Methodological Directions for the Study of Memes

Abstract

The chapter proposes an empirically oriented analysis of the memetic production on Instagram. Defined as multimodal cultural artifacts, combining visual and textual material to convey humoristic messages, internet memes proliferate across the web, spawning new popular formats and layouts. However, many scholars still rely on outdated conceptualisations or limited samples for their studies. To anchor investigation on memes to the actual production, the research answers the questions: (1) Which meme formats are currently circulating online? (2) How do popular meme formats convey their message? To this end, a dataset of static images collected on Instagram was examined with qualitative visual and discourse analysis. Findings point at the possibility to adopt a bottom-up approach to recognize and classify memes, exploiting shared features of content and form. Furthermore, this categorization offers insights on the most productive mechanisms of meme production: contextually, results show a tendency towards formats that trigger identification, leveraging on relatable life situations.