The "Me" in Meme

If you Google "meme" you will find that the term originated in the 1976 book, "The Selfish Gene," by Richard Dawkins (not to be confused with 1976 gameshow host, Richard Dawson) as a way to explain how cultural information can be transmitted through generations in our DNA.  In fact the word meme comes from a Greek word meaning "to imitate."  Internet Memes, like the ones featured on this blog, are distant cousins of this original, biological definition but also tell us about our culture.

When I teach at my university, I purposely search for photographs that represent people from different races, ethnicities, sexes, sexual orientations, and ages to illustrate my lectures.  I want my lessons to reflect the diverse human experience so that all of my students will see a glimpse of themselves in at least some of those images.  Another person who thinks that visual images matter is CEO of Facebook and founder of Leanin.org, Sheryl Sandberg.  Sandberg commissioned a set of more modern and diverse images of women to combat old-fashioned, sexist images or ridiculous favorites like the Tumblr-worthy "women laughing alone with salad."  The collection is introduced this way:

A picture is worth a thousand words. But in an age where visuals are everywhere, what message are those pictures sending? Much of the imagery we see daily portrays a familiar trope: men leading, women sidelined or sexualized, and mom and dad in stereotypical roles. But that paradigm is shifting. LeanIn.Org and Getty Images have teamed up to create the Lean In Collection—a library of thousands of creative images devoted to the powerful depiction of women and girls, families of all kinds, and men as caretakers as well as earners. These images are updated monthly. The goal is to shift perceptions, overturn cliches, and incorporate authentic images of women and men into media and advertising. Join us to help close the image gender gap—one photo at a time.

So as I curate this blog, I would like to show diverse people in memes.  This is proving to be difficult:  the groups that tend to be underrepresented in other forms of popular media also are harder to find in the meme world.  Even worse, when I do find images of women, people of color, senior citizens, people with disabilities, they are often portrayed in negative, stereotypical ways.

For this post I decided to document this phenomenon by using Google Image to search for "top memes."  Here are first 50 results:

I tabulated the characteristics of the main person featured in the meme.  If there were two people in the meme, I noted the features of the person who is portrayed to be speaking or highlighted by the text.  Based on my first impressions, here is what I found in these top 50 memes:

Seventy percent of the memes featured males; 24% featured females; and the remaining percent were unclear or featured an object (although this object was a male action figure toy).

Eighty percent of the memes featured a White person; 10% featured a Black person and 10% featured an Asian person; 2% featured a Middle Eastern person and 2% featured a Native American; while the remaining percent was an object (although this object was a White action figure toy).

Forty-two percent of the memes featured a young adult (ages 18-39); 26% featured a baby or a child; 18% featured a middle-aged person (ages 40-59); 6% featured a teenager (ages 13-17) and 6% featured an older person (ages 60+); with the remaining percent from an object (although this object was an action figure toy portraying a young adult or midlife man).

If we compare these results to data from the Pew Research Center about Social Media - where these memes would be shared - we see some mismatches.  For our example let's look at Facebook, the most popular social media platform with 71% of all Internet users logging on (like us on Facebook here!).  Here are the 2014 Facebook Demographics about Internet users:

66% of these males and 71% of these females are on Facebook.
71% of White users are on Facebook; 67% Black users; 73% Hispanic log on to Facebook.
87% of ages 18-29; 74% ages 30-49; 63% ages 50-64; and 56% ages 65+ are Facebook users.

If the basis of a meme is to tell us something about our culture - even something as simple as what is funny - the messages may over-represent males and Whites compared to their audience.  The premise of this blog is that these pop culture memes often contain ideas that are backed up by psychology - so what does it mean if these memes mostly portray certain types of people?

With the majority of midlife and older adults logging on to social media, this also means that they will be less likely to see their images illustrating these messages.  Young adults won out in meme representation and in social media use, but they are not featured in memes to the extent that they are a presence on Facebook.  If they are also the ones making these memes, it is interesting that babies and children are relatively popular choices of theirs to serve as their messengers.

My count of these memes is not science at its best, but it illustrates a phenomenon that we see elsewhere in media:  the image is male, White, and young adult.  For example, the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism found that, in the top 100 films of 2012, speaking roles were played by:  men (77%); Whites (76%); young adults (49%).  Expanding on the words of The Status of Women in U.S. Media in 2014, we may conclude that:

Unequivocally, it matters when [we] get our just due across the vast media landscape. Only when [we all] are equal partners in the multi-layered work of deciding what constitutes a story and how that story might be told can we paint a more textured, accurate picture of the worlds that we all...inhabit. (p.5).

Further Reading:

View the entire Lean In stock photo collection here.

Want to make some more diverse memes?  Try these online tools:  Meme Generator; imgflip; or imgur.

The Women's Media Center has excellent resources about how sex, gender, race, and age are portrayed in American media.