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      Between Humour and Public Commentary: Digital Re-appropriation of the Soviet Propaganda Posters as Internet Memes

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      Journal of Creative Communications
      SAGE Publications

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          Abstract

          Over the last two decades, Russian Internet accumulated a range of images originating from the Soviet epoch, including everything from official portraits of Soviet leaders to representations of Soviet greeting cards and postage stamps. While some of those digitised items remain intact, others become a part of different creative practices inherent to online environment, such as photo manipulating, remixing, recombining and merging with elements attributing to other historical or national contexts. The current article investigates one instance of creative re-appropriation of the Soviet visual legacy on the Internet: construction of digital memes from the former Soviet propaganda posters. Upon focusing on three iconic posters, namely Did you Volunteer? (1920), Do not Talk! (1941) and Motherland is Calling! (1941), this study examines how the propaganda images have been transformed by contemporary Russian users into ‘templates’ for meme-making. Furthermore, the article identifies two particular functions of memes based on the Soviet propaganda posters: first, as a form of a peculiar humour, known in Russian tradition as stiob and, second, as an instrument for voicing of public opinion, through which users comment on urgent political and social issues. The article concludes that the remakes of Soviet propaganda images do not fall within any hitherto discovered category of humorous, political or historical memes, and therefore, they should be considered as a separate case in contemporary production of memes.

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          Most cited references37

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          What Makes Online Content Viral?

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            Memes in a Digital World: Reconciling with a Conceptual Troublemaker

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              Everything Was Forever Until it Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation

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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                (View ORCID Profile)
                Journal
                Journal of Creative Communications
                Journal of Creative Communications
                SAGE Publications
                0973-2586
                0973-2594
                July 2020
                February 23 2020
                July 2020
                : 15
                : 2
                : 131-146
                Affiliations
                [1 ] Russian Institute for Advanced Studies, Moscow State Pedagogical University (MSPU), Moscow, Russia.
                Article
                10.1177/0973258619893780
                38476ce3-7464-469c-bcca-74cc291c3a59
                © 2020

                http://journals.sagepub.com/page/policies/text-and-data-mining-license

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