Memes Through The lens of Genre Analysis: Are Internet memes a genre?

1. Memes Through The lens of Genre Analysis: Are Internet memes a genre? From Sandy Hook To Facebook By: Bryan Lutz

2. Genre as Subject matter • Are there typical kinds content for the communication? • Is there a consistent or expected “tone” for the genre? • Is there a taxonomy that can be applied to classify the genre?

3. Genre as Forms And Conventions • Is there a particular or privileged medium for the genre? • Is there a common structure typical of the genre? • Are there rhetorical moves common across examples of the genre? • Is there (relative) stability in the forms and conventions of the genre? • Does the communication innovate or challenge the forms and conventions of the genre?

4. Genre as a Discourse Community • There are practices surrounding the the publication and validation of genres? • Is there a tradition behind the genre? Is there a literacy test? • Is the author connected with a larger community of writers? • What are the cultural values surrounding the genre? (Rabkinqtd. in Darsey) What cultural literacy is required? • How is the genre used, or purposed? Is it writing for expression, or aesthetic? For problem-solving? (Miller defines this as exigency contrasted with stable forms) • Are the systems of review or validation (accreditation/rejection) surrounding the genre?

5. Genre as Audience Expectations • Would an audience find this communication to be familiar? • What modes of communication are expected? • What literacies must the author possess to meet the audience’s expectations? • Is the communication accessible to the audience? • Does the genre compliment or “contradict perspectives”? (Rabkinqtd. in Darsey) • Is there an exploitation of audience? (Darsey)

6. Toward Understanding the Genre conventions of Political Internet memes • There is exigency in feelings of necessity for public deliberation and understanding • There is a common tone of ideas: “common sense” and “obviousness” • There is attribution to an author or authors, which may or may not be AATTP • The images are highly visual, and mostly weighted toward visual modes over written modes of communication • Most elements are horizontal, and the elements of the meme are either dichotomously, or trichotomously arranged • Argument by example

7. Questions: • Are Internet memes relatively stable enough in form and convention to be considered a genre? Or if stability is not necessary, then do these memes fit a common purpose? • Can I consider comments, likes, shares, re/appropriations, as part of the genre of memes? Or is this a separate phenomenon? • Who is the author of the meme? And do we need to know the author in order to determine internet memes as a genre? Would I need to show contrasting memes for comparative analysis? • Memes are often defined by the presence of an exigencies; they become a signifier that offers explanatory power for a observed phenomenon. Does the presence of exigency demand the classification of memes into genre? Or rhetoric?