I became involved with meme scholarship in 2010 when I conducted an audience study of LOLcat enthusiasts. As a result, I have been referred to as a “meme scholar,” although I don’t necessarily know if that’s quite the case. It is certainly true that I have studied memes, and I do consider “internet culture” broadly […]
Believe it or not, it’s an exciting time to be an internet meme scholar. Sure, it’s been three years since 4chan’s founder, Christopher ‘moot’ Poole, lamented the death of the “internet culture” that brought the term internet meme and its early exemplars to prominence. Sure, it’s been over a year since The Daily Dot—a sort […]
The collection of essays set to roll out on Culture Digitally over the next month began its life as a pair of panels spanning the last two annual meetings of the International Communication Association. At the 2014 meetings in Seattle, Washington and the 2015 meetings in San Juan, Puerto Rico, various configurations of the contributors in […]
Zizi Papacharissi‘s book Affective Publics: Sentiment, Technology and Politics was selected by the Human Communication and Technology Division (HCTD), of the National Communication Association as the winner of the 2015 HCTD Outstanding Book Award. In her book she writes: “I understand affective publics as networked publics that are mobilized and connected (or disconnected) through expressions […]
We’re proud to announce the special issue of Social Media & Society, vol. 1 no. 2, curated by and drawing its contributions from Culture Digitally. Culture Digitally and Social Media & Society are, we like to think, cut from the same fabric. For five years now, we have endeavored to gather scholars and practitioners who […]