From My Medium to Your Message: Internet Memes and the Political Economies of Fun

• In Event: The Popular Cultures of Digital Photography: Practices, Aesthetics, Institutions

Abstract

Internet memes provide powerful case studies for what we might call the ‘political economies of fun.’ In this paper, I consider viral memes featuring appropriated personal photos, analyzing the space where three versions of reality dialogue: 1) the version originally imagined by photographers; 2) the version created by everyday users of the internet; and 3) the version where questions of ethics reside. Digging into the politics of fun, I ask: Who is the subject of these memes, and who is their object? What happens within institutions like corporations and governments when these memes are liked, forwarded, mined for metadata, and/or or subject to surveillance? To help, I engage with three ways of thinking about photography in new media settings, including Limor Shifman’s work on meme structures, Paul Frosh’s thinking on the phenomenology of the ‘gestural image’, and my own work on new media’s ‘politics of the grab’.

Bio:
Theresa M. Senft teaches at New York University. Her books include Camgirls: Celebrity & Community in the Age of Social Networks, and Routledge Handbook of Social Media (co-editor). She is now co-editing a “selfies” section for IJOC, and writing a monograph: Fame to Fifteen: Social Media and the Micro-Celebrity Moment. Website: www.terrisenft.net

Author

• Theresa M Senft, New York U