effects on people and their communication, why they are addictive and the like. Hope you can help with this. Thank you so much! I'm 18 and I'm from the Philippines by the way. :)

Danung, J. y L. Holloway Attaway, (2008) “All your base are belong to us: An analysis of the cultural connotations of the internet meme” en Literature, culture and digital media.

Stryker, C., (2011) Epic win for anonymous: How 4chan’s army conquered the web. New York, The Overlook Press.

Chen, C. (2012). “The creation and meaning of internet memes in 4chan: Popular internet culture in the age of online digital reproduction” Habitus.

Thank You! I can use these as my RRLs, But do you think these books are available here in the Philippines? Or are these available in pdf files? :)

I am currently writing my bachelor’s thesis regarding memes when I stumbled on this post and this has been a great source of information for me. You see, my research is centered on how memes reflect on society (or something like that) and I am still in the process of formulating research problems so my life is kinda messy right now. Any readings relevant to that (even the irrelevant ones) will be greatly appreciated.

I joined knowyourmeme.com just to thank you guys for being awesome in helping beleaguered students like me. Cheers and happy holidays! :)

Hai guise!

I will be writing my BA thesis on Internet Memes. I am an English major so I need to connect them to the language somehow. I have been focusing on the grammatical side of memes – why are some of the memes grammatically incorrect and how do they work and whether the ungrammaticalness (wut?) will influence English in the long term (for the worse). Also thinking about bringing in The Grammar Nazis as 'saviours of the English language'

If you know of someone that has done something of this sort, please do let me know! You could either comment on this thread or if you have something specific (files to send, etc), you could write to me at britta.loobas@gmail.com

ktnxbai!

Good stuff here!

I am a graduate student writing on memes, myself. I'm looking into how memes and their templates can be used as tools to teach writing techniques and academic templates to incoming college students. I'll try to contribute to this thread with anything I come across, and I'll certianly be sure to check out some of the things listed here. Here are some of the sources I've been using, although this might not apply to everyone due to my topic.

George, Diana. “From Analysis to Design: Visual Communication in the Teaching of Writing” College Composition and COmmunication 54.1 (2002)

Graff, Gerald and Cathy Birkenstein. They Say, I Say: The Moves that Matter in Academic Writing. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc, 2007. (Academic templates and their uses/etc)

Hariman, Robert. No Caption Needed: Iconic Photographs, Public Culture, and Liberal Democracy. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2007 (images as iconic and able to comment on and influence society)

(Can't believe no one has said this one yet, it's not memes specifically, but the author nails many aspects of how online communities would influence humanity. Written in the 60s) McLuhan, Marshall and Bruce Powers. The Global Village: Transformations in World Life and Media in the 21st Century. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986. (reprint)

@jubru

Some useful stuff I found on Google Scholar:

4chan and /b/: An Analysis of Anonymity and Ephemerality in a Large Online Community – a study by a couple of MIT scholars on 4chan.

And The Meme Machine – a book on meme theory from 1999 which has a chapter on the internet (probably of mostly antiquarian use now, but whatever).

Also, there is I Can Has Language Play – a recording of a conference presentation on LolCat language.

Finally, I suggest going through whatever the PBS Idea Channel has put up. They cover internet culture quite a bit, and the show itself is very literate. (One of my favorites compares Homestuck to Joyce's Ulysses.)

As a side-note, I recommend getting into contact with Amanda B, a mod on this site who is also quite knowledgeable on this sort of thing. you can also ask me whatever questions you like – I'm an MA student in English Literature, and quite knowledgeable on basically all the topics you say your paper covers.

Cheers!

KYM articles are arguably formal enough to be considered academic, though it's probably best to stick with the confirmed ones.

Keep in mind, though, that we are not "peer reviewed" in the academic sense. It would be best if you included a note explaining our confirmation procedures if you do in fact use an entry on this site.

This. I'm quoting KYM extensively in my Masters thesis as this is the primary source of meme information. But, I am stating in my introduction the details of the site, its unique place in my research, and how articles are created. I do love the fact that some of my citations are the usernames of article creators though. It is SO funny to have an academic site that is "(Blubberman)" or something like that! :P

That sounds neat. Maybe you can toss the thesis up on Academia and then link it here (or, more likely, in another thread) when you're done.

Rinkel, Sean (2013): "Crisis Memes: The Importance of Templatability to Internet Culture and Freedom of Expression" is quite recent and looks interesting.

http://www.academia.edu/2439613/Crisis_Memes_The_Importance_of_Templatability_to_Internet_Culture_and_Freedom_of_Expression

I would consider: metaphors, semantics, applying cognitive linguistics rules to internet memes or such. I am writting a Major that will be based on internet memes and it will have to be related to cognitive linguistics (Lakoff, Jackobsen and others).

Hi, I'm doing my M.A. thesis about internet memes. I have been a fan of the humor as well as the creation of a new form of language in the cyberculture. I am in need of published journals about internet memes (not memes in general) that can be download in digital form. So far, I have downloaded every pdf of the journals posted here except for Shifman, Limor's "Assessing Global Diffusion with Web Memetics the spread and evolution of a popular joke". If anyone has a copy of this, please send it to my email eneil@rock.com. Thanks

Thank you for sharing these great sources. I now have a great summer reading list in my break before grad school!

Here's a link to a presentation I did on the term trolling, looking at memes from a linguistic standpoint. It won't be totally clear, as I do not have the paper hand out that went with it, sadly. It does mention Dawkins at first, but the focus is on meme term trolling specifically.

http://prezi.com/6m-vecbayolt/untitled-prezi/

¿Does anybody know who ( as well as when and why) started using the term "meme" or "internet meme" to refer to this phenomena?
So far i have only find something in "Epic win for anonymous", in which the autor Cole Stryker, says the term was co-opted by journalists when viral videos and web micro-celebrities began to appear. However there are no references about this.

It was coined by Richard Dawkins in his book "The Selfish Gene," with basically the same definition that we use here, though not affixed to the internet. If you want to know more, it's the last chapter that has all of the meme stuff in it.

I know Richard Dawkins coined the term meme to talk about cultural transmission in a similar way genes do. What i mean is ¿Who took Dawkins' term and started using it to describe viral internet phenomena and why?

that's actually a good question that our memes entry is missing.

Let's work backwards, if you don't mind…

11/2009: Mashable compiles a list of that year's top memes

09/2008: the Internet Meme Time Line is created on Dipity, linked on Wired

01/2008: Gawker writes about memes twice, once in an article about /b/ ED and SA, the second time is more family friendly memes (hollllllla @ Nick Douglas)

07/2007: ListVerse compiles a top 10 internet memes

07/2003: USA Today interviews Dan Lewis of whattheheck.com

Dan Lewis, creator of WhatTheHeck.com, has dedicated his site to unusual eBay auctions. "The [Elvis tooth auction] is probably a legitimate auction looking for real money," he said. "But most of them are just for fame -- they want to be the next Internet meme." (A meme is a concept, catchphrase or byword that spreads from person to person --in other words, such eBayers are hoping to invent the next mood ring or "Whassssssup").

12/2000: InformIT article on memetic marketing, refers to memes in their Dawkins sense & how to apply it to email

10/1997 Memes on the Net

1996: Evolution of Memes on the Network: from chain-letters to the global brain Also check the references here for some other 1990s sources

undated, but probably 2000s:
The Internet and Memetics
Memes on the Internet

The case here is probably not that of one specific moment of coinage, but a common conclusion that was reached by a number of academics and journalists

Thanks a lot for this, as I could find lots of academic sources to back up my research on memes. I'm writing a seminar paper on those and it is not easy to find sources recognised by the university.
If I stumble upon something useful that is not linked here, I'll post it to help others.

Here is my one academic article on memes and several news articles written for The Conversation:

Rintel, S. (2013). Crisis Memes: The Importance of Templatability to Internet Culture and Freedom of Expression. Australasian Journal of Popular Culture, 2(2): 253-271. DOI: 10.1386/ajpc.2.2.253_1 (Pre-pub PDF at Academia.edu)

(Based on an earlier news article: Rintel, S. (2011, August 15). Obama? Norway killings? London riots? You can has a meme for that… The Conversation.)

Rintel, S. (2013, April 10). 'Slacktivism' vs 'snarktivism'- how do you take your online activism? The Conversation.

Rintel, S. (2013, August 11). Who generates election memes? Election 2013 media panel post. The Conversation.

Rintel, S. (2012, July 28). Social media winners and losers in the Olympics opening ceremony. The Conversation.

Rintel, S. (2012, July 17). Meme team- Olympic fandom meets the internet. The Conversation.

And this piece has resonances with memes:

Rintel, S. (2011, November 2). The Evolution of Fail Pets- Strategic Whimsy and Brand Awareness in Error Messages. UX Magazine

Hi, I'm doing a literature review of internet memes and ideology through media, but want to incorporate a place for further research on internet memes and political ideologies (still vague). Is there any research on political topics in internet memes?

A few minutes on Google Scholar got me these:

Truthy: mapping the spread of astroturf in microblog streams

Memes and Metaculture: The Politics of Discourse Circulation in Fiji

Memes of Translation

Memes, Technics, Ideology, or The Affirmation of Lies and the Pursuit of the Future

I have not read any of them, but the titles do look promising.

Good luck.

While doing a bit of research for a project I'm working on, I found a book that some of you might be interested in: My Life as a Night Elf Priest: An Anthropological Account of World of Warcraft.

Here's the synopsis from the publisher's page:

In My Life as a Night Elf Priest, Bonnie Nardi, a well-known ethnographer who has published extensively on how theories of what we do intersect with how we adopt and use technology, compiles more than three years of participatory research in Warcraft play and culture in the United States and China into this field study of player behavior and activity. She introduces us to her research strategy and the history, structure, and culture of Warcraft; argues for applying activity theory and theories of aesthetic experience to the study of gaming and play; and educates us on issues of gender, culture, and addiction as part of the play experience. Nardi paints a compelling portrait of what drives online gamers both in this country and in China, where she spent a month studying players in Internet cafes.

So basically it's an ethnographic study of World of Warcraft. I've read a few chunks of it and it looks pretty interesting. I figure it should be useful to anyone who is interested in researching internet culture, which is why I'm posting it here.

Hi! I am new here. I am doing a study on memes and discourses. I would like to ask for some help regarding references, files, links, documents and similar researches. By the way, thank you for all the suggested materials here. I am trying to look for them now.

You could start with this: https://sites.google.com/a/sheffield.ac.uk/all-about-linguistics/branches/discourse-analysis/what-is-discourse-analysis

Maybe create some kind of meme discourse and analyze it or apply other discourses to it.

Thank you very much for this! :-) I will definitely check this out.

If you happen to speak german, or know someone who does:

Daniel Kusch published a masther thesis on Luhman, Latour and NyanCat in 2014

Hi there guys. I'm new to the site and am doing Internet memes for my undergrad dissertation.

I've gathered some other references for you here. Its been a really interesting read:

Leith, S. (2011) What does it all meme? Financial Times [Internet] 15 October. p. 1. Available from: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/027fefe6-f4b7-11e0-a286-00144feab49a.html Accessed: 7 Apr. 2015.

Nooney, L and Portwood-Stacer, L. (2014) One Does Not Simply: An Introduction to the Special Issue on Internet Memes. Journal of Visual Culture. Volume 13; Issue 3; pp. 388-394.

Also, as I studied the community aspect of meme-makers and users I looked into some of the research on Tumblr and fandoms. These were great references for this sort of study:

McCloud, S (2003) Popular culture fandoms, the boundaries of religious studies, and the project of the self. Culture and Religion: An Interdisciplinary Journal. Volume 4; Issue 2; pp. 187-206.

Hillman, S. et al. (2014) ‘alksjdf;lksfd’: Tumblr and the Fandom User Experience. Vancouver, B.C, Canada. 21-25 June. Simon Fraser University; Vancouver, B.C, Canada.

Hillman, S. et al. (2014) Tumblr Fandoms, Community & Culture. Baltimore, Maryland, USA. 15–19 February. CSCW'14; Baltimore, Maryland, USA.

Chang, Y. et al. (2014) What is Tumblr: A Statistical Overview and Comparison. SIGKDD Explorations. Volume 16; Issue 1; pp. 21-30.

Happy researching :-)

Hi,
I'm so happy that I found this thread… it is really helpful, thank you! :)
I'm thinking about writing a seminar paper about the memes language (in my language, Hebrew).
I was wondering if someone has this article on PDF:

Freund, Ashley. "I Can Has Voice? A Semiotic Study of Internet Memes and Their Reflection of Culture." Semiotics (2013): 127-139.‏

if you do have this one (or about memes and language in general) please let me know, my e-mail is: sedri14@gmail.com
thanks :)

I don't have access to the article, but you might want to try the #icanhazpdf twitter hashtag. It's popular among academics who can't afford article fees and want to see if someone can send the article to them for free. Details here.

Hello, so grateful to found this thread. I was planning to use internet memes as one of my thesis paper topics (I want to research about how internet memes affecting public opinion about North Korea) and i find it difficult to look for any references that specifically refers to internet memes, not memetics in general. If anyone have any references about internet memes study, or study about internet memes used as a political campaign, please let me know. You can contact me on my e-mail on naning4@gmail.com. Thanks before!

I'd say look up the shitshow that happened with that movie The Interview, that would prob be helpful in your paper

Hey, thank all of you for your research tips.
I'm thinking about writing my bachelor thesis about: Memetics and the role/meaning/influence of the subject.
I read Dawkins and I think I'll need to read Blackmore, and I think if you follow the universal darvinism the subject has nearly no conscious influence on memes and how they spread and work, and Internet Memes in contrast just exist because of the high participation and a lot of individual adaptation.
Is it clear what I want to say?
I'm not sure with the literature yet, theres not much about the meaning of the individual in the process of internet memes.
Any ideas?

Hey, I'm doing a Society and Culture (basically sociology) paper on meme culture and discrimination and I'm struggling to find anything… any ideas?

A Longitudinal Measurement Study of 4chan’s Politically Incorrect Forum and its Effect on the Web

Here is a piece written in 2017 on musical memes, specifically the Jon Sudano All Star videos!
http://www.musicologyresearch.co.uk/publications/petegofton-musicmemesandmeaning

Why is this not stickied?