This dissertation explores the process of meaning transformation in digital participatory culture by examining the replication, mutation and circulation that iconic news images undergo in cyberspace through Internet memes. With triangulation of visual historical analysis, visual rhetorical analysis and iconographic tracking, the project argues that members of remix culture weaponize the digital derivatives of the famous images through manipulation to renegotiate history, dispense social justice in the absence of other recourse and engage in political activism.
Such transformations, as this project shows, are likely to weaken the rhetorical powers of iconic images to define collective memory, a role they have played for decades. With the use of Internet memes, members of the public can now re-remember history outside the iconic accounts, producing their own interpretations of events that contribute to public discourse. Internet memes that exist alongside their iconic visual counterparts democratize the process of meaning making and remembering in remix culture, promoting polyvocality in favor of singular versions of the past. Such fragmentation of master narratives highlights the changing role of iconic pictures in the process of signification thanks to technology.
Keywords: Iconic images, Internet memes, signification, digital participatory culture, collective memory.