Many people who use the internet are familiar with internet memes and can likely visualize one. Envisioning an internet meme may also cause someone to chuckle to themselves. Even if an individual does not actively seek out or share internet memes, these sometimes comical images, videos and posts are ubiquitous. Internet memes are units of culture created and shared digitally (Shifman 2014). In 2017, the Digital Future Report concluded that Americans spend nearly 11 hours every day interacting with or watching content on the screen of a computer, phone, TV or gaming console (Cole 2017). It is no longer a question of if Americans or how much use the internet, but instead it is a question of how its usage affects their daily lives and communication styles.
Due to the pervasiveness of internet memes their content, virality and impact on culture have been researched from sociological, media studies and anthropological perspectives. Understanding how individuals interpret internet memes as linguistic symbols from an anthropological perspective reveals that internet memes are more than online jokes. Internet memes are snapshots of contemporary pop and political culture used to share political messages and commentary within digital communities and in real life (Davis et al. 2016, Mondoza-Denton 2017 and Chow 2019). Internet meme’s democratic power, amateur participation and the ability to effectively discuss ideas through comedic images gives them great political potential (Carter 2013, Westfall 2018 and Bebic and Volrevic 2018). Political and applied anthropologists have studied how cultural groups and social movements use humorous internet memes to communicate collective ideologies (Westfall 2018 and Haynes 2019). However, there is a lack of research that seeks to understand how individuals interpret messages from internet memes. Shedding light on the emic, or insider, perspective of meme interpretation can broaden
anthropology’s understanding of how internet memes are used to communicate. Using the photo elicitation method, 127 undergraduate students at Fort Lewis College in Durango, CO were asked to describe and interpret internet memes used by activists in support of the Global Climate Strike, the environmental social movement comprised of youth around the world. The responses were analyzed to form an emergent thesis about the efficacy of using internet memes to communicate political messages. Content analysis of the participants’ responses to Global Climate Strike memes determined that humor, familiarity and age are three factors that influence how people interpret political memes. Researching the symbolic usage of internet memes is crucial to better understanding them as a form of communication in both online communities and the real world.
