Toward a Phenomenological Understanding of Internet-Mediated Meme-ing as a Lived Experience in Social Distancing via Autoethnography

Abstract

As the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent social distancing measures have rendered online communication a “new normal” in the post-pandemic era, the production and consumption of internet memes have also emerged as a significant communicative paradigm in this context. However, academic discourses on internet-mediated meme-ing have tended to focus on socially oriented macro-perspectives with a pursuit of positivistic objectivity, leaving the experiential and subjective aspects of “everyday internet-mediated meme-ing” vis-à-vis individuals in a lifeworld less explored. To address this gap, this study uses structured vignette analysis (SVA) coupled with individual-oriented phenomenological reflexivity to elaborate on how internet-mediated meme-ing reveals itself as a meaningful lived experience for a “solitary conscious self” in the overall context of social distancing. It seeks to demonstrate the phenomenological applicability of the SVA as an autoethnographic method as well as highlight the individual-oriented phenomenological substantiality of meme-ing that involves self-other relations in social distancing.