CS371 Blog Post 3- Madelaine Violi
CS371 Blog Post 3- Madelaine Violi
For this week’s blog post we were asked to look at two media texts, Martin Luther’s 95 theses and a woman yelling at a cat meme. Both of these media texts “went viral”, however they were from two different time periods. I will be looking at how the third articulation is manifested within these two examples.
The third articulation concerns how media and its messages are spread through culture and society. Looking at how this applies to the example of Martin Luther’s 95 theses, Mohen (2016) discussed how Luther’s use of the printing press and combining text and art was very revolutionary and changed media usage from this point forward. Additionally, the printing press was what aided in the spreading of the reformation. Thousands of copies of Luther’s pamphlets were distributed to many different cities, which helped spread the message so quickly. Luther’s 95 theses, became the first printed writing that was affordable for everyone, and many people would share the contents with friends and family, making it a large topic of conversation during this time (Standage, 2013 pg. 54).
Moving on to the second example of the woman yelling at the cat meme, this meme “went viral”, because of Twitter. Social media platforms like Twitter have the power to make things go viral because of the number of users on the platform. Just like with Luther’s 95 theses, the women and the cat meme became very popular, very quickly. The third articulation is seen in both these examples, as the media’s message was highly distributed and became a very popular piece of media in our society. In the article by Tanya Mohen (2016), Dr. Emmerling said, “we like to say if Martin Luther was alive today, he would use Twitter”. Martin Luther would see how influential Twitter is as a media tool and even during his time he was using an advanced form of media to communicate a message to a large group of people, just like how Twitter is used today.
Mohen, T. (October 28, 2016). Long Before Twitter, Martin Luther Was a Media Pioneer. New York
Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/30/arts/design/long-before-twitter-martin-luther-was-a-media
pioneer.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=wide-thumb&module=mini
moth®ion=top-stories-below&WT.nav=top-stories-below&_r=0
Ritzen, S. (May 20, 2021). How an unlikely marriage of memes gave us ‘woman yelling at cat’. The Daily
Dot. https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/woman-yelling-at-a-cat-meme-origin/
Thank you so much for sharing Madelaine! I enjoyed reading your description of the third articulation as I discussed the first one in my blog this week. Amazingly, the printing press had the same power that social media has today. Martin Luther’s use of text and art is similar to how Instagram allows us to post pictures and have a caption accompanying them. There is something very powerful about words and images combining to amplify a message. Martin Luther used communication tools for powerful change, do you think he would be disappointed by the popularity that memes that do not significantly contribute to society have? Or, do you think that he would value memes as they contribute to social media culture? Twitter is a beneficial platform when it is spreading positivity, but can be harmful when messages are negative. Memes can be powerful, a waste of space, a pocket of daily laughter, or harmful. The idea of going viral is interesting because while one needs specific tools to make it happen, I also feel that a lot of the time luck is involved. In the past, there were no algorithms therefore Martin Luther’s work became popular because of its merit, but today there is so much technological infrastructure that people are unaware of that influences a work's popularity.
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