[Commlist] Special Issue CFP: Meme audiences: beyond content, circulation, and comments

CFP: Meme audiences: beyond content, circulation, and comments

Special issue of Popular Communication: The International Journal of 
Media and Culture

Guest editors: Dr. Joanna Doona and Dr. Martin Lundqvist at the 
Department of Communication and Media, Lund University, Sweden

https://kom.lu.se/meme-audiences

Memes have emerged as one of the dominant modes of interaction in 
contemporary digital spheres, constituting its own communication genre 
with distinct rules and conventions for how to properly ‘meme’ (Wiggins 
2019; Wiggins & Bower 2015). Memes are, as defined by Shifman (2013): ‘a 
group of digital items sharing common characteristics of content, form, 
and/or stance, which were created with awareness of each other, and were 
circulated, imitated, and/or transformed via the Internet by many users’ 
(p. 41). Considering their vast popularity — grounded in participatory 
digital culture — memes have been studied from a myriad of different 
angles, where their discursive potential (Denisova 2019; Milner 2013); 
their formative role in online community-building (Baishya 2021; Ooryad 
2023), and their curious blend of humour and social commentary/critique 
(Shifman 2013, Mortensen & Neumayer 2021) have been highlighted as 
distinctive traits. As such, meme studies has emerged as a burgeoning 
sub-field of media, communication, and cultural studies, with new 
studies seemingly sprouting on the daily.

When it comes to meme audiences, however, research is still lagging 
considerably, as we know little about how memes engage us. Previous 
studies of memes have mostly centered on their textual-discursive or 
technical properties. Indeed, as noted by Trilló and Shifman (2021) 
almost a decade after Shifman’s seminal work on memes in digital culture 
(2013), we still lack a ‘deeper understanding of how photo-based memes 
[…] are perceived by potential audiences’ (2496-2497). Likewise, 
Gonzàlez-Aguilar and Makhortykh (2022) stress that future research on 
memes should explore ‘how actual users perceive these representations’ 
(1326). This lacuna is especially apparent in qualitative in-depth 
studies of meme audiences. So far, meme audiences have primarily been 
approached (a) as ‘imagined audiences’ driven by memes’ ideological 
directionality (e.g. Wiggins 2019; Wiggins 2016); (b) through narrowly 
focused surveys (Halversen & Weeks 2023; Johann 2022), or (c) in studies 
that reduce them to the textual interactions found in digital platforms’ 
comment sections (Arda & Bas 2023; Skjulstad 2021). While certainly 
important and informative studies, such foci align with the common 
tendency in research on emerging media phenomena, to overlook audience 
and user diversity. The current understanding of meme audiences thus 
lacks qualitative nuance and depth, which is key to preventing reductive 
assumptions about audiences’ motivation, passivity, and vulnerability, 
related to issues of media power and user agency (Hermes 2024).

To gain a more comprehensive analytical, conceptual, and empirically 
anchored understanding of the attraction and popularity of memes; how 
they are meaningful; and what the potential consequences of meme 
engagement are; meme audiences require contextualized in-depth 
approaches. Here, platform logics and cultures, including the current 
trend of content centralization wherein especially younger people seem 
less prone to posting content of their own (Pew 2024; Internetstiftelsen 
2023) calls for a problematization of the idea of digital users’ 
activity and agency, potentially reintroducing ‘audiences’ as a more 
fitting term. Thus, we invite abstracts that employ explorative 
approaches and address meme audiences in all their qualitative 
complexity, going beyond the limitations of previous research.

We particularly welcome contributions which address:

- The conceptual messiness of meme audiences: from users to audiences, 
lurkers, prod-users and/or prosumers? Including but not limited to 
addressing ‘meme’-as-verb and meme practices: from using to reading, 
sharing, interpreting, engaging and/or participating.

- Research methodology and methods to develop the discussion of what 
in-depth qualitative approaches to meme audiences enable; including but 
not limited to ethnographic methods inside and outside of digital contexts.

- The wide variety of meme audience practices and forms of engagement, 
including their affective engagement with memes and meme-makers.

- Different meme audience contexts: including but not limited to 
cultural, social, and political settings, groups and spaces not yet 
previously explored in the meme studies literature.

- Meme audience agency and power; including but not limited to user 
agency within and related to various technical and commercial 
infrastructures, tools, and platforms.

- The identity and group-related work/processes of meme audiences; 
including but not limited to boundary maintenance, othering, cultural 
and/or political citizenship.

- Meme audiences’ digital literacies, genre work and/or 
technical/analytical skills.

Such contributions, we believe, will help theorize meme audiences as a 
distinctly qualitative, in-depth, phenomenon – thus making a vital 
contribution to meme studies literature.

*Submission and timeline

Please send an abstract of a maximum of 300 words accompanied by an 
author biography of a maximum of 100 words to the guest editors: 
(joanna.doona /at/ kom.lu.se) and (martin.lundqvist /at/ kom.lu.se) by September 15, 
2024. Please write ‘Meme audiences SI’ in the title. We will review the 
abstracts and send out notifications of acceptance/rejection by November 
1, 2024. Please note that the acceptance of abstracts does not guarantee 
publication since all articles will undergo double-blind peer review. 
Full papers should be submitted to the journal via their ScholarOne 
submission system by March 1, 2025, and the revised/final drafts are to 
be submitted no later than September 1, 2025. Accepted papers will be 
published in issue 1 2026. No payment from the authors will be required. 
In the meantime, you are most welcome to contact the guest editors if 
you have any questions.

*See call including references and guest editor bios at: 
kom.lu.se/meme-audiences

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