Abstract

BITONTE, María Elena. Imemes: Production, circulation, recognition and propagation. Inmediac. Comun [online]. 2024, vol.19, n.2, e206.  Epub Dec 01, 2024. ISSN 1510-5091.  https://doi.org/10.18861/ic.2024.19.2.3711.

This article explores the principles underpinning the sociosemiotic analysis of imemes -or Internet memes-, characteristic examples of the production of meaning in the contemporary world. The sociosemiotic framing of imemes departs from other approaches marked by biological evolutionism and proposes an anti-determinist and dynamic perspective, whose main premise locates social phenomena in relation to their conditions of production, circulation and recognition. Following this analytical perspective, imemes make up a class of media phenomena that is distinguished from others by its particular form of circulation: proliferation. Hence the importance of differentiating memetics -as a mode of production of meaning- from virality. From this approach, social actors are not seen as vectors of cultural transmission, nor imemes as images that imitate an original, but as interpreters of the social phenomena that they take as their object, as well as producers of memory and social contact. What are the conditions for the propagation of imemes? The article seeks a possible explanation by analysing their conditions of production, circulation and recognition, and suggests a way of investigating the autopoietic nature of imemes.

Keywords : imeme; imitation; proliferation; difference; repetition..

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