As part of my research, I’ve picked up Erin Meyer’s The Culture Map to help me decode how people think and how cultural context shapes a situation. While the book focuses on the differences between countries, the same notion can be applied to applications, as each one has different ways of behaving. While all of them do operate in English, they behave like different cultural contexts with their own dialects and reference points.

Meyers reveals that there are High-context and low-context cultures. “High-context cultures tend to have a long shared history. Usually they are relationship-oriented societies where networks of connections are passed on…” (Meyer, E. 2013, p.40). Unlike high-context cultures, low-context cultures depend on explicit and direct communication where there is little to no interpretation.

This insight emerged from my conversation with @DalstonSuperStoned in which they discussed the chain of recognition in memes. While it does not always explicitly follow this chain, as it differs on different topics, this is how the scale of high-context to low-context social platforms goes:

4chan → Reddit → Twitter → Tiktok → Instagram → and finally, occasionally, the pits of Facebook

This observation echoes Meyer’s theory of context. As mentioned, even though Meyers’ theory focuses on countries, it can also be applied to digital spaces.

Spaces like 4chan and Reddit, which operate as forums, depend on shared knowledge and an interest in very specific topics, which classifies them as high-context environments. As these notions become formulated into the meme format we know, they move to Twitter and Instagram, where they still retain their same intentions and cultural contexts. However, once they start going onto Instagram, the context starts to slightly loosen, becoming more accessible and not as nuanced. By the time (and if) it reaches Facebook, it is a big dip in context and the meaning is often diluted and reformatted entirely for mass consumption, stripped of its layered irony.  

As seen in the results from the intervention, this hierarchy of context was also noticeable as the people most active on Twitter and TikTok perfomed the best in the quiz portion.  

This digital migration of memes shows how online communities function like seperate cultures. While very close in practice, they do differ in fluency and in how the digital artefacts take place. For example, my favorite example of the Carrie Bradshaw meme is understood on Twitter and is a very popular meme; however, its prevalence dips on TikTok and Instagram. It’s still present, just not as promimnent and understood.

While this concept does not directly correlate with my research questions, it was an idea I found too interesting to ignore. Especially since I read about it in The Culture Map, and it was brought up by Dalston Super Stoned. It also adds another layer to how I think about meme circulation.

References:

Meyer, E. (2013) The Culture Map. New York : Public Affairs