Internet memes in the modern world are an integral part of cybercommunication – the process of establishing and developing contacts between people in cyberspace, carried out through modern ICT, including the exchange of information, its mutual semantic and expressive perception, as well as attempts to influence each other. You can even call Internet memes a new language spoken by a particular Internet community.
The term “meme” was originally coined in the English Oxford Dictionary in 1988 as an element of culture. Now, the same dictionary defines a “meme” as an image, video, piece of text, etc., usually of a humorous nature, that is quickly copied and distributed by Internet users, often with extensive changes.
You may not know this, but today, students can use different educational memes in their essays. But if they face some problems while writing papers, they can always order essays written by EssayShark writers. In this way, educational memes will be correctly used in your text.
Best educational memes to use in your essay
Internet memes can become an effective learning tool because the psycho-age characteristics of youth correlate with the characteristics of Internet memes and complement each other. In this case, we are looking specifically at educational Internet memes that can be used in essay writing. Let’s give examples.
The first meme can be added when you use more refined words in your essay.
The meme can be used when you can’t reach the word limit of your essay and don’t want a teacher to give it a low grade.
This meme can be used when you are writing an essay about some complex terms.
This meme can be used while using a specific citation in your essay.
This meme can be added when a student decides to use such sources of materials as Wikipedia but not more trustworthy sources.
The educational potential of Internet memes
We can characterize the educational potential as the educational and training opportunities that the phenomenon of Internet memes has. The educational potential of Internet memes lies in their influence on the cognitive, emotional, and motivational spheres of students.
The educational potential of Internet memes in the sphere of cognitive influence lies in the fact that an educational Internet meme contains enough information to extract from it any thesis or main idea without textual reinforcement. In the sphere of emotional and motivational influence -, Internet memes evoke positive emotions, help reduce stress, and increase motivation to learn or write, as in our case. Here, we will take a closer look at the second aspect of educational potential listed above.
The humorous nature of Internet memes helps to focus attention on the important and necessary parts of the material being studied. It can be a remedy against boredom, a means of engaging in a lesson, and increasing motivation to learn or write an essay. According to the study on Internet memes, it was proved that Internet memes reduce stress, linking this with ease of information processing and more positive emotions received.
Depressed people, using Internet memes about depression, better control their emotions and improve their own mood. After analyzing many sources about Internet memes, we found that theoretically, Internet memes have some influence on the emotional and motivational sphere of students and help them in education and writing essays in particular.
Who studies memes and why?
Since memes are a rapidly changing thing, journalists study them first. In the USA, this is a mandatory topic in many publications. But journalism is not the only area that comes into contact with memes. In addition to this, the following areas are studying this phenomenon: sociology, anthropology, media theory, linguistics, theory of communication and discourse, cultural studies, Internet marketing, media and marketing psychology.
But again, there is difficulty in what kind of research to conduct and what problem to pose in the study.
Researchers in the humanities can use memes to show changes in society and attitudes toward certain problems. For example, gender studies can look at the representation of men and women in various memes, and linguists can study changes in lexical and grammatical norms.
For anyone working in marketing, memes are a great way to analyze your audience. You can understand not only the target audience’s area of interest but also the most appropriate way to present the material. For example, an account for Bose headphones makes parodies of non-existent products such as broken aux.
From a business perspective, memes are a great way to segment your audience. If we are talking about purely commercial memes, then based on trend research and sociology, they can generate a suitable meme that will ensure virality and, consequently, an increase in sales.
Conclusion
Educational Internet memes not only serve as a means of teaching youth and helping them learn educational material or write an essay but also have a certain influence on the emotional sphere, and this influence can be used for specific purposes that arise in the learning process.