Memetizando e midiatizando: memes como estratégia discursiva evangélica

Abstract

The work takes a communicational approach to internet memes, understanding them as devices that take place in the process of mediatization of society (BRAGA, 2006; FAUSTO NETO, 2008; VERÓN, 2014). It discusses the concept of meme (DAWKINS, 2001) and its theoretical developments, situating it in the context of media ecology (SCOLARI, 2010). It gives special attention to the discursive aspects involved in the production and appropriation of the imagery memes, which are re-signified through operations that involve frames, dislocations and re-frames (AUMONT, 1993) and that make interdiscursivities (VERÓN, 2004; MAINGUENEAU, 1998). The research examines the appropriation of internet memes in the Protestant religious field, in pages that call themselves evangelical humor. It investigates how the appropriation of this discursive mechanism of contemporary communication is articulated in the process of mediatization of religion. The main objective is to identify the discursive strategies constructed through these memes, in order to contribute to the understanding of the changes and tendencies in the religious field in its relation with the secular world from its interfaces with the media field. For this purpose, a multiple case study (YIN, 2005) is done, analyzing memes in three pages chosen from the identification of reading contracts (VERÓN, 2004; FAUSTO NETO, 2007) that hold similarities and also singularities. In an analysis of the discourses from the perspective of Verón (2004), the work also elucidates the effects of sense that are produced through memes as devices of enunciation in virtual religious environments and the interactions of the religious and mediatic fields in the environment of social networks.