A global exploration of the web meme as an agent of pop culture, politics, protest, and propaganda on and offline, and exactly how they will save or destroy us all

Internet memes are one of today’s most unexpectedly potent and creative forms, given birth to of digital tradition and — more and more — in dialogue with true to life. An image of protesters, for instance, in Ferguson, Missouri raising their hands within a gesture of resistance gets replicated eight thousand kilometers aside in Hong Kong, where dissidents are about Memes to Movements: How the World’s Most Viral Media Is certainly Changing Sociable Protest and Power fighting for voting privileges. Or a viral video of a presidential candidate-elect may become the impetus for a global march of ladies in red ‘pussy-hats,’ itself a viral meme become more active. In the long, winding road from grumpy kitty photos, internet memes have grown to be a central concept of modern protest.

Using public media-driven movements as her guide, technologist and digital media scholar An Xiao Mina unpacks the mechanics of memes and exactly how they operate to reinforce, amplify, and shape today’s politics. She finds how the ‘foolish’ stuff of meme tradition — the picture remixes, the selfies, the Youtube music and the pun-tastic hashtags — are fundamentally intertwined with how we find and affirm one another, direct focus on human rights and social justice problems, build narratives, and make tradition. Crucially, she reveals how in elements of the world where general public dissension is certainly downright dangerous, memes can belie contentious politics opinions that would incur drastic effects if portrayed outright. And further, she examines the continuing future of internet memes as tools in both anti-authoritarian intensifying circles and government propaganda.

Memes to Movements unveils the transformative power of memes, for better and even worse. In a period when our movements are growing more complex and open-ended, Mina brings a fresh and sharply innovative take on the media discourse.