In 2013, through memes, activists mobilized citizens to criticize the government over public health scandals and censorship of locally produced movie China Town, which then ignited national awareness. The culture can be beneficial both for citizens and governments.įor citizens, memes have proved beneficial as they can empower civil engagement.Īlthough the tangible impact of memes remains vague as in the Indonesian case, scholars from RMIT University Vietnam found that memes served as a tool to empower a new form of civil engagement against the government. Meme culture should be viewed as more than just a mundane issue. In 2014, MIT scholar Limor Shifman specified an internet meme as 'a group of digital items sharing common characteristics of content, form, and/or stance that were created with awareness of each other and were circulated, imitated, and/or transformed via the internet by many users'. The term meme was coined by a biologist, Richard Dawkins, in 1976 to describe the spread of the smallest unit of culture, such as ideas, from one to another by copying or imitating. Besides being purely 'for fun', memes have been used by activists to express criticism of politicians and governments, including in authoritarian countries like China and Vietnam. Since memes are mostly simple and humorous, they do not look harmful. As a result, it puts more pressure on the House's ethics council to sort the matter out. Some people may not understand the details of the allegations against the House speaker yet the meme's rapid appearance in social media and other platforms has sparked a curiosity that triggers them to look deeper into the case. The circulation of this meme, at least, has contributed to Indonesians' public awareness. The 'papa minta saham' meme is an expression of Indonesian digital society in response to the transcript of a tape recording of House of Representatives Speaker Setya Novanto allegedly lobbying PT Freeport Indonesia for shares. The recent 'papa minta saham' (papa asks for company shares) meme, which has gone viral and prompted President Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo to mention it in his speech, corroborates this. It can turn out to be more complex and impactful than we thought. However, meme culture is not always as simple as it looks. Looking and sharing a meme takes less than a minute it is as simple as that. ![]() ![]() When we wake up in the morning, the first thing we might do is open our gadgets, see a meme, laugh at it and eventually share it.
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