The Meme of Revolution in the Media Space of Contemporary Societies

Alex­ey Y. Strizhov
Lobachevsky State Uni­ver­si­ty of Nizh­ni Nov­gorod

The Meme of Rev­o­lu­tion in the Media Space of Con­tem­po­rary Soci­eties

Abstract. Con­tem­po­rary world is a world of memes, min­i­mal units of infor­ma­tion, which drift around soci­eties and, in a large num­ber, have a tremen­dous poten­tial for res­o­nance in social sys­tems, pen­e­trat­ing lan­guage and space bor­ders. The cir­cu­la­tion of everyday’s memes of rev­o­lu­tion test the society’s “immu­nal sys­tem.” The pur­pose of this arti­cle is to iden­ti­fy the gen­er­al ways in which the gov­ern­ment sys­tem tends to resist to the meme of rev­o­lu­tion in the con­text of democ­ra­cy and the lack of cen­sor­ship in the dis­sem­i­na­tion of infor­ma­tion. Our tasks include deter­min­ing the poten­cy of the media in spread­ing the idea of rev­o­lu­tion and the capac­i­ty of dis­cur­sive pow­er. It is es-pecial­ly rel­e­vant in the con­di­tions of usurpa­tion of pow­er while main­tain­ing demo­c­ra­t­ic rhetoric. For this, in our study we use a com­par­a­tive­his­tor­i­cal approach, the phi­los­o­phy of “cul­tur­al hege­mo­ny” by Anto­nio Gram­sci and the the­o­ry of the dis­sem­i­na­tion of min­i­mal infor­ma­tion units pro­posed by Richard Dock­ins. Our con­clu­sions embrace three points for pre­vent­ing the turn­ing of the rev­o­lu­tion meme into the prac­tice of civ­il dis­obe­di­ence: the pro­mo­tion of pro-state com­mu­ni­ca­tion plat­forms in real and vir­tu­al spaces, the expan­sion of funds for finan­cial sup­port of research con­tain­ing the nec­es­sary rhetoric, and increased polit­i­cal con­trol over edu­ca­tion insti­tu­tions.

Key­words: memes, rev­o­lu­tion, civ­il resis­tance, coup d’etat, media, soft pow­er, social sys­tem, so-ciety, dis­cur­sive pow­er, cul­tur­al hege­mo­ny.

DOI: 10.5840/dspl2018118

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