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Metadata categories of World War II memes, sorted by frequency. Source of data: Lurkomor'e. Data collected on 22 October 2013.
Source publication
The article explores interactions between digital media and cultural memory in post-Soviet countries by focusing on internet memes related to World War II. It introduces the concept of historical internet memes, which are groups of digital content units associated with a historical event or a personality. The article uses a selection of World War I...
Contexts in source publication
Context 1
... on an exploration of Lurkomor'e categories ( fig. 4), I found that these elements of metadata provide a number of insights that concern the angle from which memes are present- ed. The easiest case is provided by thematic categories-such as Politics or War-that briefly describe an area to which a particular meme belongs. Other categories can point either to the emotional load of a meme-for instance, the Hate category, which unites memes that are presented in a negative way-or a meme's habitat-one example is the Realworld category, which unites memes that are presented as influential beyond the internet. A small number of categories define the purpose of a particular meme: for instance, the Jokes category includes http://www.digitalicons.org/issue13/mykola-makhortykh/ humorous memes, while the Article-detector category covers memes of a highly provocative ...
Context 2
... with the exception of a few problematic cases, the collective tagging of memes on Lurkomor'e is able to provide a basic understanding of how the community interprets and presents a particular meme to the encyclopaedia's audience. The distribution of thematic cat- egories (Fig. 4) indicates that views on World War II inside the Lurkomor'e community are at least partially determined by recognised patterns of World War II commemoration. One example is the 'national affiliation' of World War II memes: two of the largest groups are formed by the Germany-and USSR-related memes, whereas memes related to the USA and Japan represent a clear minority. Such distribution reproduces a pattern from the Soviet cul- tural memory, where the main emphasis was placed on the struggle between the Soviet Un- ion and Germany (Gudkov ...
Citations
... In this context, the concept of a meme was redefined by Shifman (2013, p. 177) as a "group of digital content units sharing common characteristics of content, form, and/or stance" which are created with awareness of each other and circulated by Internet users. Since then, multiple typologies of memes have been proposed based on their visual formats (e.g., memes based on still images; Shifman, 2014) or the interpreted functionality of the memes (e.g., memes reinforcing or challenging a particular narrative; Makhortykh, 2015). However, the majority of Internet memes to date still follow a conventional format of an image accompanied by a short text that offers additional cues for interpreting the meme's meaning. ...
Hate speech manifests itself in different social contexts, such as political debates, artistic expression, professional sports, or work environments. However, the rapid development of digital technologies, and especially of social media platforms, has created additional challenges to understanding this extreme act. This book explores the nature of hate speech on social media. Readers will find chapters written by 21 authors from 18 universities or research centers. It includes researchers from 11 countries, prioritizing a diversity of approaches from the Global North and Global South – Brazil, Cyprus, Ethiopia, Germany, Nigeria, Portugal, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, and the USA. The analyses herein involve the realities in an even larger number of countries, given the transnational approach of some of these studies.
... Their sources were Nazi Germany and the Middle Ages presented with contemporary highly appealing aesthetics to the supporters of neo-Nazism and other far right variants. Other researchers have analyzed memes to study Russian and Ukrainian nationalist narratives (Pavlyuk 2019), as well as the memory of the Second World War of the former USSR and its role in building national identity (Kalkina 2020;Makhortykh 2015). The study hereinafter is related to those of the authors mentioned, in the sense that it shows the purpose of memes in a complex political context, when there is a need to resolve a topic linked to the memory of an anti-democratic past in the current political reality. ...
This article analyses the social reaction to Francisco Franco's exhumation from his burial place in the Valley of the Fallen at the end of 2019. This decision was taken by virtue of compliance with the so-called Historical Memory Law approved in 2007 and generated a great social debate. Apart from opinions in favour and against that decision coming from the political spectrum of the left and right, respectively, we observed a new attitude, that of humour, present in tweets and memes. By analyzing a collection of memes that circulated in Twitter and WhatsApp groups, our research shows that the new media have brought in content and symbolism that ridicule the late dictator, trivialise the treatment given to the "Caudillo" [Leader] of Spain for nearly four decades and contribute to an uninhibited interpretation of memory policies.
... Their sources were Nazi Germany and the Middle Ages presented with contemporary highly appealing aesthetics to the supporters of neo-Nazism and other far right variants. Other researchers have analyzed memes to study Russian and Ukrainian nationalist narratives (Pavlyuk 2019), as well as the memory of the Second World War of the former USSR and its role in building national identity (Kalkina 2020;Makhortykh 2015). The study hereinafter is related to those of the authors mentioned, in the sense that it shows the purpose of memes in a complex political context, when there is a need to resolve a topic linked to the memory of an anti-democratic past in the current political reality. ...
This article analyses the social reaction to Francisco Franco’s exhumation from his burial place in the Valley of the Fallen at the end of 2019. This decision was taken by virtue of compliance with the so-called Historical Memory Law approved in 2007 and generated a great social debate. Apart from opinions in favour and against that decision coming from the political spectrum of the left and right, respectively, we observed a new attitude, that of humour, present in tweets and memes. By analyzing a collection of memes that circulated in Twitter and WhatsApp groups, our research shows that the new media have brought in content and symbolism that ridicule the late dictator, trivialise the treatment given to the “Caudillo” [Leader] of Spain for nearly four decades and contribute to an uninhibited interpretation of memory policies.
... ‚polyvocality' (Milner, 2016) digitaler und insbesondere Sozialer Medien in be sonderem Maße. Dennoch sind Memes bislang kaum hinsichtlich ihres Potenzials für die Beteiligung an der Konstruktion von Geschichte und Erinnerung untersucht worden (Makhortykh, 2015); ebenso haben historische Referenzen in Memes als Mittel des politischen Aktivismus kaum gesonderte Aufmerksamkeit erfahren, son dern sind eher vereinzelt in großflächigeren Memeanalysen als ein Reservoir, aus dem sich Memes speisen, hervorgetreten (Schmitt, Harles & Rieger, 2020). ...
Zusammenfassung: Der Beitrag beschäftigt sich damit, wie historische Persön lichkeiten und Ereignisse als Ressource für das populärkulturelle Genre der Memes in digitalen Medienumgebungen genutzt und für politische Zwecke instrumenta lisiert werden. Auf Basis einer qualitativen Inhaltsanalyse von über 150 Memes von vier sich als Satiregruppen bezeichnenden weit links und weit rechtsstehen den Gruppierungen in Sozialen Medien identifizieren wir fünf Strategien des Ein satzes historischer Referenzen in Memes. Diese dienen 1) dem Revisionismus bzw. der (Neu)Interpretation historischer Ereignisse, 2) der (Neu)Bewertung histori scher Persönlichkeiten, 3) der Verharmlosung historischer Ereignisse durch deren Bezug zu aktuellen Ereignissen oder umgekehrt 4) der Dramatisierung aktueller Ereignisse durch deren Bezug zu vergangenen Ereignissen und schließlich 5) der Artikulation radikaler politischer Argumente und deren Legitimation. Lizenz: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CCBY 4.0)
... A growing body of research examines the role of memes as a form of memory mediatization, including the ways memes contextualize the current events by relating them to the past and how they use memories' affective potential to facilitate public mobilization (see, for instance, Makhortykh, 2015;Boudana et al., 2017;Smit et al., 2018;Khoruzhenko, 2020). Often, this meme-based mediatization involves the reinterpretation of existing mnemonic narratives and the promotion of new interpretations of the past, as in the case of memes exposing the history of systematic injustice in the US (Smit et al., 2018) or downplaying the scale of the state-sponsored violence in the Soviet Union (Makhortykh, 2015). ...
... A growing body of research examines the role of memes as a form of memory mediatization, including the ways memes contextualize the current events by relating them to the past and how they use memories' affective potential to facilitate public mobilization (see, for instance, Makhortykh, 2015;Boudana et al., 2017;Smit et al., 2018;Khoruzhenko, 2020). Often, this meme-based mediatization involves the reinterpretation of existing mnemonic narratives and the promotion of new interpretations of the past, as in the case of memes exposing the history of systematic injustice in the US (Smit et al., 2018) or downplaying the scale of the state-sponsored violence in the Soviet Union (Makhortykh, 2015). ...
The rise of user-generated content (UGC), such as internet memes and amateur videos, enables new possibilities for mediatization of the past. However, these possibilities can facilitate not only more diverse and less top-down engagements with memory, but also lead to its trivialization and distortion of historical facts. The latter concerns are particularly pronounced in the case of memories about mass atrocities (e.g. the Holocaust), where online media are often used to promote denialism and attack the victims’ dignity. To better understand the relationship between UGC and memory mediatization, we examine a selection of internet memes dealing with Anne Frank, an iconic Holocaust victim. Using a combination of inductive content analysis and close reading, we identify four classes of Anne Frank memes: (1) ad hominems; (2) deniers; (3) trivializers; and (4) thought provokers. Our findings demonstrate the multi-faceted functionality of memes, which are used not only to trivialize Holocaust memory, but also to reinforce canonical narratives about Anne Frank, and highlight the dependency of memes on other forms of memory mediatization, thus raising questions about the interrelations between UGC and institutionalized forms of remembrance.
... A common form of online trivialization is the use of Holocaust references for producing entertaining content, such as Internet memes (Makhortykh, 2015;Sanchez, 2020). While such content can be viewed as less offensive than revisionist and antisemitic claims, it diminishes the importance of the Holocaust by normalizing it and humanizing perpetrators (Rosenfeld, 2014). ...
By filtering and ranking information, search engines shape how individuals perceive both the present and past events. However, these information curation mechanisms are prone to malperformance that can misinform their users. In this article, we examine how search malperformance can influence representation of traumatic past by investigating image search outputs of six search engines in relation to the Holocaust in English and Russian. Our findings indicate that besides two common themes - commemoration and liberation of camps - there is substantial variation in visual representation of the Holocaust between search engines and languages. We also observe several instances of search malperformance, including content propagating antisemitism and Holocaust denial, misattributed images, and disproportionate visibility of specific Holocaust aspects that might result in its distorted perception by the public.
... Memes' affective potential is often amplified by creative remixing of cultural symbols, including the ones related to the past (Smit, Heinrich, and Broersma 2018). Such mnemonic intertextuality increases engagement with the issues referred via memes and influences public perceptions of the past by reinterpreting it for the sake of the present (Makhortykh 2015). ...
... However, memes can not only refer to consensual/hegemonic mnemonic narratives, but also utilize antagonistic interpretations of the past, such as the ones dealing with racial inequity in the US (Smit, Heinrich, and Broersma 2018) or political repressions in the Soviet Union (Makhortykh 2015). Such memes can facilitate collective identity-making by evoking the sense of unity through the references to injustices suffered in the past and stirring affect to stigmatize political opponents via negative historical images (e.g. the above mentioned Nazi trope). ...
... The articulation of the past via memes initiates a dialogue with existing cultural texts which codify the societal perception of the past (Laineste and Voolaid 2017, 44). Such mnemonic intertextuality not only offers a new perspective on the relationship between the past and the present (Silvestri 2018), but also can challenge existing memory narratives (Makhortykh 2015). In some cases, it can also devoid existing mnemonic texts of their meaning by creating 'an intertextual incongruity' (Boudana, Frosh, and Cohen 2017, 16), where the affective potential of the original item is negated by the changes made to it. ...
The article discusses interactions between emotions, memory and user-generated digital content in the context of online protest campaigns. Using as a case study anti-government protest in Ukraine (2013–2014) and Venezuela (2019), it compares how pro- and anti-government communities use visuality and memoricity of internet memes to stir affect and promote their political agendas. It shows that despite differences in the use of visual content elements, Ukrainian and Venezuelan memes have similar political functionality. In both countries, pro-government memes usually rely on simple emotional messages for propaganda/polarization purposes, whereas anti-government memes produce more nuanced statements used as a form of creative criticism/coping mechanism. These political functions are often amplified by memoricity, which is used to stigmatize regime’s opponents by pro-government communities and to legitimize protesters’ demands by anti-government communities.
... That culture, Milner (2013) explains, often works at the expense of core identity categories such as race and gender to afford participatory collectives the opportunity for detached, dissociated amusement at others' distress (cf. Makhortykh, 2015;Phillips, 2016). In such a culture of lulz, much of the humor found in as well as produced and shared by online collectives is willfully absurd and offensive. ...
... History is often used to project an idealized past that must be defended or restored-in the case of far-right groups, via conservative, restorative, anti-liberal politics. World War II (Makhortykh, 2015) is central to many historical references, albeit not such that, for instance, the radical right emphasizes the Third Reich, which would be too obvious and trivial. On the contrary, memes shared by right-wing populists frequently refer to the values and virtues that Allied soldiers represented in their fight to free Europe, now claimed to lie on the altar of liberal politics. ...
This volume assembles a wide range of perspectives on populism and the media, bringing together various disciplinary and theoretical approaches, authors and examples from different continents and a wide range of topical issues. The chapters discuss the contexts of populist communication, communication by populist actors, different types of populist messages (populist communication in traditional and new media, populist criticism of the media, populist discourses related to different topics, etc.), the effects and consequences of populist communication, populist media policy and anti-populist discourses. The contributions synthesise existing research on this subject, propose new approaches to it or present new findings on the relationship between populism and the media. With contibutions by Caroline Avila, Eleonora Benecchi, Florin Büchel, Donatella Campus, María Esperanza Casullo, Nicoleta Corbu, Ann Crigler, Benjamin De Cleen, Sven Engesser, Nicole Ernst, Frank Esser, Nayla Fawzi, Jana Goyvaerts, André Haller, Kristoffer Holt, Christina Holtz-Bacha, Marion Just, Philip Kitzberger, Magdalena Klingler, Benjamin Krämer, Katharina Lobinger, Philipp Müller, Elena Negrea-Busuioc, Carsten Reinemann, Christian Schemer, Anne Schulz, Christian Schwarzenegger, Torgeir Uberg Nærland, Rebecca Venema, Anna Wagner, Martin Wettstein, Werner Wirth, Dominique Stefanie Wirz
... Only a few studies exist on how historical images are transformed online (Boudana et al., 2017;Makhortykh, 2015), as contemporary images receive the most research attention (Mortensen, 2017;Neumayer and Rossi, 2018). Granting attention to historical images is important; they not only mislead the public about the current state of affairs but also challenge the very idea of the internet as an educational space and are misleading about history itself. ...
This article analyses how pre-internet historical images of atrocity are used on social media in the era of misinformation, disinformation and a rising radical right. Combining scholarship in cultural sociology, media studies and communication, and history, the article introduces two concepts: image substitute and visual fake history. Image substitute is an image of an historical event from a particular time or place, which is used to represent a tragedy from a different decade or geographical location. Visual fake history is a combination of truth, misinformation and disinformation about past events through reliance on historical images as image substitutes and accompanying narratives. These concepts are developed empirically on the basis of images representing the Ukrainian famine of 1932–1933, circulated on Instagram under #holodomor between 2012–2018. It is shown that the Ukrainian famine was visualized through images of Soviet and South Asian famines and the Holocaust, which were embedded in anti-communist and anti-Semitic narratives.
The goal of this paper is to study the forms and uses of the past in digitally-created images that are reproduced in virtual spaces using as an example the famous painting Washington crossing the Delaware (1851) by Emanual Leutze and the subsequent changes and adaptations of this work of art. Based on the latest studies of visual culture, cultural memory and previous literature on the subject matter, we will analyse a case study: digital and virtual images created around Donald Trump's presidency and the memories of the country's war of independence. This paper will aim to define the ways in which new media relate to and use the past as well as to consider those formats as valid sources for understanding the past, as well as active spaces of discussion and debate about past times and their use in the present.
