Think of an example of something on social media that was said to have “gone viral” (a video, an image, a meme, a tweet, etc.). Choose one example of a message that has gone viral. Next, watch/view this object and answer the following prompt: Discuss what genre your example is, the features that contributed to its virality, why you think it went viral, and the effects of it going viral. Then see if you can track down any of its possible mutations. Identify what you think allowed for this mutation and discuss whether or not you think the original author had accounted for these transformations. For example, as rhetorician Laurie Gries has demonstrated, the “Hope” campaign poster used in Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign is an example of an image that has gone viral and circulated across various times and spaces. The image caught on with the help of the newly developed digital political campaign and quickly spread not only digitally but materially as the image began to show up not only across the Internet but in different countries. The image mutated as it crossed these different times and spaces. The 2008 John McCain/Sarah Palin presidential campaign parodied the post by replacing the word “Hope” with “Nope”; the Occupy Wall Street Movement replaced Obama’s picture with that of a Guy Fawkes mask-wearing member of the hacker group Anonymous; the HBO comedy series Veep replaced the image of Obama with an image of Vice President Selena Meyers (played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus) and the word “Hope” with “Maybe?” as a promotion for their 5th season; and many other variations of the image have been produced with very different purposes and potential audiences.
