Design em fluxo: processos e temporalidades dos memes de internet

Abstract

In the transition from the twentieth to the twenty-first century, we witnessed the internet expand faster than any other previous communication system. Easy access to text and image editing tools, in turn, popularized visual writing processes. The one-to-many broadcasting model, so characteristic of major media outlets, was impacted by the new many-to-many model, characteristic of the collaborative web with its online boards, blogs, and social media. People, as consumers, producers and propagators of digital content, found in the fluid and dynamic interfaces of social media a conducive space for the proliferation of digital media pieces. Among these pieces are the images known as internet memes, which have spread through networked dialogues. Shared from person to person, memes became a language in and of itself, and through them people can express themselves before the most diverse daily, social and political issues. In this research, I investigate the production and consumption of internet memes that have been shared in social media after events of great national repercussion. I seek for the processes and temporalities associated with these flexible and alterable solutions that, as a result of vernacular or even professional design, can rapidly spread through digital interfaces. In their flows, which take place around the collective construction of memetic identities, sets of media pieces in constant mutation are formed. As a living record of production flows and idea sharing, internet memes provide a consistent, vast and accessible basis for analyzing a new narrative language that emerges from the digital culture.