“It’s not a phase mom, it’s who I am” : Assessing the impact of meme culture on engagement with online music fandoms

As the way we use the internet changes, the interactions within online communities also change. Focusing on music fandoms, a new phenomenon has emerged of the use of memetic imagery, or ‘memes’, as a communication device within the group, with the ability to understand these memes being critical to feeling part of the community. When producing these memes, members of the communities can use their expertise about the music artist to create a meme which requires a deeper knowledge of the artist for it to be understood. The platform used for this research is Reddit, which hosts many forums dedicated to specific music artists. The platform economics of Reddit is discussed to understand how the site and other sides benefit from the engagement and functions of it. Research was conducted on memes in four music artist subreddits, to discover the levels of engagement as well as the themes of the most popular memes on these forums. There were high levels of engagement with memes, especially passive forms of interaction, confirming meme production and consumption both drive engagement in the communities and are the most positively received posts in terms of upvotes. It was discovered that the evolution of humour has manifested itself in the way users use memes as a medium of communication, with relevant messages requiring the necessary cultural capital to decipher the meanings of these memes. Further to this, there are multiple themes which make up the most successful memes in the community. This has implications for music industry actors, who may look to implement the learnings into their strategy to improve processes and drive engagement