MEMES AND SOCIETY: HOW CULTURE SHAPES AND IS SHAPED BY INTERNET MEMES IN SINGAPORE

Abstract

This project aims to address current weaknesses in the literature on Internet memes by exploring in detail how society and culture influence and are in turn influenced by their emergence and spread among young adults in Singapore. Four focus groups were conducted among 24 young Singaporean adults aged 18 to 25. Findings show how culturally-situated processes in the circuit of culture shape participants’ engagement with local Internet memes in Singapore, in turn challenging existing individual and technological explanations for the formation and circulation of online memes. In addition, present knowledge on the role and impact Internet memes have on resistance in culture was also problematised because participants show how Internet memes simultaneously reproduce powerful systems of values and meanings in culture. This complicates present linear analyses of Internet memes as resistance against power, because I find resistance is often formulated within power. Finally, findings appear to support the circuit of culture as a viable theory to study Internet memes because it enables a fuller discussion of their rise and circulation in light of complex and interacting processes of meaning-making in a specific culture. In all, my findings could pave a new direction of research among scholars to investigate Internet memes in terms of the circulation and exchange of meanings in culture.