Luther and Pepe the Frog - Mode of Communicaiton/Affect/Accumulation

Luther communicated his 95 theses a long time ago, where the communication technology that we have today was unavailable, but the means to which the theses were communicated are similar to what is done today. On the contrary, the Pepe the frog meme is a mode of communication that is well known on the Internet today and is communicated through different social media platforms has the capacity to reach millions of viewers.

            As a mode of communication, Luther used the doors in the church in order to get the information that he had provided through the 95 theses to masses of people. He also used pamphlets as a mode of communication in order to get his knowledge and word across to larger amounts of people. This is a mode of communication that was a lot less expensive at this time versus having the theses printed in a book, but still was able to get the knowledge across to the masses. In terms of Pepe the frog meme, It is well known by many people and communicates a message to an audience through the use of social media applications. Memes are ways in which messages can be sent to individuals without blatantly preparing a message of explanation. The original message of the Pepe the frog meme was changed when additional individuals decided to use the Pepe the frog meme in a negative way during the election, which changed the meaning of the message of the meme entirely.

            Luther’s theses were created by him to spread throughout to masses of people so that they too could hear stories and theories that Luther created. This in turn created a sense of affect based on the information that is being communicated through the theses written on the door and the pamphlets that can be spread worldwide. The amount of affect that one can relate to or feel is impacted through the fact that there are only words and symbols but no personal feelings and non verbal communication, which Pepe the frog memes have incorporated. This makes it difficult for the encoder to decode the message of Luther through affect. The Pepe the frog meme created a sense of hate towards the original meme with the ways in which it was being used to represent the American election. It was able to create affect between the meme and the person that was making sense of the meme or creating it. The meme is able to expand widely among many individuals via the Internet, and has created a way of feeling for each individual that comes across the meme.

            Through the mode of communication, in this case pamphlets and the church door, Luther’s messages were able to be spread amongst the German people. Through these messages affective infinity was able to be shared with one another. They were also able to be accumulated overtime through the collection of pamphlets. This also refers to the accumulation of knowledge that individuals collect as they are exposed to more and more knowledge through the theses.  To accumulate these theses was a harder task than accumulating memes are today. Since memes can be replicated and duplicated it was easy enough for a producer of the Pepe the frog election version to change the wording and the looks of the meme. It also enabled the creator to spread the meme worldwide and for an accumulation of memes that are similar to this one or re-created over the Internet and social media websites.

The Rapid Circulation of Luther and Pepe

For this week's post our class is discussing the topic of media ecology and how it is "an assemblage of media forms and communicative practices which creates a specific media environment". I will be discussing two media examples; Martin Luther’s 95 These and the internet meme Pepe the Frog during the 2016 USA Presidential election and how these two examples relate to the third articulation discussed in class. The third articulation concerns how media artifacts and messages are brought into being and spread through a culture, community, or society, and is manifested in the spatio-temporal dynamics of relations of creativity and production, relations of distribution and circulation, and relations of consumption and reception.

This articulation mainly describes the spread and circulation of media artifacts and messages throughout society which is something we see and/or take part in through the internet and social media every day. With this being said, with the rise of digital and social media it is hard to believe that the act of spreading media has been happening for longer than just the early 2000s. In fact, the circulation of a message is something that has been happening since Martin Luther’s 95 These. This document or media message is argued to be the first message to “go viral” in 1517 after Luther lost control of his message about the Catholic church. After Martin Luther wrote this letter, he then went on to send it to another person who then sent it to another person thus spreading the message throughout the community. Thus showing that communication can circulate so easy, this also shows how quickly an original message can lose control and be left in the hands of someone other than the creator. When a message leaves its original state it can be seen by whoever comes across is, this is a problem we have with social media and the internet today as well.

Pepe the Frog is an internet meme that has been around for many years, due to the fact that this frog looks so sad he usually has the caption “feels bad man” nearby. Pepe resurfaced this year during the presidential election when Donald Trump tweeted a “trump version” that read “you can’t stump the Trump”. Due to the fact that Trump was behind this led to many pro- Trump Pepe memes, thus Pepe was reborn. These Trump versions of Pepe began to circulate through social media instantly and became a symbol of the 2016 election. Although with this, came a lot of negative connotation attached to Pepe, Trump supporters found a connection with Donald through this meme and continued to circulate his image across the internet. This shows the extent a message can reach with the power of social media especially with a common thread linking users. This particular meme created a sense of community between people around the world which is one of the main reasons I believe it reached its viral status so quickly.

Luther vs. Pepe: An Articulation of Media Ecologies

While Luther’s 95 theses and the rise of Pepe the Frog in the context of Donald Trump’s 2016 Presidential Campaign took place almost 500 years apart, they both exemplify strong notions of different media ecologies. However, I will be focusing on the third articulation that concentrates on “spacio-temporal dynamics of relations of creativity and production, relations of distribution and circulation, and relations of consumption and reception,” (Herman).

In the 16^th century, knowledge was localized based on where they lived or what they experienced (Herman, November 3, 2016). The only way to understand things outside of lived experiences was to hear about it by word of mouth by others in the community. Martin Luther’s 95 Theses stemmed from his religious agitation with the selling of indulgences, and so he nailed a copy that was written in Latin on the doors of the church. At first, the only way that someone could understand it is if they read Latin or had the ability to physically go up to the church doors to read it. Other than that, word of mouth had to relay the message across space.

After time, the 95 Theses were presented in the form of a pamphlet and was beneficial due to its small size, cheap cost of production, and light weight (Herman, November 8, 2016). People started to buy the pamphlets and lend it to others, travelling from person to person. Because of the physical pamphlets, the readers who participated in the circulation of Luther’s Theses “took care of distribution, deciding collectively which messages to amplify through sharing, recommendation and copying,” (Standage, 53-54). In this sense, Luther’s 95 theses went “viral” as soon as the printers realized how popular it was, and made more to keep up with the demand (Standage, 53). The circulation of pamphlets became more widespread and not only encouraged social change, but also influenced a new movement due to the huge reception. The “social sharing” of Luther’s 95 Theses became bigger than he even imagined, but he ultimately formed a new campaign by which gained many followers (Standage, 53).

Although Luther’s campaign was religious in nature and went viral through print as a medium, Donald Trump’s 2016 Presidential Campaign is another movement that went viral. However, instead of print, the uses of the meme “Pepe the Frog” allowed for Trump’s campaign to make use of social media as a way to go viral. Pepe the Frog “had been a symbol of the disenfranchised, social outcasts” which appealed to Trump’s target audiene (Williams). He is a hate symbol and represents anti-Semitism, but that has not always been the case. Pepe the Frog is constantly recontextualized by users because of the circulation across the Internet. Almost anyone can access an image of Pepe the Frog, making it easy to save, reproduce, recontextualize, distribute it, then circulate it. Pepe the Frog inhibited political connotations that reflected the negative attributes that was also associated with Donald Trump, making the memes appeal to younger audiences since they were typically the ones on social media. By using social media platforms, the campaigns encouraged younger crowds to vote for political change, just as the circulation of Luther’s Theses encouraged religious change.

Works Cited

Herman, Andrew. Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo. 3 November 2016. Lecture.

Herman, Andrew. Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo. 8 November 2016. Lecture.

Standage, Tom. Writing on the Wall: Social Media -- the First 2,000 Years. New York, NY: Bloomsbury, 2013. Print.

Williams, Alex. "How Pepe the Frog and Nasty Woman Are Shaping the Election." The New York Times, 28 Oct. 2016.