Mina’s Definition: Memes as a Guideposts of Social Movements

A regret of mine when writing “Meme Life” two years ago was not finding the work of An Xiao Mina, specifically her book “Memes to Movement: How the World’s Most Viral Media is Changing Social Protest and Power.” This book was meaningful as it provided a model for using memes to bridge the gap between Internet culture and social activism. Specifically, I found her comprehensive look at the history of how memes have become powerful tools for political and social change.

Mina presents a relatively straightforward definition of Internet memes on page six of her book. These artifacts represent “a piece of online media that is shared and remixed over time within the community.” This lightweight definition allows her to present a broader overview of memes not found in traditional studies of memes. Her essential position is that memes are vehicles for significant social impact and real-world actions. Beyond being just frivolous distractions built on popular culture, memes are the guideposts that allow social movements to form in the 21st century.

Mina uses this structure of her book to present a variety of case studies that are significant beyond the Anglo-centric ones that are traditionally presented in meme studies to make strong central claims that memes can rally support for causes, mobilize activists to act quickly, and convey powerful messages across the world because of meme’s ability to transcend cultural and geographic boundaries through the use of concepts, characters, icons, and slogans that are recognizable worldwide (typically from works of popular culture).

One of the examples that Mina pulls from for the book is the “This is Fine” dog as a symbol of the Women’s March on the National Mall, protesting the policies against women in the past decade. She also highlights that these symbols, once created, leave the control of the person who posts the work. She used the example of her experiment of posting Tweets in Morse code for a commissioned performance for the Brooklyn Museum. In her words, it turned into a “networked practice” of others posting responses and conversations in Morse code, where she was removed from the conversations.

Mina’s examples throughout the book allows her to expand her lightweight definition of the book to encapsulate the impact of memes better. The central argument shifts to memes’ simplicity, humor, and/or relatability, becoming the key points that make them memorable for making messages last longer through communities that can share them more effectively. It is this focus on the creation and distribution of memes that makes memetic activism a sustainable part of social activism.

I want to point out why I believe “Memes to Movements” has significantly advanced our understanding of memes by highlighting their potential as tools for social change is based on making the section I wrote about on Memes as Sociological Acts. Specifically, Mina’s work is more evidence-based and grounded in a sense of the now. Chapter two entitled “All About the Feels” is a prime example of how she hits both points.

“Through easy repetition, memes can become a constant stream of affirmation” is a solid thematic that she introduces on the first page of the chapter. As “meme culture is inherently social,” she points to the history of symbol creation, marking the foundations of how memes would become these powerful visual communication tools. The rainbow flag from the Stonewall riots begat the iconic NOH8 symbol protesting Proposition 8 in California. The argument is that symbols like NOH8 filled a “vital gap” as a guidepost, leading one to people who shared common values that they stand for in society. The evidence-based elements of the chapter are found in her analysis of the various types of memes that one can create. This chapter is also grounded in the now, as Mina does not need to use outdated examples to prove her position; instead, she uses the historical perspective to highlight why her position makes sense given the current state of the world.

The current state of the world from a digital culture perspective can be summarized precisely in the first sentences of the third chapter, entitled “Ahem, Attention Please.”

“We live in a world of distraction, of entities competing for our attention, whether that’s banner ads, billboards, television shows, people singing on the streets. In a world where information is everywhere, attention becomes a more critical deciding factor about a society’s values.”

An Xiao Mina

Memes are a reasonable proxy for society’s attention. Someone made an effort to turn their concept into a digital artifact that others could share. They also work outside the traditional media structure that focuses on welding influence, control, and profit for massive media conglomerations. For example, using the #UgandaIsNotSpain hashtag as a case study showed how such a trend forced international media outlets to cover it and explain its significance for audiences that might not be familiar with Uganda’s economy, culture, or political power.

It would be easy to cover all of the chapters in An Xiao Mina’s book as a strong case of memetic content’s power to influence and shape social movements. The major takeaway for “Memes to Movements” is how the average Internet user should think beyond the superficial aspects of memes and consider their deeper implications for society. I would point to the various thematics raised in the remaining chapters of the book:

• “Memes contain the seeds of narratives that can grow into stories much larger than themselves.”
• “Memetic strategies can challenge power, but the opposition adapts.”
• “We have entered a new world of memetic contention, one where meme culture has become as much a tool for those in power as it has for those in power as it has for those seeking to challenge it.”
• “The desire to share, remix, and repurpose has a long history in human society.”

An Xiao Mina’s work reminds us that memes are more than just fleeting internet trends; they are potent symbols of collective expression and agents of transformation. Through her book, Mina has expanded the horizons of meme scholarship by exploring why memes have a profound impact on our world. If memes are indeed “multi-layered communication constructions that are influenced by social factors and represent a mode of individual expression, in which meaning-making is controlled by both a community that understands that the whole of the work is greater than the sum of its parts and the collective that places that creative content into some part of the broader cultural industry embedded in society,” Mina’s work does a great job showing how the different layers actually influence others through the development of individual expressions online into powerful social instruments that become digital artifacts that the world can share.