Inside the world of meme studies with Idil Galip

Memes are a part of everyday life. Whether you create, use, share or even just scroll past them while on social media, they have a place in our modern world thanks to the internet. Researcher and founder of Meme Studies Research Network Idil Galip recognises this importance and dedicates her time to studying how memes shape society and our social behaviours in an era where everything is digitalised. Read on for our full convo!

What exactly is meme studies and why have you created a research network for it?

Meme studies is a general term to describe a field of academic research which takes memes as its central research object. The word ‘meme’ was coined by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in 1976 in his book The Selfish Gene, and was described as a unit of cultural information shared from person to person. However, there is much more to the study of memes than this initial description. The term, as well as the field surrounding, has gone through changes over the years and since the 2010s, researchers have focused on understanding how internet memes (which are not limited to images, but also include videos, sounds, phrases, symbols and many other cultural templates) are made, spread, monetised and mobilised. 

I created this network during the pandemic, when I was stuck in my flat working on my PhD thesis, which was a sociological study of how meme creators on Instagram make, spread and monetise ‘niche’ memes. My motivation to set this up was a result of three things: firstly, I had trouble finding and connecting with other meme researchers, which is an issue because I wanted to learn from others and also get feedback on my research and ideas. Secondly, people I would meet in academic spaces were often surprised that internet memes could be studied academically. I knew that there were many academics writing really interesting and insightful texts on the topic, so I thought that this work had to be made more visible somehow. Thirdly, I had a bibliography of recent meme research that I had collected during my PhD which I wanted to share with other interested researchers. 

Finally, I was also feeling quite isolated and missing the collegial feeling of our PhD offices, which we couldn't access as a result of COVID-19 measures. So setting up a network where we could still connect and engage with each other seemed like a good idea at the time.

For many people, digital culture-related academia is very new, and many times not even taken seriously. What steps have you been taking to make meme studies a rigorous canon?

This is true. Digital culture research is often dubbed "frivolous", which is understandable to a degree, especially when judged against academic studies coming out of the more "serious" hard sciences. It is funny though, that some of the people who may see it as a frivolous undertaking also spend many hours of their everyday life consuming culture, seeking sociality, and engaging in public debate on digital platforms. Even the way that we interact with the IRL world is coloured by our interactions with and attachments to digital platforms. Therefore, studying the kinds of culture that these conditions create is paramount to understanding how people live, work, desire, love, consume, collect, create in today's world. Isn't this what many philosophers were doing ‘back in the day’?

Rigour is a challenging concept to navigate in academia for me. My personal take on rigorous research, as it relates to digital culture, is that it needs to be ethical first. In my own work and teaching, I highlight that when researching memes, we cannot assume that just because something is on the internet that it is "up for grabs" or is "free data" that can be inserted into an academic study without consent from the creator. Furthermore, my controversial opinion is that people who study digital culture should also be good internet sleuths. Being able to use their digital literacy and skills to, for instance, trace memes to their original posters, or at least being able to provide a genealogy of a meme, is important to being an authentic and rigorous digital culture researcher.

What are your current favourite memes right now?

Do you ever get forwarded those colourful and exuberant images on WhatsApp by your aunties and uncles, wishing you a ‘blessed morning and a happy Monday’? I am obsessed with these hyperglobal ‘good morning memes’ that connect so many people around the world together, whether through sincerity or the veil of irony. I love the kitschy aesthetics and the buoyant tone of the messaging. In Italy, they even have a term for it called ‘buongiornissimo’ or ‘good-morningism’.

Here's a sincere good morning meme and an ironic reimagining (both are anonymous):

Has studying memes had any effect on your worldview at all?

I can safely say that I am now more chronically online (shout out to Taylor Lorenz) than I have ever been. I often feel that I should be as online as possible so I don't miss any memetic occurrences. I have also observed how memetic communication and propaganda are incredibly intertwined. I believe that people who use digital platforms should have a degree of memetic literacy to keep themselves safe from information campaigns that might lead them towards dangerous and harmful ideas and places. 

As someone with a PhD in sociology, is there an intersection between sociology and memes?

Sociology, very simply, is the study of society and sociality. Our everyday lives are a rich tapestry which sociologists examine and explore in their research. Internet memes are foundational to how people communicate and express sociality in today's platformised and highly digitised world. Internet memes do not have to be funny, they can be as simple as those good morning images I mentioned. Sending a meme to a friend is an act of friendship, making memes can be a creative and even artistic pursuit, whereas monetising them can be someone's main source of income. Being able to understand how people create, share and use memes is therefore foundational to understanding a core social behaviour of the modern, networked person.