Play: Digital Arts, Internet Memes and Spreadable

The terms “viral” and “memes” have a distinct set of meaning when it comes to the world of marketing and advertising. As suggested by Henry Jenkins, these terms are the biological metaphors designed to explain a certain media phenomenon. The way media content spreads through people and cultures, it has often been likened to that of a biological virus, which spreads throughout the body seamlessly. The kind of techniques used by the media in marketing and advertising nowadays such as the Word-of-Mouth marketing and other appealing mannerisms such as video content and musical mixes in order to attract the public attention towards a certain product is being referred to as the virus within the spreadable media. Henry Jenkins refers to this process as “guerrilla marketing, exploiting social networks, and mobilizing consumers and distributors”. (Jenkins, 2009)

DouglasRushkoff in his book highlights the functioning of the so called media virus. He argues that the media virus is similar to the pathogens that that travel within and affect our body. The content spreads among the people through sharing. These media contents contain underlying messages and meanings that are intended to infect the common minds in order to compel them towards a product that is being advertised (pp.9-10). For example, the endorsement of a certain product by our favorite celebrities often brainwashes us into buying the product. These ideological codes are termed as “memes”.

These memes or hidden messages with specific agendas were first likened to viruses and memes as in biological systems, by biologist Richard Dawkins who wanted to explain the cultural evolution through biological terms. He outlined that just like the pathogen and the human body, the society also evolves with the infusion of media encoded messages.

Dawkins’s theory was further seconded by Stephenson in 1992, when they pointed out how the human mind is vulnerable towards these media encoded messages with preset agendas, with examples like mass hysteria. Mass hysteria is a phenomenon wherein, panic spreads amongst a group of people due to the inception of panic in one person, almost like the way a virus spreads, only in this case the people have a role to play, like vehicles carrying the virus. (Neil Stephenson,1992)