Unit 2 Blogger Assignment
I've been seeing a couple of my friends posting this image on Facebook. It's an image meme that takes a stand against racism. It's original author is an organization called Wipeout Racism on Facebook. Posting this image is basically a pledge to not tolerate racism or prejudice. It also asks readers of the message if they will join the cause. When I saw this, I instantly saw a connection with the work we're doing with visual memes in Unit 2. I thought it was really smart and effective way to leverage the layout of Facebook's newsfeed and the way Facebook shows shared photos to the message's advantage. Instead of just posting a text status update, people passing along this meme post a picture. This makes it stand out from the clutter in people's newsfeeds, and it's also more appealing purely because it's an image. There's a reason why content platforms like tumblr or pinterest are mostly image based: images are just more compelling online. I think this is clear when you start looking at the most popular memes on the Internet today; most of them are images. I wonder how other memes will evolve when changes are eventually made to alter communication platforms like Facebook or Twitter.
I find your commentary very interesting with respect to the questions about the fate of image-based memes after Facebook, twitter, and other social network platforms evolve. It is hard to speculate on the ways in which memes will change since the Internet, and its inherent evolution, are unchartered territory going forward.
ReplyDeleteWhat I would comment on after reading your post is the ways that the Racism photo meme uses pathos to further its message. You do a good job of talking about the logical appeal that the photo incorporates with its setup respective to Facebook's structure, but I contend that the appeal to emotion is the primary method for advocating the re-posting of the photo. This is due to the fact that the photo first establishes the poster as an advocate of equality, and then asks if the viewer shares the same opinion. This serves to invoke guilt in the viewer if they pass the photo, read it, and move on without re-posting. Will they come off as racist if they don't re-post the image? This question sums up the appeal to emotion that provides the motivation for re-posting the image.
I've seen pleas like this before on facebook, mostly as normal status updates, but sometimes as pictures like this as well. While I would say that the picture aims to make an emotional appeal through the use of guilt and peer pressure, I would also say it may not be effective. This is because, at least for me, after reading so many of these guilt-inducing posts I no longer take them seriously, and therefore do nothing to help the cause.
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