Shyam Sharma and Maha Bali

Shyam and Maha wrote this post as a reflection on MakeCycle#2 where participants made their own memes as an assignment in #CLMOOC. -Ed

Imagine going to a party where you know everyone, but when the conversation begins, you are lost. You dig out your cell phone to look up the definition of what everyone is talking about, going on to skim through a Wikipedia entry. You also ask one of your friends to explain one of the sample images that you found on the web. But the more you learn about the subject, the more you struggle to understand what everyone is saying.

One of us felt something like the above when first reading about memes as the focus of the second week of clmooc, a connected learning community/course that we participated in. Having lived in the US longer where he also studied popular culture in graduate school, Shyam knew about memes as an internet phenomenon. But for Maha, the subject was new.

Derived from Greek “mimesis” (imitation), the word “meme” refers to “an idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture” (according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary). The Wikipedia entries for “meme” and “internet meme” also highlight that memes act as units “for carrying cultural ideas, symbols, or practices.” Indeed, memes are understood as cultural analogue to “genes” in biology in that they “self-replicate, mutate, and respond to selective pressures.” Thus, memes can be hard to understand for anyone outside of particular cultures and contexts. Continue reading Memes, Contexts, Connected Learning →