Methodological Directions for the Study of Memes

The chapter proposes an empirically oriented analysis of the memetic production on Instagram. Defined as multimodal cultural artifacts, combining visual and textual material to convey humoristic messages, internet memes proliferate across the web, spawning new popular formats and layouts. However, many scholars still rely on outdated conceptualisations or limited samples for their studies. To anchor investigation on memes to the actual production, the research answers the questions: (1) Which meme formats are currently circulating online? (2) How do popular meme formats convey their message? To this end, a dataset of static images collected on Instagram was examined with qualitative visual and discourse analysis. Findings point at the possibility to adopt a bottom-up approach to recognize and classify memes, exploiting shared features of content and form. Furthermore, this categorization offers insights on the most productive mechanisms of meme production: contextually, results show a tendency towards formats that trigger identification, leveraging on relatable life situations.

Cultural Participatory in Tourism Digital Marketing Communication Channel

Tourism is one of Indonesia's leading sectors that has been seriously affected by the pandemic. This study aims to describe participatory culture in digital tourism marketing communication channels during the pandemic, through Instagram social media channels from micro-influencers, that focus on three priority tourism destinations that have been set by the government. By using the Participatory Media Culture Theory from Henry Jenkins, it is further studied how consumers and producers create cultural artifacts with commodity value. The research applied a netnographic method, the data were gathered and analyzed by the social media analysis application Analysis.io. The subject of research is the influencers and followers in 3 (three) Instagram accounts: @explorejogja, @indraseptianazhari, and @travelwithgerie, while the object of the research was the forms of participation as cultural artifacts in these accounts This study concludes that the participants build a participatory culture by the power of visual and narrative artifacts, as well as their spreadability. Further this research shows that (1) cultural artifacts in each account have their own characteristics, with similarities in the prosumer participation, where reposting becomes a cultural artifact that has its own power to form virtual relationships; (2) attractive visuals and informal guides in the form of narratives are also cultural artifacts that invite further involvement of participants, in the form of likes, comments, reposts, etc.; and (3) the presence of micro-influencers who are inherently intertwined with these accounts jointly contributing to the dissemination of content and their respective accounts, which in turn becomes a force for the spread of tourism marketing, especially during the pandemic. Pariwisata adalah salah satu sektor unggulan Indonesia yang terkena dampak serius dari pandemi ini. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mendeskripsikan budaya partisipatif dalam saluran komunikasi pemasaran pariwisata digital selama pandemi, melalui saluran media sosial Instagram dari mikro-influencer, yang berfokus pada tiga destinasi wisata prioritas yang telah ditetapkan oleh pemerintah. Dengan menggunakan Teori Budaya Media Partisipatif dari Henry Jenkins, lebih lanjut dipelajari bagaimana konsumen dan produsen menciptakan artefak budaya dengan nilai komoditas. Penelitian ini menggunakan metode netnografi, data dikumpulkan dan dianalisis dengan aplikasi analisis media sosial Analysis.io. Subjek penelitian adalah influencer dan followers di 3 (tiga) akun Instagram: @explorejogja, @indraseptianazhari, dan @travelwithgerie, sedangkan objek penelitian adalah bentuk partisipasi sebagai artefak budaya dalam akun tersebut. Penelitian ini menyimpulkan budaya partisipatori dibangun dengan kekuatan artefak visual dan naratif, serta daya sebarnya. Lebih lanjut, penelitian ini menunjukkan bahwa (1) artefak budaya di setiap akun memiliki ciri khas tersendiri, dengan kesamaan berupa partisipasi prosumer, dimana reposting menjadi artefak budaya yang memiliki kekuatan untuk membentuk hubungan virtual; (2) visual yang menarik dan panduan informal berupa narasi juga merupakan artefak budaya yang mengundang keterlibatan peserta lebih lanjut, dalam bentuk ekspresi rasa suka, komentar, repost, dll; dan (3) kehadiran micro-influencer yang secara inheren terjalin dengan akun-akun tersebut secara bersama-sama berkontribusi dalam penyebaran konten dan akunnya masing-masing, yang pada akhirnya menjadi kekuatan bagi penyebaran pemasaran pariwisata, khususnya di masa pandemi.

Necropolitics and Culture; or the Embedding of Cultural Practices in Necropower

In the burgeoning field of necropolitical studies, priority has been given to the exploration of material practices. Culture is generally regarded either as secondary to these practices or as a set of mimetic representations of necropolitics. In contrast to such approaches, this article contends that the critical gaze ought to be directed at necropower’s production of cultural artifacts meant to achieve necropolitical goals. A theory of necropolitics that does not encompass the necropolitical production and manipulation of culture is insufficient for it fails to give a complete and thorough account of the complex and variegated technologies of necropower. Cultural practices are much more than simple representations of necropolitics or their ideological or theoretical substratum; they also have the ability to subjugate life to the power of death by actively participating in the construction of death-worlds. This thesis is demonstrated by means of an analysis of the interconnection between necropolitics and culture in General Franco’s Spain (1939–75). The adoption of the theoretical standpoint put forth in this article might refine and broaden the field of necropolitical studies. Discussions on necropolitics need to open up to the embedding of culture in necropower. Centred on the analysis of the role of cultural practices within necropolitics, this direction might prove fruitful in future studies for it would reveal, with more precision than the studies limited to analysing the material dimension of necropolitics, the extent, the force, the tools, and the power of coercion of the politics of death.

On the narrative potential of photobooks: an analysis of Alec Soth's Niagara's book

Visual narratives have a long history in the context of human cultural artifacts. In any sequence of images, the juxtaposition of visual signs gives rise to narrative potential. The narrative qualities of photographic images have been explored since its early days through the medium of the book. Borrowing the book artifact from literature, photography has adapted it for its own purposes. Such appropriation invites an examination of the strategies that are employed in photobooks to promote the emergence of narratives. Drawing upon the field of Narrative Studies and the concepts of storyworld and worldmaking, this paper investigates the narrative construction in the photobook Niagara (2006), produced by photographer Alec Soth. The paper demonstrates that certain strategies used in literary texts are analogous to the photobook space. In conclusion, I argue that photobooks are cultural objects that offer invaluable narrative possibilities, especially because they afford agency for the reader’s/viewer’s worldmaking.

Hygrothermal simulation on effective dehumidification methods in a museum storage room

The hygrothermal environment must be controlled in facilities like museums and galleries to suitably conserve the stored cultural artifacts. The present study proposes a humidity control technique for a museum storage room in Kyoto, Japan. This method requires limited energy and no large-scale equipment or major building renovation. The relative humidity of the room measured during the preliminary field survey exceeded the range for the conservation of metal artifacts (under 45%RH) throughout the year, and dehumidification was experimentally performed. The possible range of humidity control and the energy are quantitatively evaluated in the present study by simulating varied ways of operating a dehumidifier in combination with the improvement of the room’s property of being airtight. The results of the study indicated that simple building modifications and operational improvements could improve the storage environment. For instance, measures to ameliorate airtightness and sensing control along with the addition of small-scale equipment such as a home-use compressor-type dehumidifier can yield long-term low humidity suitable for the conservation of metal cultural artifacts. Such measures are also considered advantageous in terms of energy and labor consumption.

Resurrect3D: An Open and Customizable Platform for Visualizing and Analyzing Cultural Heritage Artifacts

Art and culture, at their best, lie in the act of discovery and exploration. This paper describes Resurrect3D, an open visualization platform for both casual users and domain experts to explore cultural artifacts. To that end, Resurrect3D takes two steps. First, it provides an interactive cultural heritage toolbox, providing not onlycommonly used tools in cultural heritage such as relighting and material editing, but also the ability for users to create an interactive “story”: a saved session with annotations and visualizations others can later replay. Second, Resurrect3D exposes a set of programming interfaces to extend the toolbox. Domain experts can develop custom tools that perform artifact-specific visualization and analysis

So Much Life in Such a Short Time: An Exploration of Children’s Obituaries

As childhood death is considered nonnormative and outside of the life course, children may be memorialized differently than adults who have had an opportunity for fuller lives. As obituaries are cultural artifacts used to provide public documentation of personal legacies, this study sought to determine how children obituaries differ from traditional obituaries of those who have lived full lives. I content analyzed 63 children’s obituaries to determine how they differ in intention and use of linguistic devices from what we know about traditional obituaries. Several key themes emerged in the obituary content – passions, religion and faith, children’s role as siblings, their effect on those around them, and messages written directly to the deceased children. These children’s obituaries read as tributes to the children’s lives, rather than as resumes as traditional obituaries often do.

Plurilingual STEAM and School Lunches for Learning?

In Japan, where there is a bias toward English-only in foreign language education, there are also grassroots efforts to introduce greater plurality in the classroom. However, introducing diverse languages and cultures into the classroom can lead to folklorization, the delivering of essentialized information in pre-packaged formats, which can potentially delegitimize other languages and cultures. This contribution examines a collaborative integrative plurilingual STEAM practice at an elementary school in Western Japan. In the ‘school lunches project,' the children experience various international cuisine, leading up to which they would engage with related languages and cultures through collaboratively produced plurilingual videos and museum-like exhibits of cultural artifacts. The interdisciplinary, hands-on, experiential learning within this project helped the children to develop an investigative stance toward linguistic and cultural artifacts, nurture a deeper awareness of languages and openness to diversity, foster reflexivity, and encourage interdisciplinary engagement.