Portraits on social media are value-laden constructs. Whether documenting graduation or flexing in the gym, users express what they care about and present it for others to evaluate. Since “global” portrait genres are produced and consumed in different locales, their interpretation and evaluation may vary. We thus ask: What values do people identify in different types of social media portraits? Which evaluative criteria do they use when judging them? An analysis of 100 interviews with users from Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea, and the United States reveals that people consistently recognize genre-specific values in portraits and evaluate them through a narrow set of communication-related criteria. Such evaluations vary across cultures in ways that only occasionally match established comparative literature on values. We reflect on the relational character of the criteria adopted for the evaluation of portraits worldwide, highlighting its association with new modes of sociability in digital spheres.

This paper examines memetic content as a window into the values expressed by far-right constituents. Our main premise was that far-right memes are a site of interaction between two types of values: those of the far-right as a social movement and those characterizing memetic communication on social media. We studied this notion through a case from Italy: the photo-based meme genre of ‘alternative calendar commemorations’ that memorialize events or figures important to the far-right imaginary. A multi-modal qualitative analysis based on Schwartz’s theory of personal and political values yielded mixed results. As expected, we found strong appeals to collectivistic values such as patriotism and tradition. Yet some of the individualistic values associated with memes, such as self-direction and authenticity, were also evident in the corpus. We conclude by discussing how this blend of values challenges both well-established value theories and perceptions about the political work of far-right memes.

As sites where social media corporations profess their commitment to principles like community and free speech, policy documents function as boundary objects that navigate diverse audiences, purposes, and interests. This article compares the discourse of values in the Privacy Policies, Terms of Service, and Community Guidelines of five major platforms (Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, and TikTok). Through a mixed-methods analysis, we identified frequently mentioned value terms and five overarching principles consistent across platforms: expression, community, safety, choice, and improvement. However, platforms limit their burden to execute these values by selectively assigning responsibility for their enactment, often unloading such responsibility onto users. Moreover, while each of the core values may potentially serve the public good, they can also promote narrow corporate goals. This dual framing allows platforms to strategically reinterpret values to suit their own interests.

In 2017, the MeToo hashtag spread across the globe. However, it showed limited success in the Japanese Twittersphere and instead inspired local initiatives such as #WeToo and #Furawādemo (“flower demo”). To understand this reformulation, we analyzed 15 interviews with Japanese social media users and 119 Japanese newspaper articles. The results corroborate the framework we label VTM (values, topics, media), suggesting that an intersection between perceived Japanese values, the topic’s gendered and sexual nature, and media affordances explain the movement’s local development. While perceived Japanese values clash against those associated with #MeToo, new formulations “soften” the protest by blending in values such as reserve and harmony. Overall, we show how perceptions of popular values rather than values as essential orientations shape activism. Finally, we discuss the study’s implications for understanding cultural variance in cyberactivism, highlighting how divergent notions of “safe space” shape such movements.

Given its massive volume and rapid development of new trends, the universe of user-generated content may seem utterly chaotic. Yet the flow of content is underlined by deep-rooted patterns of communication. In this article, we present the first systematic attempt to identify these patterns using the concept of social media rituals. Understood as typified communicative practices that formalize and express shared values, rituals offer a productive path to categorize popular genres of content and trace the values they convey. Integrating theoretical literature on rituals with empirical studies of social media genres, we develop a typology of 16 rituals that express diverse values, ranging from respect and responsibility to materialism and pleasure. Furthermore, we show that rituals embed different notions of good communication, as reflected in the values of authenticity, persuasion, affiliation, and demonstration. Finally, we discuss how our framework can facilitate comparative investigations of user-generated content and platform values.

The world of user-generated content on social media is vast and seemingly unorganized. In this article, we attempt to identify some of its overarching patterns by sorting social media content into different “rituals,” patterned ways of communicating where people express and negotiate shared values. We integrate theoretical literature on rituals with empirical studies of social media genres to develop a typology of 16 rituals. Each ritual conveys different values, ranging from respect and responsibility to materialism and pleasure. Rituals also convey different notions of what counts as good communication, emphasizing one of four communicative values: authenticity, persuasion, affiliation, or demonstration. In our conclusion, we discuss how our framework can support future comparative research on what people post to social media.

Social media platforms are prominent sites where values are expressed, contested, and diffused. In this article, we present a conceptual framework for studying the communication of values on and through social media composed of two dimensions: scale (from individual users to global infrastructures) and explicitness (from the most explicit to the invisible). Utilizing the model, we compare the communication of two values—engagement and authenticity—in user-generated content and policy documents on Twitter and Instagram. We find a split between how users and platforms frame these concepts and discuss the strategic role of ambiguity in value discourse, where idealistic meanings invoked by users positively charge the instrumental applications stressed by platforms. We also show how implicit and explicit articulations of the same value can contradict each other. Finally, we reflect upon tensions within the model, as well as the power relations between the personal, cultural, and infrastructural levels of platform values.

In recent years, political discourse in digital spheres has seen a rise in the use of infographics. The paper addresses an unexplored question about this phenomenon: which characteristics are associated with higher levels of ostensive user engagement with political infographics in social media? We conceptualize ostensive user engagement as the outward-facing metrics afforded by a platform (e.g., like, share, and comment count) that serve both as means for self-presentation and shape the informational environment that others are exposed to. A corpus comprised of all infographics posted on Facebook by the four leading candidates in the 2016 US presidential campaign (N = 252) was coded for cognitive, behavioral, and emotional characteristics. We found that two of the cognitively oriented dimensions enhanced engagement, while behavioral cues (calls to action) were, surprisingly, negatively linked. The inclusion of emotions did not show an overall association; however, a deeper look revealed a candidate-specific effect: anger was associated with greater engagement on Trump's infographics, and similarly, pleasure on Sanders’. In conclusion, we discuss the implications of our findings for understanding the informational environment shaped by engagement with infographics in light of the two seemingly opposing perceptions of internal and external authenticity.

Instagram is the place for the visualization of everything, from travel and food to abstract concepts such as freedom. Over the past decade, the platform has introduced a bottom-up process where users co-produce image repertoires that shape the boundaries of the imaginable. Drawing on an epistemology of social constructionism, we ask which visual repertoires are associated with value-related terms on Instagram. We studied 20 widely used value hashtags, sampling the top 100 posts for each (N = 2,000). A combined qualitative–quantitative content analysis revealed that 19 of the 20 hashtags possess distinct visual footprints, typically reflecting an orientation toward the self and an emphasis on consumption. We conclude by discussing three implications of our findings: the role of images in the social construction of the meaning of values, the distinction between internalized and externalized value depictions, and aestheticized consumption as an organizing principle of Instagram’s mainstream.

New Year’s resolutions are acts of valuation where people express ideas about what is important and worthwhile in life. Although resolutions have a long history, the twenty-first century has transformed the practice into a social media ritual with greater visibility, interactivity, and reach. Using this unique event to explore the globalization of values, we analyze tweets about New Year’s resolutions in English, German, Italian, Japanese, and Korean. Combining network analysis (n = 160,592) and content analysis (n = 2000), we compare discursive topics, modes of ritual participation, and the values expressed in resolutions. Our findings indicate both that the ritual crosses cultures and that there are language-specific dynamics that do not map neatly onto established divisions between ‘Eastern’ and ‘Western’ value orientations. Instead, we identify three underlying tensions organizing the articulation of values: self-acceptance vs. self-improvement, public vs. private, and conformity vs. oppositionality. We discuss these in relation to an overarching tension between local contexts and global platform cultures. Finally, we explore the study’s broader implications for understanding the interaction between values, norms, and global communicative practices.

This paper examines memetic content as a window into the values expressed by far-right constituents. Our main premise was that far-right memes are a site of interaction between two types of values: those of the far-right as a social movement and those characterizing memetic communication on social media. We studied this notion through a case from Italy: the photo-based meme genre of ‘alternative calendar commemorations’ that memorialize events or figures important to the far-right imaginary. A multi-modal qualitative analysis based on Schwartz’s theory of personal and political values yielded mixed results. As expected, we found strong appeals to collectivistic values such as patriotism and tradition. Yet some of the individualistic values associated with memes, such as self-direction and authenticity, were also evident in the corpus. We conclude by discussing how this blend of values challenges both well-established value theories and perceptions about the political work of far-right memes.

This article presents a transnational study of the classification and evaluation of social media content. We conducted a large-scale survey (N = 4770) in five countries (Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea, and the United States) with open-ended questions about the types of content people like and dislike. Through iterative and inductive coding, we identified 29 topics, or broad areas of interest, and 213 recurrent genres, or narrower categories that share elements of form and content. We compared the results according to country, gender, age, and education level, identifying patterns of cultural difference and commonality. While we found significant differences in the prominence and preferentiality of content, these distictions were less pronounced for disliked topics around which social media users tended to converge. Finally, we discuss genre imaginaries as normative maps that reflect ideas about morality in general and the purpose of social media in particular.

Social media constitute a fertile though challenging arena for the use of ironic humor. A combination of facilitating and hindering factors turns the production and identification of irony in this sphere into a complex venture, positioning it as a powerful tool in consolidating group boundaries. The main aims of this paper are to identify the markers of ironic humor on social media and to explicate their workings within the dynamics of digital interactions. Existing literature about ironic markers addresses mostly face-to-face and mass-mediated interactions, while there is a gap in our understanding of the production and interpretation of irony in the unique communicative conditions of social media. An analysis of a bilingual corpus of successful and failed ironic utterances extracted from five social network sites yielded a novel typology of five ironic markers: platform, participants, style, intra-textual content, and contextual knowledge. These markers both resemble and deviate from features of irony in non-digital settings. Media affordances often allow access to necessary complementary information, yet such forensic activity is only accessible to active users, who recognize the need for further investigation of the meant. Hence, using certain types of ironic markers forms utterances that are decipherable to some audiences but opaque to others. In this sense, the marking of digital irony and its decoding both rely on group boundaries and play a central role in their delineation. We conclude by evaluating the roles of this new regime of ironic markers in processes of boundary work.

This paper presents a first systematic analysis and conceptualization of local comic responses to global events, as articulated by internet users. We probed the multifaceted interactions between the global-local and entertaining-disruptive dimensions of contemporary satire through a cross-linguistic analysis of reactions to Donald Trumps’ election. Using a combination of qualitative methods, we analyzed humorous messages in Arabic, Chinese, English, German, and Spanish (n = 321) on Twitter and Weibo during November 2016. We found that globally shared themes are mainly apolitical and entertaining, while glocal responses align with three ideal types, which we term inbound, transitional, and outbound satire. Each type of satire featured a distinct combination of protagonists, targets and humor mechanisms. In conclusion, we discuss how cross-national satire on social media problematizes the (already murky) distinction between entertaining and disruptive satire, why satire is uniquely equipped to domesticate global affairs through estrangement, and how our typology may be linked to bilateral relations between countries in the contemporary international arena.

Information visualizations (“infographics”) have long been part of the production of knowledge, although the rise of digital media brought about a significant expansion in both their volume and their use for political purposes. This article provides a first overview and typology of the emergent genre we term “digital political infographics.” Informed by literature and theory about visualizations, political persuasion, interfaces, and digital sharing, we aimed to reveal the “data-politics” unique to this expression form. A grounded analysis of 200 politically oriented infographics on Twitter yielded a two-dimensional typology relating to the narrative strategies and the interfaces underpinning users’ engagement with data in this discursive format. An integrative evaluation revealed that digital political infographics are hybrid communicative forms, characterized by three influence trajectories between political persuasion, infographic conventions, and digital environments: “politicizing” infographic traits, “infographing” political tactics, and creating a new common ground, featuring a rhetoric of “tactile data experience.”

This study uses meme templates as a lens for exploring cultural globalization. By conceptualizing such templates as expressive repertoires that simultaneously enable and limit expression, we examined global and local dimensions of mainstream meme culture. We traced the top 100 templates in meme generators in English, German, Spanish, and Chinese, using 10 examples to typify each (n = 4000). Combining quantitative and qualitative analysis, we examined the forms, social identities, and emotions embedded in these templates. Our findings demonstrated that whereas meme templates are dominated by American/Western pop culture, local templates are also evident, especially in Chinese. Overall, memes are socially conservative yet emotionally disruptive; while they align with hegemonic representation patterns, their emotional palette tilts toward the negative, with anger as a major anchor and happiness expressed ironically. Finally, our findings suggested an individualism–collectivism puzzle, wherein emotions in memes seem to contradict the existing literature on cultural values.

While the centrality of Facebook as a political arena has been widely acknowledged, only scant attention has been given to what makes some political posts more successful than others. Addressing this gap, we analyzed a corpus of political posts written by diverse political actors in Israel. We explored, in particular, two main groups of factors that have been associated with major attributes of Facebook usage: content engagement and self-presentation. The analysis yielded a model of six features that promote the success of a political post: implied emotions, humor, first person, self-exposure, personal stance, and anger-evoking cues. We also identified differences in successful posts written by right-wing and left-wing actors; while humor was found to be a significant predictor of success only in left-wing posts, references to an out-group are associated with success only in right-wing ones. Overall, the findings showed that attributes of self-presentation are strongly linked to the success of political posts.

This article traces the role of ‘testimonial rallies’ – Internet memes in which participants post personal photos and/or written accounts as part of a coordinated political protest – in the formulation of truth-related values. Rather than endorsing the value of truth per se, rallies such as ‘We are the 99 percent’ or ‘I never ask for it’ valorize what I term ‘memetic authenticity’. This construction of the authentic incorporates four basic components: evidence, self-orientation, affective judgement, and mimesis. By combining ‘external authenticity’ that relates to the aggregation of factual proofs with forms of ‘internal authenticity’ that focus on emotive individual experiences, testimonial rallies serve as a grassroots weapon of the weak against those in power. While ‘external’ and ‘internal’ forms of authenticity are happily married in this genre, I conclude with a reflection on our grim future in the case of divorce.

This article explores the workings of memes as cultural capital in web-based communities. A grounded analysis of 4chan’s /b/ board reveals three main formulations of memes as capital, delineating them as subcultural knowledge, unstable equilibriums, and discursive weapons. While the first formulation follows well-documented notions about subcultural knowledge as a basis for boundary work, the latter two focus on the dualities intrinsic to Internet memes. The contradiction between following conventions and supplying innovative content leads to memes’ configuration as unstable equilibriums, triggering constant conflict about their “correct” use. Paradoxically, this struggle highlights collective identity, as it keeps shared culture at the center of discussion. Similarly, when memes are used as jabs at the most intense points of arguments, they function simultaneously as signifiers of superior authoritative status and as reminders of common affinity. Thus, the dualities underpinning memes’ structure lead to their performance as contested cultural capital.

This paper offers the first systematic analysis of ‘digital memetic nonsense’– clusters of seemingly meaningless digital texts imitated and circulated by many participants. We evaluated this phenomenon through two conceptual lenses: theories on nonsense in the pre-digital age and the techno-cultural conditions that facilitate its contemporary formations. A grounded analysis of 139 nonsensical memes led to their typology into 5 genres: linguistic silliness, embodied silliness, pastiche, dislocations, and interruptions. In each of these genres, we show how digital nonsense may potentially serve as a social glue that bonds members of phatic, image-oriented, communities. If, in the past, nonsense was depicted in both intellectual terms, as defiant deconstruction of meaning, and in playful/social terms, its current memetic manifestations lean heavily toward the latter. Rather than being a reflection on ‘referential meaning’, digital nonsense is analyzed as a generative source of ‘affective meaning’ that marks the formation of social connections preceding cognitive understanding. We conclude by highlighting the potentially subversive implications of this shift for participatory barriers and community membership.

This article presents a broad framework for the cross-cultural analysis of user-generated content (UGC). Building on veteran concepts used in comparative studies, as well as on literature focusing on attributes unique to UGC, I suggest that global and local aspects of digital cultures can be identified by analyzing four dimensions: values, frames, emotions, and communicative stances. A further principle is using genres as prisms through which the four dimensions are evaluated. The utility of this framework is demonstrated through a cross-linguistic analysis of two genres: notecard confessions and recut trailers. An examination of the manifestations of these genres in English, Arabic, Spanish, German, and Chinese provided insight into the strengths and weaknesses of the proposed model. In particular, I argue that previous theories of values should be reconsidered when analyzing the new landscape of UGC, because they fail to fully account for the multifaceted and fragmented ideals embedded in these content types.

In September 2010, a video titled “It Gets Better” was uploaded to YouTube, responding to suicides of gay teens who had suffered from homophobic bullying. Before long, thousands of Internet users added their own versions of the clip, creating a mass appeal to young people while simultaneously negotiating the norms of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) collective identity. Conceptualizing this body of videos as an Internet meme, we examine the extent to which participants imitate or alter textual components presented in previous videos. A combined quantitative and qualitative analysis of 200 clips shows that in an arena ostensibly free of formal gatekeepers, participants tend to police themselves, toeing the line with conformist norms. We also identify domains of potential subversion, related not only to the content of the videos but mainly to the forms facilitated by digital media.

This paper uses the lens of internet-based humor to examine how, amidst massive global flows of content, young Israelis articulate a sense of local-national affinity. We analyzed verbal and visual comic email forwards to trace: (a) the extent to which Israelis share local versus global content and (b) the means through which national affinity is conveyed. Results show that while Israelis’ humorous diet is mainly non-local, a pervasive use of the Hebrew vernacular plays an important role in creating local affinity. Our analysis yielded five discursive frames that mark locality in humor: presumed locality, dramatized locality, ex(im)ported localization, clandestine localization , and conspicuous localization . We conclude by offering a typology that locates these frames along three analytical axes: origin, explicitness and diversity. The combination of these frames and axes suggests a nuanced map of comic global-local interplays and offers a model for future comparative research.

In this paper, we analyze “Gangnam Style” re-makes from a memetic point of view. Our examination unfolds in three parts. First, we present our conceptual framework, according to which Internet memes constitute forms of interpretive (and potentially also political) participation. We then focus our discussion on the case of “Gangnam Style”, in an attempt to unpack the song’s memetic success. In the third and main part we move from the initial video to its successors, asking: What types of changes were introduced to the original version when it migrated to other territories? Focusing on the Middle East, we applied comparative thematic analysis to 78 versions created by Hebrew-speaking populations (mainly in Israel) and 68 versions created by Arab speakers in the Greater Middle East. Our main findings show both similarities between the corpuses (particularly with regards to women’s marginal role in the clips) and differences between them. While Arab creators used “Gangnam Style” as a tool for carnivalesque socio-political satire, Israeli ones tended to “erase” the original meaning by focusing on middle-class lifestyle, leisure, and entertainment. Finally, we claim that remakes of “Gangnam Style” and similar videos may serve as important vessels for negotiating images and identities of conflicted environments.

This study employs a large-scale quantitative analysis to reveal structural patterns of internet memes, focusing on 2 forces that bind them together: the quiddities of each meme family and the generic attributes of the broader memetic sphere. Using content and network analysis of 1013 meme instances (including videos, images, and text), we explore memes' prevalent quiddity types and generic features, and the ways in which they relate to each other. Our findings show that (a) higher cohesiveness of meme families is associated with a greater uniqueness of their generic attributes; and (b) the concreteness of meme quiddities is associated with cohesiveness and uniqueness. We discuss the implications of these findings to the understanding of internet memes and participatory culture.

This article explores new forms of ethnic humor as emergent in a salient arena of contemporary culture: our electronic mailboxes. We argue that two processes underpin the manifestations of ethnic humor as it ‘goes online’: the global turn and the turn to genre plurality. We examine the implications of these processes through (1) content analysis of 1000 Israeli humorous ‘forwards’ and (2) a grounded analysis of 130 texts representing ethnic groups with varying degrees of proximity to Israeli culture. Regarding the global turn, we found that non-local ethnicities are ‘imported’ to the local symbolic sphere via new forms of humor. Regarding the turn to genre plurality, results indicate that while old forms of ethnic humor typically include explicit stereotyping, new forms introduce a wider variety of stances towards ethnic stereotypes, ranging from their reproduction in visual language to a polysemic stance, and finally to their neutralization.

This article probes the cultural meaning of contemporary meme genres that are based on photographs. The analysis looks into the broad dimensions of truth and temporality, as expressed in three prominent genres: reaction Photoshops, stock character macros, and photo fads. Based on patterns shared by these genres, it is argued that photo-based memes function as both modes of hypersignification, wherein the code itself becomes the focus of attention, and as prospective photography, wherein photos are increasingly perceived as the raw material for future images. Finally, combining the two frames, memes are conceptualized as operative signs – textual categories that are designed as invitations for (creative) action. While these three qualities were also evident, in one way or another, in traditional forms of photography, they have emerged as governing logics in an era marked by an amalgamation of digital photography and participatory culture.

While polysemy has been discussed in communication studies for decades, a fundamental question has evaded systematic analysis: Which textual features make mediated texts open to multiple interpretations? Focusing on humor, we addressed this question by using a somewhat unusual point of departure–a failed intercoder reliability test. We analyzed 130 humorous forwards, of which 55 elicited disagreement between coders regarding the target of mockery and 75 were uncontroversial. Our comparative analysis yielded six textual attributes that augment polysemy in mediated humor: narrative-valence discrepancies, unstereotypical stereotyping, debatable personality traits, self-deprecating humor, intertextuality, and centrifugal multimodality. We demonstrate the utility of the proposed typology by analyzing public controversies stirred by humorous communication, and discuss its applicability to the study of audiences and nonhumorous genres.

Audience participation has become a salient component of contemporary digital news environments, challenging traditional boundaries between readers and journalists. In this paper, we present an analytical framework for the evaluation of participation features in news websites, consisting of five axes: Chronology—the stage of news production; Visibility—transparency and prominence; Agency—users' and editors' level of activity; Integration—segregation versus embeddedness of participatory features; and Share-ability—inner, public and social circles of activity. This framework was developed in a cross-cultural study based on a grounded theory approach. We examined participation features in 15 prominent news websites in the United Kingdom, the United States and Israel, and conducted a cross-national and cross-organizational analysis. Other than the use of advanced social plugins, no significant cross-national differences were found in the implementation of participatory features. However, the differences discovered between news organizations require further investigation into the factors shaping the selection and construction of news-based participatory features.

In this article, we use the somewhat unusual lens of joke translation to examine the process of "user-generated globalization" – cross-national diffusion of content by Internet users. We tracked the translations of 100 popular jokes in English into 9 languages and analyzed them quantitatively and qualitatively. Our findings indicate that (1) web-based diffusion of translated jokes is common but varies greatly, both between languages and between jokes; (2) "global hits" differ from "translation-resistant" jokes in their themes and incorporation of American markers; and (3) translated joke versions tend to include only minor cultural alternations (such as name shifting), thereby preserving the original messages. Overall, these findings suggest that Internet jokes serve as powerful (albeit often invisible) agents of globalization and Americanization.

This article explores the relationship between fans and producers in an era of technological and cultural change. Focusing on fans' new liberties in the Web 2.0 environment, we study the ways in which fandom—previously conceptualized as a “powerless elite”—copes with increased status and influence. We focus on the case of Doctor Who, a cult series revived by a fan turned producer, and the love–hate relationship between him and the show's fans. Using grounded theory, we analyze discussions in the LiveJournal community doctorwho and chart the strategies used by members to negotiate their new place in the world. In an age marked by a rapid increase in fan power and blurring of the boundaries between producers and consumers, we find Doctor Who fans working intensively to disempower themselves and keep the fan/producer separation in place.

This paper re-examines the concept of “meme” in the context of digital culture. Defined as cultural units that spread from person to person, memes were debated long before the digital era. Yet the Internet turned the spread of memes into a highly visible practice, and the term has become an integral part of the netizen vernacular. After evaluating the promises and pitfalls of memes for understanding digital culture, I address the problem of defining memes by charting a communication-oriented typology of 3 memetic dimensions: content, form, and stance. To illustrate the utility of the typology, I apply it to analyze the video meme “Leave Britney Alone.” Finally, I chart possible paths for further meme-oriented analysis of digital content.

Launched in 2005 as a video-sharing website, YouTube has become an emblem of participatory culture. A central feature of this website is the dazzling number of derivative videos, uploaded daily by many thousands. Using the ‘meme’ concept as an analytic tool, this article aims at uncovering the attributes common to ‘memetic videos’ – popular clips that generate extensive user engagement by way of creative derivatives. Drawing on YouTube popularity-measurements and on user-generated playlists, a corpus of 30 prominent memetic videos was assembled. A combined qualitative and quantitative analysis of these videos yielded six common features: focus on ordinary people, flawed masculinity, humor, simplicity, repetitiveness and whimsical content. Each of these attributes marks the video as incomplete or flawed, thereby invoking further creative dialogue. In its concluding section, the article addresses the skyrocketing popularity of mimicking in contemporary digital culture, linking it to economic, social and cultural logics of participation.

This article traces the depiction of Arab leaders in televised Israeli satire during the last two decades. First, I discuss the construction of Yasser Arafat's image in the popular show Hartzufim (1996–2000), claiming that his polysemic framing as an Arab-Jew served both the emotional needs of Jewish-Israelis in a bewildering era of transformations and the commercial interests of the show's producers. I then examine the depiction of other Arab leaders in Eretz Nehederet (2003–present), highlighting the continuous dominance of the “Israelification” framing strategy as a mode of hegemonic cooptation. Yet, in contemporary entertainment-driven media environment, this framing of Arab leaders tends to be de-politicized and fantasy-anchored, rather than news-anchored.

This article explores the uncharted territory of reflexive internet humor about networked computers. A combined quantitative—qualitative analysis of 250 texts sampled from popular websites yielded a map of the main themes underpinning this massive corpus of humor. We analyzed them in relation to three grand theories of the nature of humor — superiority, release, and incongruity — locating each theme on a matrix deriving from the theories: (i) a superiority axis, running between the powerful and weak players in the networked environment; (ii) an incongruity axis, running from the purely human to the strictly technical, and (iii) a release axis reflecting degrees of tension generated by the former two dualities. Our analysis suggests that humor about networked computers extends to a comment on the nature of humanness in a bewildering age of artificial intelligence. The communication of this reflexive comment may be shaping a global community of computer users.

This paper examines the ideologies encoded in popular internet humor about gender in the context of contemporary debates about post-feminism. Five major themes in gender-focused humor were identified in a grounded analysis of 150 popular internet texts. In addition to three traditional themes—sex, marriage, and blondes—the two post-feminist themes found were gender differences, referred to as “Mars and Venus,” and individualism and empowerment, tagged as “Girl Power.” While seemingly new as themes and genres, our interpretation leads to the conclusion that these are, in fact, symptoms of “backlash” (namely, innovative repackaging of old sexist themes). Whereas sexist and post-feminist notions are dominant in these exemplars of popular online humor, critical feminist texts were found to be nearly absent, as was concern for the public sphere or issues of ethnicity, class and sexual preference. The concluding discussion focuses on the mechanism that enables popular internet humor to be a sophisticated and powerful vehicle for naturalization of so-called “universal” stereotypes about gender differences.

This paper presents a first analysis of popular Internet humour about gender. The focus is on the extent to which such humour encodes sexist, feminist, and post-feminist ideologies. Utilizing a novel sampling protocol, a corpus of 150 highly popular verbal and visual comic texts was retrieved from eight English-based websites. The findings of a content analysis suggest that although men and women are mocked to an equal extent, traditional stereotypical gender representations still prevail, along with the emergence of new postfeminist portrayals. The postfeminist, essentialist thesis of gender differences is revealed to be central, while feminist humour about gender inequalities is marginal. The discussion contextualizes these findings and argues they express backlash interpretations of postfeminism. Finally, the results are discussed in relation to the high hopes held for the potential of the Internet to be involved in women's empowerment and the transformation of gender relations.

In recent years, political communication scholars have been paying growing attention to new television genres blending entertainment and politics (Baym, 2005; Corner and Pels, 2003; Van Zoonen, 2005). A key dilemma driving these studies touches upon the consequences of political entertainment for the democratic process and the nature of the public sphere. However, less attention has been given to the implications of these shows from the perspective of political actors themselves. Our main aims in the present study are to map the challenges politicians face in the new television environment, and to explore the strategies they develop in order to address them successfully. In this analysis, we highlight the concept of communicative competence as a productive framework for understanding politicians’ performance in new types of televised interactions. We use the case study of the ‘mock interview’genre as a site …

The ‘sexy dumb blonde’ stereotype, which emerged in American popular culture during the Twentieth century, is one of the most salient themes of contemporary Internet humor. In this paper, we analyze the new generation of online blonde jokes, claiming that they incorporate three main features. First, in relation to the blonde image itself, we find that stupidity has superseded promiscuity as the main theme of Internet-based blonde jokes. Second, in relation to the spread of the jokes, we describe the globalization of the blonde joke on the Internet, and its translation into numerous languages. Finally, we portray the emergence of “Meta blonde” jokes—texts that build on the popularity and familiarity of the audience with the blonde joke genre in order to comment and reflect on it, yet in so doing, cunningly reinforce old stereotypes.

Memes are small units of culture, analogous to genes, which flow from person to person by copying or imitation. More than any previous medium, the Internet has the technical capabilities for global meme diffusion. Yet, to spread globally, memes need to negotiate their way through cultural and linguistic borders. This article introduces a new broad method, Web memetics, comprising extensive Web searches and combined quantitative and qualitative analyses, to identify and assess: (a) the different versions of a meme, (b) its evolution online, and (c) its Web presence and translation into common Internet languages. This method is demonstrated through one extensively circulated joke about men, women, and computers. The results show that the joke has mutated into several different versions and is widely translated, and that translations incorporate small, local adaptations while retaining the English versions' fundamental components. In conclusion, Web memetics has demonstrated its ability to identify and track the evolution and spread of memes online, with interesting results, albeit for only one case study.

This article maps the fundamental dimensions of media coverage of contemporary war. It defines and discusses three major dimensions: Arenas of war news (the homefront, the opponent's media field, and international media); the main script used for positioning the protagonists (power, vulnerability and disaster); and the degree of correspondence between coverage sought by officials and that presented by the media. Here, the political and ideological nature of the regime is highly relevant. Using the case study of the fighting between Israel and the Hamas in the Gaza strip in 2008/2009, we demonstrate the interplay and multifaceted relations between these dimensions.

Humour has long been a part of election campaigns but rarely has election humour been subject to scholarly analysis. The increasing popularity of new forms of Internet-based humour has, however, raised questions about the significance of humour in campaigning and whether online humour can be used as means of stimulating political engagement. This article assesses online humour in the context of the 2005 UK election, exploring both the motivations of the different actors who distributed web-based political humour and the nature of the texts themselves. We find that whilst the official party campaigns use humour very cautiously, there has been an upsurge in humour based campaigns from net activists as well as more traditional broadcasters. Yet, overall, the way that humour is used is paradoxical, since it often attempts to encourage participation but portrays politics as a cynical game, leaving the rationale for political participation unclear.

This paper focuses on one of the most prominent manifestations of humorous communication in the present era – Internet-based humor. It explores both the content of Internet humor and the various forms that it takes. A content analysis of 400 humorous texts from eight salient humorous websites shows that the Internet functions both as a ‘carrier’ of old humor types such as jokes and cartoons and as a ‘generator’ of new humor types. The new types are defined and analysed in the light of three characteristics of the Internet: Interactivity, multimedia and global reach. Whereas interactivity is expressed in the humorous texts in a very limited way, the features of multimedia and global reach are more visible. The results point to a prominence of the visual humorous forms over the verbal forms, as well as to a global dominance over the local. This supremacy of the global is evident in the analysis of the humorous topics: Globally oriented topics such as sex, gender and animals are much more popular than locally oriented topics such as ethnicity and politics. This does not mean, however, that the humorous texts reflect a universal set of values. Not only are the vast majority of the texts in English, but they also reflect the values and priorities of Western, capitalist and youth-oriented cultures.

The paper focuses on the phenomenon of ‘clean joke’ Web sites. Such sites are often described as providing family-friendly humor, which is safe for children. However, our analysis reveals that the term ‘clean joke’ has mainly one operative meaning: a joke which is ‘sex-free’. Whereas sex is excluded from ‘clean joke’ sites, sexist, racist and ageist content does appear in them. Therefore, the problematic message some of these Web sites convey is that: a) sex is ‘dirty’; and b) sexism and other forms of discrimination are ‘clean’. We interpret these findings both at the cultural level as manifestations of negative Western attitudes towards sexuality, and also at the technological level as easy solutions for child protection in the digital era.

Taking “Gangnam Style” seriously: what Internet memes can tell us about digital culture. In December 2012, the exuberant video “Gangnam Style” became the first YouTube clip to be viewed more than one billion times. Thousands of its viewers responded by creating and posting their own variations of the video—“Mitt Romney Style,” “NASA Johnson Style,” “Egyptian Style,” and many others. “Gangnam Style” (and its attendant parodies, imitations, and derivations) is one of the most famous examples of an Internet meme: a piece of digital content that spreads quickly around the web in various iterations and becomes a shared cultural experience. In this book, Limor Shifman investigates Internet memes and what they tell us about digital culture. Shifman discusses a series of well-known Internet memes—including “Leave Britney Alone,” the pepper-spraying cop, LOLCats, Scumbag Steve, and Occupy Wall Street's “We Are the 99 Percent.” She offers a novel definition of Internet memes: digital content units with common characteristics, created with awareness of each other, and circulated, imitated, and transformed via the Internet by many users. She differentiates memes from virals; analyzes what makes memes and virals successful; describes popular meme genres; discusses memes as new modes of political participation in democratic and nondemocratic regimes; and examines memes as agents of globalization. Memes, Shifman argues, encapsulate some of the most fundamental aspects of the Internet in general and of the participatory Web 2.0 culture in particular. Internet memes may be entertaining, but in this book Limor Shifman makes a compelling argument for taking them seriously.

Shifman illuminates the roles of a central cultural phenomenon in the digital age—the meme. She introduces the concept of the Internet meme, and traces the rise of memes over the past decade till they have become a prevalent mode of communication across the globe. The chapter provides insights on memes in digital communication cultures, explaining why they matter economically, socially, and politically. Shifman argues that memes are nothing less than new ways of expressing and constructing values. While there are many different kinds of memes, Shifman argues that the content of Internet memes tends to go well beyond the overt values expressly conveyed to incorporate a set of more latent, or covert, values, which are intrinsic to the significance of memes as communicative formats. Her chapter clarifies why the study of memes is an important new area for research on digital communication.

This chapter examines the role that humor has played in a specific context: Israel’s ethnic cleavage between “Ashkenazim” (Jews of Euro-American origin) and “Mizrahim” (Jews of Asian and North African origin). From the early 1950s, Israeli discourse about this cleavage revolved around three dichotomies: diasporic versus Israeli identity; Mizrahi versus Ashkenazi; and ethnic tribalism versus the Israeli melting pot. Within the Zionist ideology prevailing in Israel from its inception, the hierarchic relationship represented in each pair was well defined, with the latter element considered superior to the former. Yet during the 1970s, and more so in the 1980s and 1990s, social and cultural changes challenged these three dichotomies and the hierarchies ascribed to them. The chapter begins with a brief discussion of the literature on the social implications of ethnic humor. It then examines the main changes that have taken place in discourse about ethnic power relations in Israel since the 1970s. This is followed by an in-depth analysis of a number of canonical humorous television texts that epitomize four historical stages of ethnic representation in Israeli televised humor. Finally, it looks into the broader implications of the analysis, arguing that polysemic qualities of humorous texts allow them to establish common ground between different social and cultural groups.

Audience participation has become a salient component of contemporary digital news environments, challenging traditional boundaries between readers and journalists. In this paper, we present an analytical framework for the evaluation of participation features in news websites, consisting of five axes: Chronology—the stage of news production; Visibility—transparency and prominence; Agency—users' and editors' level of activity; Integration—segregation versus embeddedness of participatory features; and Share-ability—inner, public and social circles of activity. This framework was developed in a cross-cultural study based on a grounded theory approach. We examined participation features in 15 prominent news websites in the United Kingdom, the United States and Israel, and conducted a cross-national and cross-organizational analysis. Other than the use of advanced social plugins, no significant cross-national differences were found in the implementation of participatory features. However, the differences discovered between news organizations require further investigation into the factors shaping the selection and construction of news-based participatory features.

The word “dissemination” is used in two distinct ways in communication scholarship: as a theoretical model and as a mundane term. According to John Durham Peters's conceptual classification, dissemination is the loose “seeding” of ideas that may (or may not) be harvested by audiences. When used as a mundane term, dissemination depicts the directed spread of information, ideas, or (most often) scientific knowledge from a central source to divergent audiences. While both uses refer to an intentional spread of messages from one entity to many, the theoretical construct is “thinner” as the sender does not aim to control the conditions (or outcomes) of resection. In contemporary digital culture, the two meanings of dissemination collide in the concept of “sharing.” Used as an overarching term for depicting a wide array of online activities, “sharing” incorporates a new incarnation of dissemination, tailored to fit the phatic, self-oriented, and algorithmic Web 2.0 culture.

In theory, Israel should be a great place for political satire. It may be a cliché to say that political reality is often far more surprising, intriguing, and unpredictable than anything a satirist could come up with, but when it comes to the Holy Land this is probably the case. Packed with a mindboggling array of contradictions and involved in a ceaseless conflict with its Arab neighbors, Israel is always either on the verge of a crisis, or in the midst of one. Yet when it comes to televised satire, the offerings are surprisingly limited. So far, only three prominent satirical shows have been aired in Israel: Nikui Rosh (“Head Cleaning”; 1974-1976), Hartzufim (“Crappy/Cheeky Faces”; 1996-2000), and Eretz Nehederet (“What a Wonderful Country”; 2003-present).

Harold Adams Innis is widely considered a founding proponent of a technological deterministic approach to communication studies. One of the fundamental notions usually ascribed to such an approach is that technology is an autonomous, powerful force, emerging independently of social expectations. Technology, according to this view, is the independent stimulus, social change the dependent response (Bijker, 1997; MacKenzie & Wajcman, 1990; Smith & Marx, 1996). In this sense, at least, we fail to detect symptoms of technological determinism in Innis’ writings about communications (Blondheim, 2003; Innis, 1951; 1972). Far from it: Innis, rather than considering communication technologies to emerge out of the blue unattached to social expectations, understood them to be engineered and launched in response to society’s perceived needs, through purposeful social choices.