There is a chasm between the meme concept as it was characterised by Richard Dawkins, within the 1970s and the term meme as it is utilised within the context of digital culture (Dawkins 1981). Defining a web meme as (1) a group of digital items giving basic characteristics of substance, structure, or stance; (2) that were created with consciousness to one another; and (3) were distributed, imitated, and altered via the web by various users (Jenkins et al., 2018).

This definition deviates from Dawkins’ notion in one essential way (Dawkins 1981). Instead of delineating the meme as a lone cultural unit that has disseminated well, memes ought to be dealt with as groups of content units (Dawkins 1981). This concept shifts from a particular to a plural account of memes infer from the new manners by which they are experienced within the digital age (Dawkins 1981). On the off chance that in the past individuals were disclosed to one meme variant at a given time (for example, heard one adaptation of a joke in a gathering), these days it takes just two or three mouse clicks to see several variants of any meme conceivable (try, ‘that escalated quickly’) (Jenkins 2002). The meme originates from the 2004 film ‘Anchorman’ in which the quote by Will Ferrell playing the character of Ron Burgundy, was popularised across-the web (Plante 2016). In this manner, memes are currently present within the public sphere not as fitful substances but rather as a large grouping of images and texts (Davison 2012).

While extensively debated within academia, the notion has been energetically picked up by web users (Jenkins 2002). It is decreased day by day by various individuals, who portray what they do on the web as creating, growing or circulating “memes” (Dawkins 1981). In any case, there is additionally a more profound justification for utilising this term (Dawkins 1981). Web users are on to something (Jenkins 2002). There is a key similarity between the expression “meme”, as Dawkins figured it, and how contemporary participatory culture works (Dawkins 1981). Personally, describing this similarity as consolidating three dimensions (Jenkins et al., 2018).

To begin with, memes can be portrayed as cultural information that goes along from individual to individual, yet step by step scales into a communal social phenomenon (Jenkins 2002). This attribute is exceedingly harmonious with the activities of contemporary participatory culture (Jensens 2010). Platforms, for example, YouTube, Twitter or Facebook depend on substance that is spread by people through their informal networks and may scale up to mass dimensions in hours (Dawkins 1981). Also, the critical demonstration of “sharing” data (or permeating of memes) has moved toward becoming, as Nicholas John proposes in ongoing articles, a crucial piece of what members experience as the digital sphere (John 2013). 

Secondly, memes reproduced by mixed methods for imitation or repackaging, individuals become mindful of memes, process them, and afterwards “repackage” them to pass them along to other people (Jensens 2010). While repackaging isn’t essential on the web (individuals can spread substance as seems to be) (Dennett 1990). Individuals do make their versions of web memes and in alarming volumes. Individuals repackage either through pastiche (the metamorphosis of particular content by other individuals), or remix (innovation based controls of substance, for example, Photoshopping) (Jenkins et al., 2018).

Lastly, memes spread through competition and selection (Jensens 2010). While procedures of social choice are ancient, digital media permits us to trace the propagation and evolution of memes in remarkable ways (Jenkins et al., 2018). Also, meta-data about methods of competition and selection (for example “like” or “view tally” numbers) is progressively turning into a prominent and compelling piece of the procedure itself (Dennett 1990). Individuals consider it before they choose to remake a video or Photoshop a political photo (John 2013). Overall, the meme idea is a long way from immaculate, it exemplifies some crucial parts of digital culture, and all things considered, this finding is of extraordinary value (Jensens 2010). 

Memes are social structure obstructs that are enunciated and diffused by active human force; this does not imply that individuals don’t live in social and cultural universes that limit them, obviously, they do (Jenkins 2006). What encourages procedures of cultural dissemination aren’t the “secretive” intensity of memes, but the webs of meanings and structures individuals work around them (Jenkins et al., 2018). With respects to producing a new substance, there are three fundamental kinds of motivation at plat here, cultural, social and economic (Shifman 2014). 

The economic logic behind meme production identifies with the consideration economy overseeing contemporary social orders (Dennett 1990). To put it plainly, it asserts that the most profitable asset in the information era isn’t information, but the attention individuals pay to it (Jenkins et al., 2018). Producing memes appear to function admirably in this sort of economy, a simulation of a popular video may get consideration since it will show up in YouTube‘s recommendations bar or spring up as an exceedingly pertinent item when one is searching for the first video (Jenkins et al., 2018). The second, social logic of meme production can be identified with what Barry Wellman and others portray as “networked individualism” (Wellman et al., 2003).

From one perspective, by transferring an independent video or a Photoshopped picture individuals can express their independence, they connote that they are digitally literate, singular, and imaginative (Jenkins 2006). Then again, the content that they transfer regularly identifies with a run of the mill, generally shared memetic video, picture, or formula (Jenkins et al., 2018). Through this referencing, individuals simultaneously build their distinctiveness and their connection with a bigger network (Jenkins et al., 2018). At last, the cultural logic of meme production suggests that the continuance of norms that are established in the historical backdrop of popular culture classes and fan societies, as talked about widely in “Textual Poachers” and subsequent works (Jenkins 2006).

The concept of web memes is so impressive because it traverses interpretations (Jenkins 2006). While web memes are all about individuals generating content, they are likewise about people making content with consciousness to each other (Dawkins 1981). Memes include inescapable pastiche (Jenkins 2006). However, they are additionally founded on extraordinary synergistic work and complex multi-member choreographies (Knobel and Lankshear 2007). Besides, studies directed by Assaf Nissenbaum, Kate Miltner and Ryan Milner demonstrate that memes work as a sort of social capital, knowledge about memes and the “right” approaches to utilise them have turned into a marker of enrolment in specific networks (Jenkins et al., 2018). 

In these settings the duality of being both an individual and a piece of a network is abated every day, network individuals are required to be unique, however not very unique while making memes (Shifman 2014). We should pay attention to memes, and doing that additionally implies, by fundamentally analysing the power elements that comprise memes and that are established by them (Jenkins et al., 2018). 

References: 

Dennett, D, C, 1990, Memes and the exploitation of imagination, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 48, no. 2, pp.127-135.

Davison, P, 2012, The language of internet memes, The social media reader, edited by Michael Mandiberg, New York, New York University Press, pp.120-134.

Dawkins, R, 1981, In defence of selfish genes, Philosophy, vol. 56, no. 218, pp.556-573.

Dawkins, R, 1981, Selfish genes and selfish memes, The mind’s I: Fantasies and reflections on self and soul, pp.124-144.

Dawkins, R, 1982, The extended phenotype, Oxford, Oxford University Press, United Kingdom, vol. 8, no. 1, pp.1-250.

Jenkins, H, 2002, “The poachers and the Stormtroopers: Cultural convergence in the digital age”, in P, Le Guern, ed., Les cultes médiatiques, Culture fan et œuvres cultes, Rennes, France, Presses universitaires de Rennes, pp. 343-378.

Jenkins, H, 2006, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, New York, New York University Press.

Jensens, K, B, 2010, Media Convergence: The Three Degrees of Network, Mass and Interpersonal Communication, 1st ed., London, Routledge, pp.78-208. 

Jenkins, H, Ford, S, and Green, J, 2018, Spreadable media: Creating value and meaning in a networked culture, United States of America, NYU press, pp. 245-300. 

John, N, A, 2013, The social logics of sharing, The Communication Review, vol. 16, no. 3, pp.113-131.

John, N, A, 2013, Sharing and Web 2.0, The emergence of a keyword, new media & society, vol. 15, no. 2, pp.167-182.

Knobel, M, and Lankshear, C, 2007, Online memes, affinities, and cultural production, A new literacies sampler, vol. 29, no. 1, pp.199-227.

Markman, K, and Sawyer, C, E, 2014, Why Pod? Further Explorations of the Motivations for Independent Podcasting, Journal of Radio & Audio Media, vol. 21, no. 1, pp. 20–35.

Plante, C, 2016, Why Anchorman’s ‘that escalated quickly’ escalated quickly, April 21, 2016, viewed 10 April 2019, <https://www.theverge.com/2016/4/21/11474470/anchorman-quote-that-escalated-quickly-meme>

Shifman, L, 2014, Memes in digital culture, Cambridge London, England, The MIT Press, pp.95-200. 

Wellman, B, Quan-Haase, A, Boase, J, Chen, W, Hampton, K, Díaz, I, and Miyata, K, 2003, The social affordances of the Internet for networked individualism, Journal of computer-mediated communication, vol. 8, no. 3, p.1-16.