Memetic Rhetorics

Series

• Sweetland Digital Rhetoric Collaborative

Memes are omnipresent online and have become an increasingly important facet of not only the field of digital rhetorics, but of pop culture in general. What appear to be little more than funny images with a punchline, however, are actually powerful vehicles for culture and ideology. In Memetic Rhetorics, Erika M. Sparby untangles some of the complexities of memes by determining how memes function rhetorically in our society, examining rhetorical ethical considerations, highlighting how memes fuel cultural ideology, and finding ways to reveal and reject uncritical memetic behaviors. Through this careful look at the rhetoric and ethics of memes, Memetic Rhetorics demonstrates that memes manipulate and reflect culture and ideology and thus shape our identities and our world.

Erika M. Sparby is Associate Professor of Digital Rhetorics and Technical Communication at Illinois State University.

Praise / Awards

• “Sparby does an excellent job providing a toolkit for understanding and creating memes. They provide deep analysis to offer insights into how to modify this heuristic further to create a sound and ethical approach. Sparby’s work offers digital literacy scholars a new set of practices and ideas for future analysis.”
  —Ryan P. Shepherd, Ohio University