(Internet) meme as a new media genre - an overview
The publication is a voice in the discussion on the essence of an (internet) meme treated as a communication phenomenon bearing the characteristics of a separate media genre, carried out on the basis of Polish research. The starting point of the analysis was to discuss a relation between meme as defined by Richard Dawkins and (internet) meme genre. As a result of this discussion, the observed phenomenon was considered one of the possible phenotypic effects of the meme treated as a unit of cultural information. The properties of the (internet) meme treated as a media genre were based on the method of genological analysis developed by Maria Wojtak. The subject of the analysis, in accordance with the adopted methodological assumptions, was a selected series of memes, and, on a meta level, academic, popular-science and fan-like statements concerning internet memes. As a result of these analyses, the structural, pragmatic, cognitive and stylistic characteristics of particular aspects of the internet meme genre pattern were described. The structural features of the (internet) meme include multimodality, interactivity, intertextuality. The pragmatic features are the functional potential, the sender’s independence, the recipient’s active position. The cognitive aspect is the relevance of the topics discussed, and the comments represented the picture of the world of the message sender. The stylistic features of the meme include colloquiality and its manifestation in different types of language games. A multilevel character of the genre was observed not only in individual “meme-realizations” or individual “meme-series”, but also in a “meme template” itself.