Call for Proposals! Tactical Media Reader: Common Tools for Common Struggles

By Tommaso Campagna, October 1, 2024

INC Reader #18 Tactical Media Reader Common Tools for Common Struggles Edited by Chloë Arkenbout, Tommaso Campagna, Sepp Eckenhaussen and Geert Lovink Activists, artists, and social movements take on a multitude amount of simultaneous urgencies, from the climate crisis, war, and genocide to housing crises, economic recession, and endemic fake news. We know that these [...]

Critical Meme Reader III: Breaking the Meme

By Chloë Arkenbout, May 17, 2024

INC Reader #17 Critical Meme Reader III: Breaking the Meme Edited by Chloë Arkenbout and İdil Galip When you want to say something about memes, it is impossible to escape having to situate them. What usually happens is that meme makers and thinkers fall back on two definitions: Dawkins (1976), Shifman [...]

Photo report: Memes Beyond Images Conference

By Chloë Arkenbout, December 2, 2022

The (political) power of memes has moved beyond virtual images. The distinction between the virtual and ‘real life’ no longer applies, or perhaps was never really there. Their effects (or should we say affects?) are moving through digital infrastructures, policy, regulations, and bodies. If memes are used as a tool by the alt-right to mobilize [...]

OUT NOW – Critical Meme Reader II: Memetic Tacticality edited by Chloë Arkenbout and Laurence Scherz

By Laurence Scherz, November 10, 2022

The (political) power of memes has moved beyond virtual images. The distinction between the virtual and ‘real life’ no longer applies, or perhaps was never really there. Their effects (or should we say affects?) are moving through digital infrastructures, policy, regulations and bodies. If memes are used as a tool by the alt-right to mobilize [...]

How and Why to Start a Meme Studies Research Network: A conversation with Idil Galip

By Chloë Arkenbout, April 6, 2021

As the co-editor of the upcoming INC Reader about critical meme research, you can imagine when I received an invitation to the Meme Studies Research Network I got really excited. Over 250 international and interdisciplinary researchers, artists and other meme enthusiasts are currently connecting over there. Which has been a blast, honestly. The main goal [...]

Call for Proposals: INC Reader #15 – Critical Meme Research

By Chloë Arkenbout, November 13, 2020

As they metastasized from the digital periphery to the mainstream, memes have seethed with mutant energy. From now on, any historical event will be haunted by its memetic double — just as any pandemic will have its own infodemic that will recursively act upon it — issuing in the kinds of cross-contamination that Baudrillard already [...]

Critical Meme Reader II: Memetic Tacticality

By Chloë Arkenbout, November 10, 2022

(⚠️ Alert — the link for ordering online doesn’t work when connected to an Eduroam network, please try with another WiFi network) INC Reader #16 Critical Meme Reader II: Memetic Tacticality Edited by Chloë Arkenbout and Laurence Scherz The (political) power of memes has moved beyond virtual images. The distinction between [...]

Critical Meme Reader: Global Mutations of the Viral Image

By Chloë Arkenbout, September 2, 2021

INC Reader #15 Critical Meme Reader: Global Mutations of the Viral Image Edited by Chloë Arkenbout, Jack Wilson and Daniel de Zeeuw Beyond the so-called ‘Alt-right’ and its attendant milieus on 4chan and Reddit, memes have passed the post-digital threshold and entered new theoretical, practical, and geographical territories beyond the stereotypical young, [...]

Let’s Get Physical: A Sample of INC Longforms, 2015-2020

By Miriam Rasch, August 27, 2020

For mobile reading, we recommend going directly to the INC Longform webpage. Order a free paper copy by filling out the form below. INC Reader #13 Let’s Get Physical: A Sample of INC Longforms, 2015-2020 marks the five year anniversary of the INC Longform series. Based on research both theoretical and practice-based, INC Longforms [...]

Video Vortex Reader #3: Inside the YouTube Decade

By Tommaso Campagna, June 11, 2020

INC Reader #14 Video Vortex Reader III: Inside the YouTube Decade Editors: Geert Lovink and Andreas Treske What is online video today, fifteen years into its exponential growth? What started with amateur work of YouTube prosumers has spread to virtually all communication apps: an explosion in the culture of mobile sound and vision. [...]