Go
 

  Get this audio book:




Learn More About
Find More Titles by
This Author: Limor Shifman
This Narrator: Karen Saltus
This Publisher: Gildan Media

Memes: In Digital Culture by Limor Shifman

Memes: In Digital Culture

by Limor Shifman


Title Details

Author
Narrator
Publisher
 
Unabridged Edition
Running Time
3 Hrs. 47 Min.

Description

In December 2012, the exuberant video "Gangnam Style" became the first YouTube clip to be viewed more than one billion times. Thousands of its viewers responded by creating and posting their own variations of the video - "Mitt Romney Style", "NASA Johnson Style", "Egyptian Style", and many others. "Gangnam Style" (and its attendant parodies, imitations, and derivations) is one of the most famous examples of an Internet meme: a piece of digital content that spreads quickly around the web in various iterations and becomes a shared cultural experience.

In this audiobook, Limor Shifman investigates Internet memes and what they tell us about digital culture. Shifman discusses a series of well-known Internet memes - including "Leave Britney Alone", the pepper-spraying cop, LOLCats, Scumbag Steve, and Occupy Wall Street's "We Are the 99 Percent". She offers a novel definition of Internet memes: digital content units with common characteristics, created with awareness of each other, and circulated, imitated, and transformed via the Internet by many users. She differentiates memes from virals; analyzes what makes memes and virals successful; describes popular meme genres; discusses memes as new modes of political participation in democratic and nondemocratic regimes; and examines memes as agents of globalization. Memes, Shifman argues, encapsulate some of the most fundamental aspects of the Internet in general and of the participatory Web 2.0 culture in particular. Internet memes may be entertaining, but in this book Limor Shifman makes a compelling argument for taking them seriously.


People Who Liked Memes: In Digital Culture Also Liked These Titles:
  The Gospel According to Oprah
by Marcia Z. Nelson

  Orson Welles
by Barbara Leaming

  The Strategy of Conflict
by Thomas C. Schelling