Q1. How Affordances and Infrastructure Affect Discourse Communities
Use as reference – Chapter 5: Commercially Motivated Strategic Messaging and Memes
Use as reference: Matalon, L. J. (2019). Modern problems require modern solutions: Internet memes and copyright. Tex. L. Rev., 98, 405.
Use as reference – Zannettou et al., “On the Origins of Memes by Means of Fringe Web CommunitiesLinks to an external site.”
For a programming discourse community, do the following analysis:
identify the main (or a prominent) platform/digital infrastructure that mediates communication in your chosen discourse community.
find relevant scholarship on the platform and/or network effects of that kind of infrastructure that helps you better understand how what is possible to do on the platform affects what the discourse community does on the platform.
explain that scholarship and how it helps you better understand the discourse community, identifying at least four examples of interactions that make more sense in light of your research.
Q2
Use as reference: Wiggins, Chapter 7: Identity.
Use as reference – Wiggins, Chapter 8: Internet Memes as a Form of … Art?
Use as reference- Lombard, “The spread of memes and social media: Online persona construction and offline lives in selected examples of film and television.” Links to an external site.
Topics: essentialism and constructivism, instability and construction of identity, resonance, Dada, surrealism, alienation, disillusionment, the readymade, elaboration, identity and memetics in discourse communities, outgroup construction, etc.
Identity and Memetics
Analyze identity construction and identity performance in your discourse community, identifying common patterns and tendencies. Provide at least three examples, and compare and contrast them.
Identify the ways identity and memetics interact in your discourse community. How does identity construction/performance affect memetic behaviors?
Provide at least three examples of memes that perform or engage with identity or persona in the discourse community.