Meme

In June 2009 a group of forum-goers on the popular culture website, Something Awful, created a monster called the Slender Man. Inhumanly tall, pale, black-clad, and with the power to control minds, the Slender Man references many classic, canonical horror monsters while simultaneously expressing an acute anxiety about the contemporary digital context that birthed him. This anxiety is apparent in the collective legends that have risen around the Slender Man since 2009, but it figures particularly strongly in the Web series Marble Hornets (Troy Wagner and Joseph DeLage June 2009 - ). This thesis examines Marble Hornets as an example of an emerging trend in digital, online cinema that it defines as “folk horror”: a subgenre of horror that is produced by online communities of everyday people— or folk—as opposed to professional crews working within the film industry. Works of folk horror address the questions and anxieties of our current, digital age by reflecting the changing roles and behaviours of the everyday person, who is becoming increasingly involved with the products of popular culture. After providing a context for understanding folk horror, this thesis analyzes Marble Hornets through the lens of folkloric narrative structures such as legends and folktales, and vernacular modes of filmmaking such as cinéma direct and found footage horror. The focus then shifts to the ways in which Marble Hornets’ digital folk context amplifies the classic horror conventions with which the series engages. Primary attention is given to three key components: the monster, the narrative, and the audience. Folk horror might be a new term, but it is an old concept, one that reflects the important role that community plays in the forging of fear. It has been suggested that the Slender Man is a tulpa, a creature brought into physical existence by collective thought. As such he is truly a monster for the digital age as he reflects the many faces—positive and negative—of the increasingly “connected” individual. Through the lens of folk horror we may not only witness significant developments in the horror genre, but also those of storytelling on a broader scale.

A Memética é, então, a ciência que estuda como memes se propagam. O que a genética faz com os genes, a Memética faz com os memes. Ou, mais precisamente, o que a genética de populações e a epidemiologia fazem com as informações genéticas, a Memética faz com as informações culturais. O ponto a ser discutido então é apenas se os modelos matemáticos aplicados na primeira podem também ser usados na segunda. Isso, é claro, levanta enormes problemas. Será que a cultura realmente pode ser dividida em unidades de informação? De que são feitos os memes? Como eles são passados? Como saber se eles foram realmente passados ou não? O que determina que um meme vai infectar a mente de uma pessoa e de outra não? Quem manda no meu comportamento sou eu ou meus memes? Eu posso escolher quais memes vão me infectar? Utilizar modelos biológicos para tratar a cultura não seria reducionista e mecanicista? [...] É com este espírito que o livro foi escrito. Mas, antes de tudo, é um livro de divulgação científica. Pretende dar ao leitor a fundamentação filosófica e científica para discutir os conceitos aqui tratados. Pode, então, ser lido por um não-filósofo que só sabe de biologia aquilo que aprendeu na escola

Much is spoken and written about the liberal nature of global trade and its relation to democracy and freedoms. Trade representatives of the transatlantic free trade agreement (TAFTA | TTIP) have talked about the importance of the negotiations being transparent, accountable, and participative. However, a number of leaked draft texts of other free trade agreements being negotiated by the United States (US) and the European Union (EU) indicate that these promises are mostly empty. A leaked European Commission (EC) communiqué further evidences an attempt to establish a “mainstream media narrative” about the TAFTA | TTIP in order to reduce the “anxiety” of EU citizens and consumers. This article carefully analyzes the manners in which the negotiations of the TAFTA | TTIP are proving to be untransparent, lacking in participation, and unaccountable. The purpose of these analyses is not merely to present evidence that this is actually the case at hand, but also to clarify why transparency, accountability, and participation are crucial to the negotiations on transatlantic trade. Lastly, the article suggests that the TAFTA | TTIP negotiations learn from the World Intellectual Property Organization’s (WIPO) Marrakesh Treaty, characterized as an "exemplary exercise of transparency, civil society participation, and multilateral cooperation".

We clarify, in this paper, that memes are elements of intertextual relation, from the analysis of 31 videos response for a Brazilian viral called “oração” (A Banda mais  Bonita da Cidade), popular on YouTube in 2011. meme’s intertextuality makes semantic connections and its aggregated value of visibility helps to disseminate original content. We demonstrate that viral videos, when become memes, trigger process of identification and differentiation from versions and parodies created
by the audience.

A lo largo la historia española la sátira ha estado presente de una forma constante, configurándose en una suerte de correa de transmisión, de vehículo informativo y comunicacional. Además de proporcionar herramientas para la comprensión de la realidad, ha tenido en ocasiones la capacidad de generar narrativas propias y modelar imaginarios sociales. Ha sido en los momentos de crisis, ya sea esta económica, política o institucional, en los que oleadas de creatividad se han puesto al servicio de la interpretación de procesos sociales, de la generación de subjetividad y también frecuentemente de un activismo que se ha situado en primera línea. La intención de este artículo es abordar el impacto de la sátira en España desde que la crisis económica se inicia en 2008. Lo llevaremos a cabo desde una perspectiva comparada, acercando nuestra mirada al último gran periodo de crisis en España, el del tardofranquismo y los primeros años de la transición.

The idea that the political system is subject to rampant and invisible voter fraud has animated recent debates over the regulation of elections. Election integrity advocates have claimed that this threat justifies voter identification laws and other laws that have narrowed the ability for some citizens to vote, while voting-rights advocates have claimed that these measures are a form of voter suppression. These legal changes have occurred despite research that has demonstrated that virtually no actual voter fraud (specifically voter impersonation fraud) exists. While the consensus is that these voter suppression initiatives are driven by naked partisanship, this consensus fails to consider how longstanding ideological traditions about voter participation (and their interrelation with race, gender, and class myths) influence the debates over how to adequately regulate the right to vote. This paper will propose a different theoretical framework to address the voter fraud myth: memetic...

El siguiente trabajo propone pensar la relación entre la experiencia vital/mortal que implica un conflicto bélico y una visualidad propia de la guerra. Para eso se trabaja con una manera particular de vincularse con el campo de lo visible: la técnica del montaje. Es a partir de ésta última que podemos pensar a las imágenes que se abordarán en el presente artículo como una colisión de tiempos heterogéneos. Pensar la experiencia de la guerra es pensar una experiencia del desorden, por lo tanto el campo visual que la instituye y que a la vez ésta ayuda a configurar no puede ser lineal sino fragmentado, ensamblado, estallado. Esto no ocurre en una guerra en particular sino en la experiencia bélica per se. En nuestra cultura visual contemporánea sin embargo encontramos un tipo de imagen que fue utilizada para pensar estos conflictos y contestarlos: el meme, que aquí será puesto en diálogo con otras imágenes aparentemente inconexas pero que forman parte de la genealogía de estas imágenes ...

Myb genes constitute one of the largest transcription factor families in the plant kingdom. Soybean MYB transcription factors have been related to the plant response to biotic stresses. Their involvement in response to Phakopsora pachyrhizi infection has been reported by several transcriptional studies. Due to their apparently highly diverse functions, these genes are promising targets for developing crop varieties resistant to diseases. In the present study, the identification and phylogenetic analysis of the soybean R2R3-MYB (GmMYB) transcription factor family was performed and the expression profiles of these genes under biotic stress were determined. GmMYBs were identified from the soybean genome using bioinformatic tools, and their putative functions were determined based on the phylogenetic tree and classified into subfamilies using guides AtMYBs describing known functions. The transcriptional profiles of GmMYBs upon infection with different pathogen were revealed by in vivo a...

With the communication systems of the Internet technology having rapidly been improved in 2000s, it is obvious that communication has been evolved into a new dimension. Communication systems of the Internet technology exemplified as blogs and microblogs, social networking websites, news portals, video sharing websites, online encyclopedia and dictionaries, games etc. refer to " social media ". Each space of communal-everyday life has been occupied by social media which are believed to contribute much to the interactive communication. It is undeniable that broad participation of users in social media cannot be considered to be independent from the background of each user shaped by collective mentality, ways of thinking and use of everyday language, on one hand. On the other hand, it can also be claimed that social media could influence individual way of thinking, adoption of an attitude and acquisition of a positive or negative standard of judgment. In Turkey where masculinity is mostly expressed via femininity, everyday language dominated by patriarchal discourse is reproduced and brought into caps, a new and cynical form of visual and written medium of expression of social media. This study focuses on what masculine language tells the target audience through caps. We wish to offer a discursive and semiotic content analysis by random sampling upon how caps functions in the reproduction and reinforcement of masculine language so as to raise awareness of this process for the Internet users and contribute to the multidisciplinary studies.

This article aims to discuss the role humour plays in politics, particularly in a media environment overflowing with user-generated video. We start with a genealogy of political satire, from classical to Internet times, followed by a general description of “the Hitler meme,” a series of videos on YouTube featuring footage from the film Der Untergang and nonsensical subtitles. Amid video-games, celebrities, and the Internet itself, politicians and politics are the target of twenty-first century caricatures. By analysing these videos we hope to elucidate how the manipulation of images is  embedded in everyday practices and may be of political consequence, namely by deflating politicians' constructed media image. The realm of image, at the centre of the Internet's technological culture, is connected with decisive aspects of today's social structure of knowledge and play. It is timely to understand which part of “playing” is in fact an expressive practice with political sign...

This paper evaluates and criticises the developmental systems conception of evolution and develops instead an extension of the “gene's eye” conception of evolution. We argue (i) Dawkin's attempt to segregate developmental and evolutionary issues about genes is unsatisfactory. On plausible views of development it is arbitrary to single out genes as the units of selection. (ii) The genotype does not carry information about the phenotype in any way that distinguishes the role of the genes in development from that other factors. (iii) There is no simple and general causal criterion which distinguishes the role of genes in development and evolution. (iv) There is, however, an important sense in which genes but not every other developmental factor represent the phenotype. (v) The idea that genes represent features of the phenotype forces us to recognise that genes are not the only, or almost the only, replicators. Many mechanisms of replication are involved in both development and evolution. (vi) A conception of evolutionary history which recognises both genetic and non-genetic replicators, lineages of replicators and interactors has advantages over both the radical rejection of the replicator/interactor distinction and the conservative restriction of replication to genetic replication.

In March 2012, the Kony 2012 campaign was launched by the NGO Invisible Chindren, having as its main tool a 29 minute movie, whose main goal is to mobilize people in order to find and arrest Joseph Kony, the leader of LRA (Lord’s Army Resistance), an active militant group in central Africa accused of practicing a series of crimes against humanity. The popularity reached by this activist movie has led us to focus our analysis on some strategies used by its producers and on some of the main effects of the campaign so far. We depart from considerations over the meaning of a variety of video footages taken from Youtube that were used as basic building blocks in the making of Kony 2012. The analysis, then, follows the sequence in which images and sounds are woven into the Kony 2012 narrative, and its unfolding of the potential political meanings in the micro videos. Finally, taking the movie as a moment immersed in a complex process of construction, dispute and negotiation of an imagined digital community, we discuss the ways in which the movie and the practices that surround it are proposed as a global politics, built from myths and utopias, which places itself as young, post-modern and digital all at once. The movie provokes answers from other digital actors in this new agora, which proved itself highly manipulable and also, not without paradoxes, highly critical.

This paper evaluates and criticises the developmental systems conception of evolution and develops instead an extension of the “gene's eye” conception of evolution. We argue (i) Dawkin's attempt to segregate developmental and evolutionary issues about genes is unsatisfactory. On plausible views of development it is arbitrary to single out genes as the units of selection. (ii) The genotype does not carry information about the phenotype in any way that distinguishes the role of the genes in development from that other factors. (iii) There is no simple and general causal criterion which distinguishes the role of genes in development and evolution. (iv) There is, however, an important sense in which genes but not every other developmental factor represent the phenotype. (v) The idea that genes represent features of the phenotype forces us to recognise that genes are not the only, or almost the only, replicators. Many mechanisms of replication are involved in both development and evolution. (vi) A conception of evolutionary history which recognises both genetic and non-genetic replicators, lineages of replicators and interactors has advantages over both the radical rejection of the replicator/interactor distinction and the conservative restriction of replication to genetic replication.

"To date there appears to have been little academic research that concentrates on investigating nineteenth century professions and none that could be located which consider their role in relation to the development of small provincial towns during this period of occupational flux. For example  Holmes (1982 ) and Corfield  (1999 ) concentrate on profession in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries; Abbott (1988) nineteenth and twentieth century profession in England, France and America and other researchers on the development of specific occupations such as medicine (Friedson 1970); accountancy (Matthews 2006); librarianship (Goode 1961) and although Larson’s (1977) research locates the beginning of professional mobilisation projects in the nineteenth century, it is primarily concerned with the twentieth. This research therefore explores how professional services developed in small English county towns during the nineteenth century and uses the county town of Stafford as its focus. It takes the form of a series of three interrelated case studies that move from providing a macro view of professional life and work in Stafford; to a more focused case study of one specific occupation, that of chemist/druggist; to investigating one particular Stafford family that for several generations had members who worked as chemists/druggists. This approach provides an overview of the type and level of professional services on offer in Stafford during this period along with an in-depth analysis of one particular occupation.

Research results indicate that profession as a concept held little value for the folk of Stafford throughout the nineteenth century and that professional services in the town were slow to develop, even during a period of rapid population growth. A range of twentieth century research theories and frameworks for categorising profession were tested and appeared not to be appropriate for accurately identifying professional work at this time and a nineteenth century framework is proposed. The growth of educational opportunities throughout the century and the use of profession as a marketing tool are however found to be intrinsically linked to the growth of the concept of profession by the end of the nineteenth century.
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