Meme Creator Culture Production Arena on Facebook

Abstract

Ace Anthem Universe is a meme community that focuses on producing video content. One way to distribute this content is by the Ace Anthem Universe fan page. The meme creators can assume as cultural intermediaries because they can construct tastes for their consumers. However, it requires cultural, economic, social, and symbolic capital. This research aims to analyze the struggle of meme creators in the Ace Anthem Universe community to attain cultural intermediaries. This research uses the virtual ethnography method. The sampling technique used is purposive sampling. The data collection techniques use participant observation, interviews, and virtually studying cultural artifacts. Informants of this study are meme creators of the Ace Anthem Universe community. This study uses the concepts of habitus, arena, capital, and cultural intermediaries from Pierre Bourdieu. The results of this study explain that to penetrate the arena of meme culture, creators need smartphones as economic capital. In addition, knowledge as cultural capital is indispensable to obtaining symbolic and social capital in this arena. The capital obtained by meme creators becomes their capital to gain legitimacy as a cultural intermediary.

Keywords

• cultural production
• habitus
• cultural capital
• memes
• cultural intermediaries