On the latest Digital Sociology Podcast I am talking to Dr Jess Drakett who is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at Leeds Beckett University. Jess shares some fun and fascinating insights from her PhD research into representations of gender in meme culture and sexism in the tech industry. She conducted qualitative, discourse analysis of probably the most commonly used memes – “image macros”. These are usually an image with white writing overlaid at the top and bottom like this:
The research looked into how humour is used in the very rule bound world of memes both by applying the format of a particular image macro to a new and context, subverting the form or commenting on it (as with the one above).
A big part of the analysis was how memes create collective identities for those who know the rules and the references but are also exclusionary for those who don’t and if they are the target of the memes with many being sexist and misogynistic.
The other part of Jess’s research was into the use of humour in a workplace context in the programming industry. She found similar kinds of humour used in the tech industry and memes themselves as facilitators of this with image macros being pasted up on workplace walls.
Jess talks a bit about the challenges of conducting research on memes but also that some of the most useful resources are ones which academic researchers wouldn’t usually draw on like the “Know Your Meme” database:
You can read Jess’s paper on her meme research ‘Old jokes, new media – Online sexism and constructions of gender in Internet memes’ in the journal Feminism & Psychology
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0959353517727560
However, that version doesn’t include images (due to the copyright concerns of the publishers) but the pre-print version of the paper does:
http://eprints.leedsbeckett.ac.uk/4406/
You can follow Jess on Twitter @jessicadrakett
You can listen to the podcast on Anchor or download and subscribe on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher or wherever else you get podcasts.
This episode:
Podcast archive:
https://anchor.fm/digital-sociology-podcast
This Is Not a Sociology Blog 
This episode was very interesting! I am doing bachelor’s in sociology and now finishing my bachelor thesis about elders’ view on digitalisation.
I think it’s pretty obvious how memes are in nature partly excluding those who don’t get the jokes since the word “même” in french translates to “same”. I could see memes having their origin in relatable internet humor and therefore got the name from people commenting “same” and “me” on the posts. Memes are related to the relatable humor these days’ stand-up comedians use; they make jokes about their experiences and themselves in a funny way to the audience can relate and get a giggle out of it. So I think think meme should be seen as any more excluding than relatable stand-up comedy jokes, although memes are often more niched and are comprehensible for a smaller audience.
I think it’s especially interesting how Jess compared memes to hyroglifics; they’re simple imagines which act as symbols and can help fast and information rich communication. I’m mostly fascinated with the complexitiy and layers of meme humor. As Jess mentioned you can move one element from one meme, such as a hat, and put it on something else and thereby transporting the meaning of the initial meme to something more complex.
I’d myself like to do a study on memes and maybe question how memes play in the internet seeming to be a democratic space or how memes can be seen as a rebellion against structured, planned out humor as what becomes a meme really not at all can be planned.
Hi Hugo. Thanks for listening and for your very interesting comments! I am not an expert in memes but while I don’t think memes are inherently exclusionary the key issue is the way in which they have (often) intersected with sexist culture. I’ll pass your excellent comments on to Jess and good luck with your thesis!