Communicating with Memes: Consequences in Post-truth Civilization

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Communicating with Memes: Consequences in Post-truth Civilization investigates the consequences of memetic communication, the causes of these consequences, and what actionif anyshould be taken in response. Communicating with memes across social media networks has become a commonplace activity in todays world, despite the fact that just years earlier, this mode of communication was a rarity. The rapid adoption of this new mode of communication through ubiquitous social media and device use is resulting in a major transformation of the ways in which we think and behave in our digital world. From the election of Donald Trump, to online harassment and identity theft, to the resurgence of once-eradicated diseases due to the anti-vaxxer movement, Grant Kien analyzes fourteen major consequences of this shift and confronts the question of how to approach these consequences.

Reviews

This stunning book is destined to become a classic. Comparable to Harold Innis' intellectual precision and Marshall McLuhan's global imagination for the electronic era, Grant Kien is the master thinker of today's digital era. Brilliant with theory and deep across the history of ideas, the readability index of this book is a solid ten. Communicating with Memes will be taught and debated with the same long-lasting influence as Wiener's Human Uses of Human Beings and Baudrillard's Simulacres et Simulation. -- Clifford G. Christians, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
In Communicating With Memes: Consequences in Post-Truth Civilization, Grant Kien provides a wide-ranging tour de force for understanding memetic communications, its virality through social media, and its implications for identity, sociality, politics, and contemporary life. This is a must read for students and faculty in Communications, Media Studies, Cultural Studies, Science and Technology Studies, Sociology, and many other fields. -- Angharad Valdivia, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Memes are, in many ways, a new language permeating our lives. Whole conversations appear as animated GIFs, talk show hosts talk about the latest meme craze, and meme templates serve as anything from work and relationship commentary to political criticism ("hold my beer"). Kien is able to trace not only how contemporary digital memes began, but also what they might mean and how this language can serve as a way to open cultural dialogue and shut it down through fake news, manufactured social crisis and moral panics, and barely veiled reinscriptions of dominance, power, and privilege. This theoretical text is also grounded in history and case studies, making it a fascinating critical engagement with this new, rich language. -- Ted Gournelos, Rollins College

Author Bio

Grant Kien is a professor in the Department of Communication at California State University, East Bay.