Pepe and Luther: Media Circulation Through Culture, Community, and Society

While the internet and social media are both ways of people communicating and spreading their ideas all over the world, with this mass of communication comes the ability to spread hate. The third articulation we discussed in class surrounds 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”.  When applying this concept to Donald Trumps presidential campaign and the meme Pepe the Frog, it can be found that once something goes viral, the meaning and context which is applied to it no longer remains in the hands of the creator. They ways in which the artifact is consumed and received can be further manipulated the more popular the artifact becomes and the range of audiences it is able to reach. 

Luthers 95 theses went viral after he was no longer able to control the nature of his message and who it reached. The people who read his messages were what caused this mass spread. It worked within a “decentralized person-to-to person media system” where the audience decided what was worth sharing and had the ability to amplify particular messages (Standage, 53). Similar to social media today where people have the control over what is shared liked, and reblogged, increasing the reach of its message. In this process, meanings of artifacts have the ability to change according to to its viewers’ ideas. When Pepe went viral, his meaning changed as well. He became a symbol of hate, not his original intention as a symbol that celebrates peace, togetherness and fun. He began to be used as a political tool when Donald Trump tweeted a photo of himself as a version of Pepe (Williams, 2016).  His image changed from that of just a sad frog to one representing messages of hate. Using Standage’s idea of synchronization of opinion, people use memes and other forms of media, such as Pepe, as a way to express their opinions which may be against the status quo. People then began to use Pepe to display these messages through out social media, displaying how media artifacts that are spread throughout our culture and society can develop new meanings depending how how they are consumed and received. 

Works cited

Mele, C. (2016). Campaign Aims to Help Pepe the Frog Shed Its Image as Hate Symbol. New York Times. 

Mele, C. (2016). Pepe the Frog Meme Listed as a Hate Symbol. New York Times. 

Standage, T. (2013). Writing on the Wall. 48-63. 

Williams, A. (2016). How Pepe the Frog and Nasty Woman Are Shaping the Election. New York Times.