Viral Phenomena

What does it mean to go viral?

• Relies on certain networks

• Gets a lot of traction Relatability?

• Popular

• Viral - virus - transferability - gifs (linguistic values)

Things that have gone viral:

• Me too movement - began as a twitter phenomenon

• Repurposing - remixed - recreated - copycat (Drake - dad dancing)

• Michel Obama at Trumps inauguration - side eye

• French Spiderman - saves child falling from building

What is viral phenomena?

• There is so many articles about how to go viral when you goggle what is viral

• It is funny as there are so many differences in viral content

• pranksters - humiliation

Breaking the internet: the narrative of viral media

There isn't many academic articles written on viral content as it is still something that people are trying to understand

Why do things go viral?

• Relatability

• The rags to riches

• Empathy

• Cute Snark

• Humour - from odd to annoying and everything in between

• Smarts

Viral phenomenons before the internet

Reffer madness (1936) a government-backed short film about the use of Marijuana

However it backfired as it just told young people about it and made it more popular.

This is America: Case study on Childish Gambino

The video has 460m views and counting. The song is commenting on the state of America and how black lives matter. The video has strong scenes of gun violence which is quite shocking to some but it is highlighting what real life for son lot of black people is like in America.

His unique dance moves and facial expressions are easily identifiable have turned into memes keeping the song relevant in social media - is he doing it as he's conscious of meme culture?

What is a meme?

An image that is widely recognised and easily remade - repacked and repurposed

The origin of the meme

Richard Dawking Quote

Thinking about memes

Do memes gave clear social, political, or historical origins?

-- Sometimes e.g. This is America, Right Wing coining the term snowflake

If not what makes them popular?

Why do we meme?

• Communication? Its quick, accessible and easy to use on the internet

• What do memes tell us about modern life, both on- and off line?

• That online media is saturated, we spend so much time online - are online media presences are getting bigger and bigger

The difficulty in explaining memes

Sara Cannizzaro's article 'Internet memes as internet signs: a semiotic view of digital culture’, 2016, argues for a clearer framework of internet-based memes.

Theorising memes

The book 'Memes to Movements by An Xiao Mina (2018) is about how the world's viral media is changing social protests and power.

"A global exploration of internet memes as agents of pop culture, politics, protest, and propaganda on- and offline, and how they will save or destroy us all"

#Hashtags

They have the power of turning ideas into massive movements

Movements, not Moments

Talks about the power of hashtags and how it got the Me Too movement going.

Viral Marketing

Sometimes things will go viral for a company and it is very good for business as way more people end up seeing their product than expected but sometimes this can be a bad thing for example:

Blare witch project — some of the actors faces went up as missing people and some people believed or wanted to believe (to enchase their experience of the film) that they were missing.