AI and memes: Across the boundaries

Authors

  • Minhyung Jo Florida State University
  • Gary Burnett Florida State University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.21900/j.alise.2024.1629

Keywords:

memes, information domains, information boundaries, Meme generators

Abstract

Memes have become one of the most popular cultures encapsulated by digital artifacts across digital spaces of all kinds. Users can create memes by themselves but can also use online services or tools. Among these, AI tools are popularly used because they can quickly generate creative memes by exploring vast stores of preexisting resources. Depending on the configurations of their algorithms and storehouses of resources, different AI meme generators can create different memes with the same prompt; further, the same generator can create different memes at different times with the same prompt. In addition, AI-generated memes may include controversial content through images and captions or other components, unanticipated by the writer of the prompt. In this study, we will examine several AI meme generators by creating memes using identical prompts and a series of prompts and compare the outputs, with a focus on cross-world ethical issues through the theoretical lens of information domains (Burnett, 2015; Burnett & Burnett, 2019). The results will provide insights into learning, meme generation, and ethical issues related to the use of AI tools.

Author Biographies

  • Minhyung Jo, Florida State University

    Minhyung Jo is a Ph.D. candidate at the College of Communication & Information, Florida State University, United States. His research interests are social media, memes, and user studies.

  • Gary Burnett, Florida State University

    Gary Burnett is a professor at the School of Information at Florida State University, and he received his Ph.D. in English from Princeton University and his MLS from Rutgers University. His work focuses on a theoretical approach to “Information Worlds,” exploring the social, political, and economic contexts of information access and exchange; and “Information Domains,” which attempts to theorize information in terms of relationships and interactions between individuals, social worlds, and practices of signification.

References

Burnett, G. (2015). Information worlds and interpretive practices: Toward an integration of domains. Journal of Information Science Theory and Practice, 3(3), 6-16. http://dx.doi.org/10.1633/JISTaP.2015.3.3.1

Burnett, K. & Burnett, G. (2019). Information domains, information ethics. In Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference on Conceptions of Library and Information Science, Ljubljana, Slovenia, June 16-19, 2019. Information Research, 24(4), paper colis1942. Retrieved from http://InformationR.net/ir/24-4/colis/colis1942.html (Archived by the Internet Archive at https://web.archive.org/web/20191217182431/http://informationr.net/ir/24-4/colis/colis1942.html)

Downloads

Published

2024-10-16

Issue

2024: ALISE Proceedings

Section

Works in Progress Posters

License

Copyright (c) 2024 Minhyung Jo, Gary Burnett

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.