Media and Society - SLU Madrid

  In 2015 at the Met Gala, Rihanna's yellow dress called everyone's attention; it gave a lot of play on the net. The main purpose of the Met Gala is to be talked for calling attention, not for the best dress. Rihanna's dress burst Twitter and the Internet with the form of memes. According to Bratich as stated in the article Occupy All the Dispositifs, "the meme was not designed merely to spread information, but to facilitate the passage from information to action; its key characteristics are imitation and transfer" (Bratich, 2013) . Rihanna's dress was by Guo Pei Haute Couture design, on the red carpet became the subject of endless memes. The dress turned into the Wizard of Oz's yellow brick road, a gigantic Spanish Omelette, the base of a pizza, or the SpongeBob SquarePants. As Bratich stated, "memes, jokes require a third person: not just the enunciator or the target, but a ‘‘neutral spectator’’ who judges" (Bratich, 2013) . Rihanna always ...

 On a street in an unknown city, one of the most memorable photos has gone viral. After his sister took a photo of him, she realized that she had involuntarily recreated the mythical meme where the boy's face is a whole picture. The neck of the male of our species has a very "hard life", especially when it is crossed with someone sexually attractive. At that moment the darkest part of our brain sends all kinds of desperate signals to the already up to the nose neck muscles to make the head spin.  This macho attitude is what the photographer Antonio Guillem wanted to reflect in the image that, without him knowing, became the already mythical meme of the distracted boyfriend: a couple crosses paths with a good-looking girl and the man, instead of keeping his attention on his beloved, sees how her neck makes movements that are in principle impossible for the human anatomy. A meme that has had unquestionable success in reflecting the views of the human of the 21st century... ...

  Description: This article shows the current situation in which Spain is facing the COVID 19 pandemic. This article also shows a certain reticence about how the government has not been able to manage this crisis and therefore Spain is positioned as one of the countries that are managing the pandemic the worst. "While the national government of Socialist President Pedro Sánchez has faced accusations from his rivals of lying about mortality rates, the regional government of Madrid, led by the conservative Popular Party, has been the object of equally fierce criticism" (BBC article).  Analysis:  One of the clear signs that the article uses to demonstrate the government's mismanagement is that in general the people of Spain are very unhappy and therefore there have been different cases which have led to a second wave. However, the article also mentions that this second wave is not only the fault of the government but also involves young people and successive protests and cro...

  The meme I chose is called "Woman yelling at a cat" which is the combination of two images without any relation. Nonetheless, it went viral and it has been used as an emotional moment that argues about the interpretation of phrases and as been used as publicity for brands. The combination of both images began as a reaction of a twitter user on May 1, 2019 who found hilarious how they look together. On the one hand, the woman yelling image was retrieved in 2011 from a scene of the show "The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills" when Taylor Armstrong was infuriated for emitted comments from a fellow cast member about the abuse, Armstrong had suffered from late husband. In this way, looking only at that part of the and learning about the background story may allow to see this from a totally different perspective. On the other hand, the cat image originated back on 2015 and it was posted by an Ontario resident whose cat was anxious and did not like to be around more cats ...

The meme I chose to analyze is called “Drakeposting” which is an image of Drake taken from his “Hotline Bling” music video. The music video was released on October 19, 2015 and began circling the internet in January 2016. Many memes have come from this music video such as one of his full body in a grey sweatshirt. This meme is a screen shot of him doing a dance move where in one shot he’s looking away in disgust and in the other he is not. This has been used to demonstrate dislike for one item or idea in a comedic way. The meme has been used for many jokes and has had many variations such as covering his face with another character, such as Thanos. Since the meme became popular in January 2016 it has been circulation social media such platforms as Reddit and Twitter fairly steadily with the highest usage at the beginning of January 2017. During this time the meme was used to demonstrate disgust for the year and things that had happened. Since then the usage has continued steadily. Brat...

  Is this a Pigeon - Meme Analysis One of my favourite memes is the “Is this a Pigeon” meme, originally featuring a character from a Japanese anime, pointing to a butterfly and asking if it is a pigeon.   The shot used in the meme originated from the 1991 “The Brave Fighter of Sun Fighbird”, in which the android character Yutaro Katori incorrectly labels different parts of nature in an attempt to show how much he has learned about earth. The shot was first posted on Tumblr by the user Indizi dell'avvenuta catastrofe on December 6 th 2011 and from there it gained popularity, appearing on different websites such as, AnimeUltima.tv, Smosh and Buzzfeed.   But it was in 2018 when it reappeared that its current form gained popularity. The shot became more situational, appearing in different variation depending on the topic it is being used for. The first of these variations was posted on April 26 th 2018 by Twitter user romiosini, who changed the butterfly to “any makeup look...

            This meme possesses powerful symbolism as it portrays the image of a Native American chief of a tribe. The caption reads "so you're against immigration? Splendid, when do you leave?". This is a satirical way of discussing the colonization of the native land by the European settlers. Moreover it is also a reference to President Trump's stance on immigration and his will to build a wall and limit immigration. This meme is written under a tone of irony and humor, nevertheless it hides a deep history of colonization and segregation. Henceforth it does satisfy some of bratich's ideology of contextual analysis of a meme. Bratich discusses the ideology that " there are contextual factors related to social power." He also asserts this ideology by stating that "This type of innovative action is prominent ‘‘on occasion of a historical or biographical crisis, interrupt[ing] the circular flux of life.’’". (Bratich, 2014) Therefore this meme f...

 Since its conception, the Stonks meme encapsulates the absurdist humor and outlook of a generation that is rife with uncertainty. With the template first published to a Facebook group in 2017, then later used across various social media platforms such as Youtube, Imgur and Reddit, the meme has only recently gained more popularity and interaction with more audiences through Twitter this spring1. According to Know Your Meme (2019), the meme was originally used to make self-deprecating jokes for  “poor financial decisions”. Aesthetically, the template hosts a faceless figure imposed upon a stock image popular in other memes (e.g., Helth, Shef) with the overexaggerated misspelling of certain professions which aligns with, as Batrich claims, as the “image macro” that combines “text and image via repetition and difference”2. This allows for easy reproduction of the meme - through simply reposting or using as a reaction, updating the meme to feature pop-culture references or work in...

There is no doubt, especially after the 2016 United States Presidential Election, that memes have become a driving force in politics today. One of the earliest examples of memes that became "fake news" in the 2016 election was the theory/joke that Texas Senator Ted Cruz is the Zodiac Killer, a well-known serial killer who was never caught. In the late 1960’s and early 70’s, California was terrorized by a mysterious string of murders, the perpetrator never caught. He left behind several letters written in code, cryptograms that have yet to be deciphered.  In 2013, a Tweet by @RedPillAmerica read, “#CPAC Alert: Ted Cruz is speaking!! His speech is titled: ‘This Is The Zodiac Speaking”. This tweet is vague and doesn’t tell us much. Zodiac could mean various different things, but what catches my attention is the username of the account. “Red pill” has become a term appropriated by the internet, specifically the far right, on forums discussing conspiracy theories or an “unpleasant...

       I chose the meme below because I believe it is relevant to many individual’s current situations right now.  The image of a child going to school with full plastic suit protection from Covid and holding a sign that reads “first day of school” is not the average first day of school photo that we are used to seeing from young children or even from adults.   However, our social, personal, and cultural climates have changed drastically due to Covid and I believe this meme is easily identifiable, relatable, and humorous to mostly western places in the world. According to Bratich, “... there are contextual factors related to social power. This type of innovative action is prominent ‘‘on occasion of a historical or biographical crisis, interrupt[ing] the circular flux of life.’’8 It is an ‘‘action that undermines and contradicts the prevalent belief-system of a community…,’’ (Bratich p. 65)  This meme relates to a historical crisis that is Covid-19....

The meme that I chose to analyse is called “distracted boyfriend” and I believe most people that have twitter have probably seen it. The meme is a man looking at another woman while walking with his girlfriend, who looks shocked about it. It was a picture taken by the spanish Antom Guillem for a campaign (Hindustan Times, 2017). So while there are some misconceptions about the picture being about a real situation, it is nothing but models. The meaning of the picture itself is already explicit despite the many memes that were created with it. The meme first emerged on a turkish Facebook group but it did not become famous until it came to instagram and twitter. An instagram account posted the picture with the caption “Tag your friend/ who falls in love every month”, which overpassed 28.500 likes. Then a twitter account posted it with the girlfriend being “capitalism” and the distracted boyfriend being “youth” looking at “socialism”. So the meme went viral and was adapted to various issue...

 Dinner date meme, putting happy looks on their face with masks even though they are sad:  This meme is symbolic because is the ongoing use of language and gestures in anticipation of how the other will react. This picture relates to symbolic interactionism because the two are on a date or at dinner and they are putting happy looks on their face with masks and they are trying to look ideal at the moment - even though they do not truly feel that way according to their actual faces. The adjustments of mood the mask make help the interaction between the two using gestures based on the wanted perception for that kind of occasion. This is significant because I feel like this image portrays common first dates or blind dates on this day. In real life, people get set up on blind dates or first dates, and even if it goes bad they put on a happy face and act like they are having a good time just to go home and delete the other person's number. Sometimes we are not happy but we still smi...

Since the original photo’s upload in 2018, the “Change My Mind” meme has circulated the internet in several formats and thereby reaching several audiences. Conservative podcaster Steven Crowder, known as @scrowder on Twitter, prompted students at Texas Christian University to change his mind surrounding his belief that male privilege is a myth. In the image, Crowder is pictured seated at a table with a camera, microphone, script, and mugs that read “Louder with Crowder”- the name of both his Youtube channel and podcast. According to Know Your Meme (2018), a photoshopped version of the image was posted the following day (February 19th) on Twitter. That same day, Reddit users posted their own photoshopped versions of Crowder and his sign in the /r/dankmemes subreddit, enabling the widespread use and popularization of the “Change My Mind” meme format.  According to Jack Bratich’s definition of memes in his paper “Occupy All the Dispositifs: Memes, Media Ecologies, and Emergent Bodies ...