This resonates with me on a number of levels. 1) During my time in college there was a primary assignment in our Political Science class, which is the editorial cartoon assignment. Many of the students were virgins when it came to political cartoons of the kind newspapers carry. For someone like myself, who has a lifetime of news consumption, mostly in the pre-digital age, this was elementary. But the younger students had to learn the entire phenomenon before they could analyze the political content. I have suggested to faculty that they adapt the assignment to include memes as an alternative to political cartoons, and I will be sharing this installment of The Other Wave with two of my college professors. 2) Memes make an emotional point, often humourous, to drive home a larger point about an issue. As such they are fertile ground for confirmation bias, as our biases thrive on the emotional level. This is why they are such a dangerous vector for the misinformation problem that infects the Internet and is currently disintegrating society in a variety of ways. 3) There should be a meme debunking course taught in our high schools.
This resonates with me on a number of levels. 1) During my time in college there was a primary assignment in our Political Science class, which is the editorial cartoon assignment. Many of the students were virgins when it came to political cartoons of the kind newspapers carry. For someone like myself, who has a lifetime of news consumption, mostly in the pre-digital age, this was elementary. But the younger students had to learn the entire phenomenon before they could analyze the political content. I have suggested to faculty that they adapt the assignment to include memes as an alternative to political cartoons, and I will be sharing this installment of The Other Wave with two of my college professors. 2) Memes make an emotional point, often humourous, to drive home a larger point about an issue. As such they are fertile ground for confirmation bias, as our biases thrive on the emotional level. This is why they are such a dangerous vector for the misinformation problem that infects the Internet and is currently disintegrating society in a variety of ways. 3) There should be a meme debunking course taught in our high schools.
I wholeheartedly agree with these points, Rory — thanks for sharing! I'm also curious to hear what your college profs think, so please keep me posted.