The meme as a discursive genre in Online Social Network Services

March 16, 2022March 16, 2022
by Fernando de Assis Rodrigues

The study aimed to investigate memes as a discursive genre and describe them on a page of an Online Social Network Service (OSNS) aided by the classification of Recuero (2011).

As a method, the descriptive study with an exploratory character was used, with Facebook as the locus of data collection. The choice is justified because it is one of the most used OSNS (DIGITAL, 2019). Facebook pages in Portuguese were freely observed with the purpose of disseminating memes.

The selection to carry out the data collection was based on the number of likes and shares made on the pages, thus reaching the page Capinaremos. In March 2021, the Capinaremos page was classified according to its creators as entertainment with 1,513,476 followers, achieving particular popularity among internet users.

For the development of the study, six (6) memes were selected based on the classification of posts from the year 2020, between November 29 and December 24, 2020. For the development of the study, six (6) memes were selected based on the classification of posts from the year 2020, between November 29 and December 24, 2020. In the description of the memes, Recuero’s (2011) classification was adopted, as it is understood that their research can contribute to the understanding of the genre.

Only memes produced with a set of images and texts/statements were used in the study. This stage of the research approaches memes in the context of social, political, and everyday situations, in order to describe them as a discursive genre. To complement the approach, some individual peculiarities of each meme were recorded, such as the number of shares observed on the page Weeding with the intention of verifying the level of reach that the genre obtained among internet users.