Analyzing the Influence of Meme Culture as a Medium of Freedom of

Speech

Sonali

In his book The Selfish Gene, published in 1976, Richard Dawkins coined the word ‘meme” to

describe how culture is passed down over the generations (Popova, 2013). Memes have been

modes of communication that are circulated by the means of social media in the form of images,

audio, and videos (Rintel, 2014). These visual messages that once made us laugh about our

school friendships or what our elders expected from us, have now really gone beyond what is

just humor and have taken a scary turn (Kurutz 2020).

A lot of meme creators have now taken the heavy responsibility of informing their audiences

about the issues prevailing around the world but in their own altered ways (Donovan, 2019). The

news information supplied by these memes has mostly resulted in the development of unique

narratives among the youngsters. And because of this, a major source of getting news

information for our nation’s youth is social media. The young audience depends majorly on these

internet memes to get information about what is going around the world.

As a result, anything they read here is true, and if they try to learn more about the topic and

disagree, they dismiss it as a fake. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram along with Whatsapp have thus

become the platform for the bulk circulation of news and these memes. (Hoey, 2018)

But despite all this, memes have come a long way in proving themselves to be a major mode of

expression amongst the people, who are creating them and also those who are circulating and

sharing them. Memes have an unusual capacity to communicate ideas to large audiences in the

loud environment that has become political discourse on the Internet. People seek non-official
innovative material that is not linked with the commercial tactics and political propaganda they

are exposed to on a regular basis since they are aware of their exposure to exploitation on the

Internet. Low-cost, non-profit, and inherently populist, memes appear to offer a response to this

demand. They don't aim to discover "the truth," but rather to appreciate the diversity of truths

(Develle, 2017).

The study's aim will be to see how memes that circulate on the internet affect young people's

knowledge consumption. The research also explains how disinformation circulation across social

media leads to the possession of unnecessarily false information by these young people.

Alongside, discovering the power these images hold as a way of expression.

The research, therefore, involves understanding how and what methods are being used to make

these memes impactful. For this, the research seeks to look into the two sides of the spectrum i.e.

the creators and the audience using reliable methods to study them.

References

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