I love memes. The idea that a message can be conveyed in an agreed upon picture and a short slogan is very appealing. So much so that I once argued, albeit tong firmly in cheek, that memes are a very modern form of poetry. Granted, it is hardly Paradise Lost but the rise of internet mem culture is illustrative of the participatory culture that Henry Jenkins referred to on his blog (Jenkins, 2006), whereby media consumers have evolved into media participants.
Another big academic player, Richard Dawkins, was the first to define the word meme, when he proposed that memes are the transmission of “ideas, tunes, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches (Dawkins, 2006). It is an apt description then for the rapid manner in which ideas are spread via internet memes but a meme is not limited to a captioned photo or a grumpy cat. Perhaps the best definition that I can find is “a piece of digital content that spreads quickly around the web in various iterations and becomes a shared cultural experience” (Shifman, 2014). Thus, Gangnam Style, grumpy cat and Pepe become part of our shared cultural experience, whether we like it or not.
So how can teachers use and develop memes? I’m fond of saying the following to my classes “I’m down with kids, or in with kids, or up with the kids…or whatever preposition the kids are using these days? Kids still use prepositions don’t they!?” It is a lame joke based on the fact that teachers cannot be anything but ‘daggy.’ However, to extend the joke I developed the following memes as part of my classroom management strategy:
These are as lame as my jokes and were met with a groan rather than a laugh but this was exactly the response I was hoping for. It is important that teachers connect somehow with the generation they are teaching and it is more often than not humour that makes this connection. As Dunbar (2012) states: “when teachers use humour, students see the classroom as more informal, supportive and innovative than when teachers do not use humour.” Memes are not poetry, but they are useful tool for teachers
Works Cited
Dawkins, R. (2006). The Selfish Gene (30th anniversay edition). London: Oxford University Press.
Dunbar, N. (2012). Humour use in power-differentiated interactions. Humor, 25(4), 469-489.
Jenkins, H. (2006, June 19). Welcome to Convergence Culture. Retrieved from Confessions of an Aca-fan: The official weblog of Henry Jenkins: http://henryjenkins.org/2006/06/welcome_to_convergence_culture.html
Shifman, L. (2014). Memes in Digital Culture. Boston: MIT Publishing.
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