Emotional Contagion and Memes

Within the digital sphere, Internet memes are exclusively persuasive media for user- generated content based on their specific characteristics. Internet memes are important internet artifacts for individual expression and visual rhetoric that enhances cultural communication and digital comprehension. emotional contagion plays an essential role in successfulness of Internet memes. If memes, or the message they represent, provoke an emotion, they are more likely to be shared. They are encoded with visual signs that bind to emotional and long-term memory, and meanwhile amalgamated with social events and personal identity, the emotional provocation drives emotional reaction and create engagement, contagion, and success. Images are processed by long-term memory, where it is retained and remembered and most importantly, they cause a stronger emotional response, since visual memory is encoded in the same area where emotions are processed. Visual stimuli and emotional reactions are easily connected and is proven to drive decision-making behavior. Visual message in memes, combined with personal identity, created emotions that led to action. The success of memetic can be directly traced to both online and offline emotional contagion. Therefore, memes trough emotional contagion can affect social and political change, in both positive and negative ways. In this study, by investigating the studies conducted in the field of meme, we traced its special use in different fields of communication. Studies show that meme is a tool for transmitting emotional and this cause digital contagion which might create social movement.in the digital world meme is a common language of users and a tool for inducing concepts and an element to convey emotional, social, economic and political messages. Civil and political activists today use meme to convey messages and achieve their goals. Meme is the creator of Stereotypes thinking in modern society, they defuse a common message, forcing people to do common behavior or excitement.

کلیدواژه ها:

Memes ، Emotional Contagion ، Mass Communication ، Social Networks ، Stereotypes