Memetic Communication Syllabus

Memetic Communication Syllabus

One of the more consistent requests for a class from my students was a course on memes and their impact on culture and society. Most of the students would share gifs and memes via our Slack channels. There are times that I am a little lost in the visual language, but I quickly catch-up via looking up what I don’t know on Know Your Meme. This almost encyclopedic knowledge of my students proves to me that they have some media literacy and cultural capital with regards to communicating via these units of information and knowledge. The kicker for me was that they wanted a deeper understanding of why we use this form of communication in our daily lives.

I want to make the course something beyond a simple discussion of memes in the classroom setting. I felt that there was proper research out in the field that used visual rhetoric, applied communication theory, and interdisciplinary approaches for analysis and assessment of this complex field of study.

This post represents my process and rationales for the decisions that were central to the overall design of my syllabus for “Memetic Communication.” Step zero in my course design is crafting a course description that I feel gets to the root of a problematic of study or presents a worthwhile educational experience for all stakeholders in the class.

Course Description

My course description for Memetic Communication is:

This course will focus on culture as communication via the smallest unit of expression, the meme. The term itself comes from Richard Dawkins in 1976 to describe some of the most basic constructions of culture within society, like stereotypes within television shows, wallpaper patterns, and even the form factors of kitchen appliances. The structure of the course will be in the form of the analysis of memetic communication (using the more modern definition of the term) using visual communication theory, mass communication theory, and interdisciplinary approaches to attempt to deconstruct memes and understand how to effectively communicate in the often noisy arena of communication known as the Internet.”

I want to spell out the history of the term meme in the description as I felt it added the proper ethos to the course of study and allowed me to examine historical components within the class schedule and readings. Also, I thought it was essential to lay out the epistemological structure for the course in the description in the form of theory set as it might help set the expectations for how the class will function during the semester.

Course Objectives

My first step usually when designing a class would be to apply my course learning objective and assessment analysis (CLOA) to the class syllabus. I use Bloom’s Taxonomy to craft a series of learning objectives that are specific enough to address the charge for the course. The main reason I still use this model of education is that create statements that lead to useful formative and summative evaluation tools. I usually try to have six learning objectives to meet the six levels of categorical hierarchy in Bloom (remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating).

The next step would be to use the Heartland Area Education Agency (1992) and Reschly and Ysseldyke’s (1997) models for assessment in the classroom based on the objectives created by Bloom’s categorical hierarchy. The Heartland AEA modes of assessment are exams (standardized, end-of-unit, or teacher-made), communication (individual conferences, small-group discussions, or interviews), observations with rubrics (classroom interactions, student participation, or student involvement), performance (debate, written reports, experiments, speeches, mediated work, demonstrations, drawing, or projects), or combination of those previous four. The function component of creating a reliable mode of assessment is to encourage students to be “independent, strategic learners.” The combination of Bloom’s and Heartland generate a series of skill-based course objectives.

Finally, I determine what level of proficiency the students should perform those skills based on the Dreyfus and Dreyfus model (1980) of directed skills acquisition. The five proficiency levels are: novice (limited “situational perception” & all aspects of work treated separately with equal importance), competence (“coping with crowdedness” [multiple activities, accumulation of information], some perception of actions in relation to goals, deliberate planning, & formulates routines), proficiency (holistic view of situation, prioritizes importance of aspects, “perceives deviations from the normal pattern,” & employs maxims for guidance, with meanings that adapt to the situation at hand), expertise (transcends reliance on rules, guidelines, and maxims, “intuitive grasp of situations based on deep, tacit understanding,” has “vision of what is possible,” & uses “analytical approaches” in new situations or in case of problems), and mastery (situational recollection, holistic recognition, intuitive decision, absorbed awareness).

The byproduct of this process would be a reasonable pathway when it comes to the pedagogy of a given course.

I didn’t do any of that here.

It was Howard Rheingold who suggested that I have my students help in the development of this course and Holly Dyer took up the challenge. The following is her course objectives for the course:

Students will:

  1. Analyze the historical origin and intended purpose of memes
  2. Analyze the origin of the word “meme,” its denotation, and how its connotation has evolved
  3. Explain how memes can be an effective form of communication.
  4. Give examples of how memes can convey emotion.
  5. Use computational methods to create memes and storyboards.

It is from this point that I created the modes of assessment for the course.

Course Assessment

The majority of the assessment comes from six assays that the students will complete. The term assay is one I’ve used for a while to describe a combination of a research paper, presentation, and an oral exam. It is described this way in the syllabus for the course:

The six assays in class will be in the form of discussing a memetic artifact using a series of focusing questions based on the previous readings. You will need to complete a two to four pages written assessment of the artifact before the start of class with shall be submitted to me via Moodle. You will be in front of your classmates giving a short 30-second summary of the nature of the memetic artifact during the class-time. Also, you will need to answer the focusing questions and questions from your classmates and/or Dr. Tilton.”

The focusing questions are new every class session and are based on the previous readings, class sections, and discussions. The written component is designed to aid the student when giving the presentation. The rubric of assessment will be developed based on the focusing questions, the medium of the meme, and the completeness of the student’s analysis of the meme.

The remaining modes of assessment include a Mid-Term Exam, Final Group Presentation, & Final Project.

Course Literature

The primary readings for the course will come from three foundations text in the field of memetic communication theory and praxis. Those books are Limor Shifman’s “Memes in Digital Culture,” Milner, DeNardis, & Zimmer’s “The World Made Meme,” & Paul McLean’s “Culture in Networks.” I felt based on discussion with various colleagues across multiple institutions that those texts would provide my students with a foundation for understanding the basics of memetic communication and meme culture. I also decided to provide more niche resources for the purpose of address more specialized topics throughout the semester. The following is a list of topics and readings:

“Memes vs. Tropes:”

“Meme as genre:”

“Charitable Memes:”

“Weaponizing Memes:” (Thank you Ben Bates)

“The Paralanguage of Memes:” (Thank you Crystal Abidin)

“SxSW as Memetic Platform:”

“Codeswitching:”

“Meme Magic:” (Thank you Alice Marwick and Rebecca Lewis)

“Wholesome Memes:”

“Meme Economy:”

“Memes as Marketing:”

“The Future and Death of Memes:”

General Education

I believe given the nature of the course design, description, objectives, assessment, and literature that the course would fulfill the seventh general education requirement at Ohio Northern University which focuses on “knowledge of human thought and culture.” I can offer three rationales why this course would fit this requirement:

1.) It seems to fit the other courses in this requirement: The nature of this course incorporates a historical perspective of the nature of memetic communication also with a level of philosophical analysis that requires the student to be able to analyze how memetic communication influences human thought via the remixing and retransmission of cultural artifacts for the purpose of retexturing mediated visual works..

2.) It is a detailed examination of how culture provides the outlets of extratextual communication: The course’s overall purpose is to have the students think beyond the level of text presented in a given piece of memetic communication by analyzing culture’s influence on the interpretation of a given artifact by a given audience. This requires a level of cultural capital and media literacy that hopefully the literature and various classroom interactions will provide the students.

3.) The course learning objectives and readings are focusing on having the students understand the nature of human thought in the encoding and decoding of memetic communication artifacts: I believe that the materials we have selected for this course will give the students a better appreciation of the thought technologies needed in the production of these types of artifacts. 

Summary

I believe that this course should be a through and enjoyable examination of memetic communication as a cultural touchstone for new media and the latest expression of human thought via the Internet.

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