The World Made Meme: Public Conversations and Participatory Media

by Ryan M. Milner

How memetic media--aggregate texts that are collectively created, circulated, and transformed--become a part of public conversations that shape broader cultural debates. Internet memes--digital snippets that can make a joke, make a point, or make a connection--are now a lingua franca of online life. They are collectively created, circulated, and transformed by countless users across vast networks. Most of us have seen the cat playing the piano, Kanye interrupting, Kanye interrupting the cat playing the piano. In The World Made Meme, Ryan Milner argues that memes, and the memetic process, are shaping public conversation. It's hard to imagine a major pop cultural or political moment that doesn't generate a constellation of memetic texts. Memetic media, Milner writes, offer participation by reappropriation, balancing the familiar and the foreign as new iterations intertwine with established ideas. New commentary is crafted by the mediated circulation and transformation of old ideas. Through memetic media, small strands weave together big conversations.

Milner considers the formal and social dimensions of memetic media, and outlines five basic logics that structure them: multimodality, reappropriation, resonance, collectivism, and spread. He examines how memetic media both empower and exclude during public conversations, exploring the potential for public voice despite everyday antagonisms. Milner argues that memetic media enable the participation of many voices even in the midst of persistent inequality. This new kind of participatory conversation, he contends, complicates the traditional culture industries. When age-old gatekeepers intertwine with new ways of sharing information, the relationship between collective participation and individual expression becomes ambivalent.

For better or worse--and Milner offers examples of both--memetic media have changed the nature of public conversations.

Genres: Nonfiction, Sociology, Academia

272 pages, Hardcover

First published October 7, 2016

Reviews

[Skrivena stranica · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's ok, but it's already outdated 3 years later, and this will say more about how one person on one age saw memes than what memes actually is. That is to be expected since memes are like that, they really are a personal experience in a big world of memes that is constantly changing. How far did the memes move from their beginnings and if "I" of the first memes saw today's memes, I wouldn't call them memes. I still don't understand why Ice Bucket Challenge is a meme. I don't see it as a meme, for me meme needs to be something funny, but maybe people showering in ice is funny for larger group so it turned out to be a meme. If it's a meme, it's very short lived and no one even remembers it.

[Guilherme Smee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Uma das coisas que achei mais fantásticas em The World Made Meme: Public Conversations and Participatory Media e que abriu uma chave de análise para mim foi que o autor Ryan M. Milner trata os memes como "mídia memética" a despeito de outras teorias que os veem como "vírus da mídia", ou os classificam como algo à parte, reservado somente aos memes da internet, ou ainda que exploram num espectro mais amplo da memética, como mídia espalhável. A primeira parte do livro, mais teória é bastante pertinente e o livro como um todo tem um texto fácil e gostoso de acompanhar. Já a segunda parte do livro "Memetic Public Participation" me fez perceber como alguns memes só fazem sentido num determinado contexto temporal e espacial. Muitos memes estadunidenses não fazem sentido aqui no Brasil e com o passar do tempo se tornam desgastados e perdem sua graça e força, uma vez que os exemplo trazidos pelo livro foram colhidos há seis anos atrás. Por outro lado, muitas outras imagens ainda guardam sua "potência memética" preservada e são relevantes ainda hoje. A memética é uma campo que ainda precisa de muitos mais estudos e é uma rica abordagem para a mídia nos tempos atuais. Este é um dos melhores e mais acessíveis livros sobre memética que li até agora e posso dizer que já li mais de uma dezena.

[Sheng · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's been a long time since I've read any books due to my busy schedule in university and one of my sources of entertainment during the academic semester has been the easily digestible format of memes. Memes are way more widespread and varied compared to three years ago when this book was written but I was still really interested in an in-depth analysis at the role of memes and what they have become, even back in 2015. Memes are obviously great entertainment or 'nationwide inside jokes' as a student of the author put it but to take a proper, formal look at them really piqued my interest and thus, this was the first book I chose to read once my finals were over.

This book is divided into six chapters and the first three were honestly quite a pain to read. They were essentially breaking down the meme format and explaining their significance or function in a micro-sense. It involved a lot of explanations behind the jokes in memes that got more and more painful as I went on. It really felt like this was a Memes for Dummies text for the older generation in order for them to understand this new popular form of media. It was quite painful to read plus all the examples from 2015 and earlier have now become cringeworthy in today's age. That obviously is not a fault of the book but rather a fault of the time that has passed since it has been published but it still affected my reading experience. The memes weren't even that funny in the first place so it was just a toil to read them.

The book picked up a lot more in the second half where the impact of memes in a macro-sense on society was explored. It offered the potential impact of memes in areas such as gender equality, income inequality, racism and even simpler impacts like making random people famous just because of the most random circumstances like a funny picture. Again, the examples were outdated and were meme formats that I haven't thought about in ages like Bad Luck Brian and Ridiculously Photogenic Guy but still, it was like peeking behind the wizard's curtain when you read about all the stories about what happened behind the memes. It was definitely more complicated and nuanced in some aspects than I thought and the proper academic analysis format that the book had taken came into handy in such a scenario, making the book more of an eye-opener.

Overall, this book was obviously outdated in the fast-paced and everchanging meme world but it did provide some food for thought regarding the usage of memes that still ring true today. The first half of the book was a real pain to read and quite a few of the memes are unfunny but the second half of the book definitely redeemed it a little in making me think more about the impact of memes in society. 2.5/5

[Alexander Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

It seems that there's a trend in memetic communication literature. The first halves of these books are always about the development of "a new theory" of more granular communication technology, but the last halves are always about developing a strongly social constructionist view of ethics supported by some very select classifications or ontologies of memes. Dr. Milner certainly won't be the last to do this, but hopefully the field can grow beyond this point and actually understand his technologically limited and theoretically trained perspectives of memes.

That being said, the first half of this book offers some very interesting thoughts! The attachment of publics, counterpublics, and the average individual's participation seems to be presently a very relevant and valid conversation to have about memes in the political weather. But, I would beg to differ if one was to say this was relevant to the longevity of memetic climate. This book is one that will not stand the test of time, but offers some interesting insights into how memes can help motivate conversations and activism in an online world be they ethical, rational, or not.

[Word Muncher · Rating 4 out of 5]

The word meme was coined by our own Richard Dawkins for the flux of culture. They can be in many forms and timeless. There are good memes and the book will teach you what this means, and there are bad memes, which would be the opposite. The nuances of memes are felt in the seratonin they provide in so many ways. Memes teach you, keep you up to date, make you laugh and educate. They can be poached or bricolaged or altered in so many ways that they never become useless, becoming current constantly and expressions for anyone with wit and understanding. They have so much diverse meaning for the entire world. Even Putin tried to ban them because he feared their power. Who knew there was so much involved in making worthy memes though. This author has a thesis on memes and there are some fantastic insights and so much more to a picture with a line or two to express something. There are laws and rules and understandings to good memes. There are also words like memetic. Just for memes. And of course all memes are a case of 'if you know you know' because they are all an inside joke, whether it's a made up line or a song or something someone did. Wink.

[Thomas Hale · Rating 3 out of 5]

An introductory text of sorts to the critical study of memes and their place in online discourse. Being from 2015, Milner's book is interesting in what it isn't able to cover, but there's a lot in here that's useful if not groundbreaking. Latter chapters concerning in/outgroup construction and a good, robust methodology review kept me reading to the end, but this is very much an academic text to be dipped into for choice quotations.