Memes, menomes and LOLs: expression and reiteration through digital rhetorical devices

Abstract

The popularity of internet memes as communication items presents a series of research issues, including the characteristics of any connection with the original meme concept from biology. Also, an aspect that demands exploration is how these items serve a broader communicative purpose, as mechanisms for individuals or groups, and how they impact society as a whole. This paper presents a revision of perspectives on memes, and proposes to analyze them as rhetorical devices, devising a general interpretation of these items as menomes, and concentrating attention in a particular iteration, the image macro meme, which we propose to call LOL.

Keywords

• Memes
• digital narratives
• internet studies
• communities of practice