1.1 General Introduction
Social media and memes have become part of our everyday lives. Every day, thousands of digital memes are created and shared, spreading laughter and humor, as well as information all over the modern world. Social media function as a new tool for communication, a source for information and a space for discussion and entertainment. Both, social media and digital memes offer a wide range of possibilities to act out one’s creativity and acquire knowledge. The Cambridge Dictionary in fact defines social media as
“websites and computer programs that allow people to communicate and share
information on the internet using a computer or mobile phone” (Cambridge Dictionary b, n.d.)
There are numerous social media platforms. Some of the most popular ones are Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok and Instagram. IG has gained huge power and success over the past 10 years, having become one of the most famous social media platforms. According to the website Statista (2021), IG is amongst the top 5 of the most popular social networks worldwide.
The statistic’s ranking relies on the number of active users as of January 2021. IG results on the 5th place with 1,22 billion users According to the Cambridge Dictionary, Instagram is
“the name of a social media service for taking, changing,
and sharing photographs and video” (Cambridge Dictionary, n.d.)
What becomes clear is that the focus on IG is on pictures and videos. For this reason, this social media platform appears to be the perfect storage and distribution channel for digital memes, which are comprised of digitally shared photos and videos. Merriam-Webster Dictionary distinguishes between two definitions of meme:
1) “an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture”
(Merriam-Webster, n.d.)
2) “an amusing or interesting item (such as a captioned picture or video) or genre of items that is spread widely online especially through social media” (Merriam-Webster, n.d.) The first definition refers to the original meaning of the term meme, introduced by Richard Dawkins. Merriam-Webster cites Richard Dawkins, who said
“Memes (discrete units of knowledge, gossip, jokes and so on) are to culture what genes are to life. Just as biological evolution is driven by the survival of the fittest genes in the gene pool, cultural evolution may be driven by the most successful memes.” (Merriam-Webster, n.d.)
The second definition explains the term from the digital point of view, referring in fact to memes on IG and other social media. Again, Merriam-Webster includes a quote by Anastasia Thrift, saying
“The grumpy cat meme frowned its way onto the Internet in September 2012 and never turned its dissatisfied head back. Since then, the image of the cranky cat has grown more and more popular in direct proportion to appearing less and less impressed by fame.”
(Merriam-Webster, n.d.)
and thereby giving an example of a highly popular Internet meme, the grumpy cat, which shows how consistent and durable a meme and its fame can be.
As already mentioned, social media and memes are something that almost everyone who has access to digital devices- from Generation Z and young adults to increasingly more people from older generations also- sees and is confronted with on a daily basis. This raises the question, whether they can be integrated into lessons at school as well and whether they can promote language learning or the acquisition of sociocultural competence and knowledge.
1.2 Personal reasons for choosing this topic
Ever since I started experiencing digital meme culture around ten years ago, I always enjoyed their constant presence on social media. My first personal experience with memes was on Facebook and pictured Rage Comics, for example, the “Fuuuuuuuuu” comic and other stickman comics. Over the years, my personal use of Facebook drastically decreased and I started focusing on IG, as many other teenagers and young adults. I found interest in IG not only because it has become one of the most frequently used and most popular social media platform worldwide (Statista, 2021b), always offering new creative features, but also because it gave meme culture a chance to expand on a completely new global level. Besides my passion for social media and memes, numerous other motives lead to my choice of my thesis’ topic: Firstly, I am very passionate about teaching. My internships helped me realize that I had chosen the right direction and the right job for myself. Secondly, humor and laughter play and important role in my life. I live true to the motto “A day without a smile or a laughter is a wasted day”. In my opinion, humor has the power to improve life quality and connect people and spread feelings of joy and happiness. Moreover, I think that humor does not only make our quotidian private lives lighter and more positive, but it can also facilitate and enhance the learning process. As we all know, laughter results in a high release of endorphins and causes relaxation and an all-around positive feeling. Therefore, I believe that the power of humor, laughter and positivity can and should not only be used for private purposes, but also in education and hence enable a
more enjoyable learning atmosphere. Lastly, I am interested in photography and video making and that is basically what both, IG and memes are fundamentally about. IG gives me the opportunity to look at memes, memes make me every single day and certainly also millions of other young people appreciate and support this new digital meme culture. Therefore, the only question that remained for me personally was the following: why not combine all three of my above-mentioned personal passions and make a thesis topic out of it? So that’s what I did. I am very grateful to be able to write about a topic I am very passionate about because it is both, informative as well as humorous. So what better way is there to teach and learn about certain topics than through humor? The importance lies in understanding and realizing where the fun ends and where the seriousness behind the humorous pictures and videos starts and where the potential for learning exists. In my opinion, as a teacher, it is our job to remind our students to reflect critically on the content they see online, as well as in real life. Content may be ironic, sarcastic, satirizing or funny and it is absolutely fine to laugh about all these contents as long as the humor is not derogatory or demeaning of others. One must also bear in mind the message behind these content as well and reflect on the potential for learning.
1.3 Thesis purpose and outline
This thesis aims at exploring the purpose and the role of memes and social media in society and finding out, whether they can contribute to the acquisition of linguistic features - such as vocabulary, phrases or grammar – in the language classroom, and also whether they can support the acquisition of sociocultural knowledge. The thesis is structured as follows:
Chapter 2, which is literature review, which focuses firstly on the definition and explanation of essential the key terms Instagram and memes. Next, the distinction between the original term meme and the new, modern version of this term are highlighted. In addition, the difference between a meme and a viral meme will briefly be discussed. Furthermore, the chapter focuses on meme culture and how memes aid the representation of cultures, society and events. Finally, the chapter discusses the function and use of memes in education and in the classroom.
Chapter 3 describes the methodological design of my research. After discussing the research question and the research’s purpose, I will further explain the approach of this empirical study, provide information about the ethical aspects, give reasons for choosing this study and declare why I decided to proceed in that particular way. Furthermore, the chapter includes a personal categorization of each meme that has been used in the study, as well as a brief description of every meme. Chapter 3 is concluded with personal ideas and intentions in regards to the memes’
functions in learning and teaching, in other words how this meme could be used for language learning or the expansion of sociocultural competence
In Chapter 4 the findings of the research are presented. In other words, it focuses on the analysis of the data and lists the study’s results.
Chapter 5 compares my research’s results to existing literature and hypothesizes on possible reasons for the results. This chapter mainly focuses on the illustration of the accordance and divergence between existing literature and my study’s results and discussion about the findings’
possible meaning.
Finally, Chapter 6 presents a summary of the study’s findings, practical implications for educators, as well as limitations of the present study and implications for future research.
Concluding, it highlights the shortcomings of my empirical study and suggests possible ideas for future research and investigations on this increasingly discussed and interesting topic.