Outreach
#MUSEUdeMEMES
A web museum dedicated to gathering and cataloging internet memes created or circulated in Brazil, combining research, teaching and outreach.
A web museum dedicated to gathering and cataloging internet memes created or circulated in Brazil, combining research, teaching and outreach.
#MUSEUdeMEMES was born from a double provocation. On the one hand, like any museum, it aims to present the public with a bit of the memory on the subject. On the other, it is itself a meme, a joke, a device whose main purpose is to stimulate reflection on the role memes play in contemporary culture.
Memes are a typical internet phenomenon, and can present themselves as captioned images, viral videos or expressions spread through social media. Native to the universe of virtual communities, memes are generally ephemeral elements, commonly regarded as passing “silliness” or “useless culture”. The web museum seeks to gather content about these phenomena and discuss them within the theories of Communication, highlighting their role in the formation of identities in virtual communities and in interactions on internet social networks.
The #MUSEUdeMEMES project is concerned with (1) building a diverse collection about Brazilian memes or memes that circulated through Brazil at some point in their internet trajectory, (2) organizing a set of bibliographic references and theoretical-methodological guidelines for researchers interested in the topic, and (3) holding events and exhibitions, physical or virtual, open to the general public. The collection is only a small part of the work, which also consists of mapping and monitoring the content circulating on social media and cataloging books and articles published in scientific journals from more than 50 different countries, across multiple fronts of interest ranging from political memes to the universe of media entertainment, from sports to feminist and LGBTQ memes.