Understanding the Function of Memes with An Xiao Mina

“It’s hard to know what the dividing point now is, I think it’s part of a larger trend we see with the fusing of entertainment and politics. The fact that we have a former reality star as our president means that the boundaries between humor and seriousness are difficult to discern. And in many ways jokes contain kernels of truth, it could kind of kill a joke to cover it and to analyze it. I think we need to start looking at what jokes are reflecting about society and what humor reflects about society.” — An Xiao Mina @anxiaomina @meedan

I learned that filter bubbles are necessarily not a bad thing as it plays a role sometimes, especially if you’re marginalized or if you’re living under threat in an authoritarian context. This goes into the idea that memes play an in-group effect that is very valuable for a lot of people. When using social media to learn about different communities, Mina’s advice on using a private browser, as well as setting up a different Twitter or Facebook to look at red and blue feeds was a very insightful and useful thing that I have learned. She also advises us to poke around different groups on Tik Tok and Reddit to explore the other side of the bubble that we are in. Another tip that Mina shared was using Twitter’s location filter to find local coverage, the only downside is that less than 10 percent of tweets have locations, so it’s a feature that is rarely used. On Instagram, filtering by hashtags and looking at suggested new hashtags, as well as following a local influencer are some ways you can use to find local coverage.