SINGAPOREAN INTERNET MEMES
7
Ubiquity: The Journal of Literature, Literacy, and the
Arts, Research Strand, Vol. 5 No. 1, Spring/Summer
2018, pp. TBD
Ubiquity: http://ed-ubiquity.gsu.edu/wordpress/
ISSN: 2379-3007
...
SINGAPOREAN INTERNET MEMES
7
Ubiquity: The Journal of Literature, Literacy, and the
Arts, Research Strand, Vol. 5 No. 1, Spring/Summer
2018, pp. TBD
Ubiquity: http://ed-ubiquity.gsu.edu/wordpress/
ISSN: 2379-3007
Singaporean Internet Memes in Visual Culture
© Pavithra Raja
National Institute of Education
Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Correspondence concerning this article should be directed to Pavithra Raja, National
Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, 1 Nanyang Walk, Singapore
637616
Contact:
[email protected]
Ubiquity: The Journal of Literature, Literacy, and the Arts, Research Strand, Vol. 5 No. 1,
Spring/Summer 2018Raja SINGAPOREAN INTERNET MEMES
8
Abstract
Internet memes have been studied as digital artifacts in pop polyvocality (Milner, 2013b;
Yoon, 2016), and for vernacular creativity (Burgess, 2007; Milner, 2013a; Tannen, 2007).
Educators’ engagement with memes is crucial to aid young students’ critical readings of them
(Knobel & Lankshear, 2007). In late-authoritarian Singapore, memes have been studied for
their popularity and as outlets for expression (Sreekumar & Vadrevu, 2013; Liew, 2015). In
this study, I examined memes related to education using theories and methods of social
semiotics (Kress, 2010; Kress & van Leeuwen, 1996), and Machin and Mayr’s (2012)
Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis to understand discursive and social practices
surrounding Internet memes, and education, a perennial issue for Singapore. The analysis
suggests Singaporean memes exhibit dense networks of intersemiotic meaning, sharing
features of comic and sequential art in portraying local educational issues related to public
pedagogy and hegemonic discourses. Intertextuality and humor featured in cultural
representations, with global memetic vernacular and local languages. In the context of art
education, meme literacy may help teachers equip students with skills to respond
knowledgably to online visual culture.
Keywords: Internet memes, Art, Visual Culture, Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis,
Singapore
Ubiquity: The Journal of Literature, Literacy, and the Arts, Research Strand, Vol. 5 No. 1,
Spring/Summer 2018Raja SINGAPOREAN INTERNET MEMES
9
Singaporean Internet Memes in Visual Culture
The term meme was coined by biologist Dawkins (1976), who was in search of a word
to “convey the idea of a unit of transmission, or a unit of imitation” (p. 192). Notions of
memes as biological analogies—as parasites, or as genes—come into conflict with the idea of
human beings as active and conscious agents of their spread, and are part of the debates in the
now thriving field of memetics (Blackmore, 2000; Shifman, 2013).
In the context of these debates, recent research has traced the trajectory of memes
proliferating on the Internet. Shifman (2013) defines Internet memes as “a group of digital
items sharing common characteristics of content, form and/or stance, created with awareness
of each other, and circulated, imitated, and/or transformed via the Internet by many users” (p.
41). In the context of art and visual culture, memes tend to “riff” on visuals and are
subsequently “appropriated, re-coded, and slotted back into the Internet infrastructures they
came from” (Nooney & Portwood-Stacer, 2014, p. 249).
In doing so, Internet memes can hit discordant notes; for example, Yoon (2016) found
that Internet memes about racism tend to mock people of color and deny structural racism;
subsequent color-blindness was challenged by critical analysis of Internet memes, and the
creation of counter-memes to heighten students’ critical awareness of racial issues in the
context of art education. Internet memes in themselves can be used in art and art education as
long as one considers not just the visual aspect of the memes but also the humor, remix,
distinct voices and shared authorships involved in their production (De la Rosa-Carrillo,
2015). Conceptualizing the language of Internet memes as “visual, succinct and capable of
inviting active engagement by users” (p. 15), De la Rosa-Carrillo (2015) identified specific
educational contexts where the language of Internet Memes could incorporate technology,
storytelling, visual thinking and remix practices into art and visual culture education.
