Internet Meme: A Virtual Visual Artefact of Digital Visual Culture

Case Study: 2018 - 2020

Abstract

The internet is one of information, business and entertainment source to date. It’s also the apparatus for communication. Thus, the internet become one virtual world, it possessed almost the same mechanism as the real world, and subsequently rising new culture. One of the internet cultures is internet meme. Recent study conducted on internet meme conclude that the internet meme is another way of communication and the sample of the study is fairly obsolete. This study is an endeavor of new approach on internet meme, seeing it as a visual culture and phenomenon rather than mere communication phenomenon. This research also seeks to provide a novelty of understanding about internet memes. Three samples of internet meme were taken, ranging from 2018 to 2020. Samples is analyzed using visual methodology by looking at 3 sites of the sample image: production, image, and audience. Each of the sites contain 3 modalities: technology, compositionality, and social which will be elaborated through this study. The result of the study is that the internet meme can be a visual representation of important events from the history presented in more amusing way by people, although the communication aspect is still attached. The internet meme is also an attempt to respond an important historical event of their time in an amusing way.