What can we learn from research into memes as a pedagogical phenomenon in democratic or participatory contexts? The primary aim of this scoping review is to map the current knowledge about the pedagogical value of memes in participatory and democratic contexts. As secondary research question, the papers also asks what democratic and participatory understandings the field of research is grounded in.

According to Shifman (2014, pp. 39-42) memes are a form of communication between people or groups of people, often digital, and often consisting of visual or audiovisual media. Moreover, memes are commonly understood to be humoristic in nature; the humoristic aspect of memes has also been linked to democratic and participatory functions (Anderson & Keehn, 2020), and the possible value it may have for educators. This further raises the questions of whether we know more about the pedagogical value of memes in the context of democracy and participation, and how this research can be summarized and what gaps may exist in the literature.

Further theoretical perspectives can be found in Durham Peters (2020) philosophy of media, adopting the view that media is not only a tool for mediation in our different social systems, but a part of these systems themselves; the theory on memes can be expanded to define memes also as messages in themselves, meaning that they are part of our environment and carry meaning both by mediation of something and existing in themselves as part of the system.

Memes as a form of communication has in recent years become more widely researched. With perspectives ranging from memes as a political tool in specific elections (Ross & Rivers, 2019), to memes as form of identity formation in grassroots movements among marginalized groups (Burton, 2019), there is still a need to get an overview on memes as a pedagogical phenomenon in a democratic and participatory context. This paper shows the preliminary results of a sample of research in that context.

The need for this overview is based on the lack of reviews on this topic of research, particularly with regards to the pedagogical value of memes as a democratizing phenomenon. Apart from summarizing the current knowledge, another aim is to reflect upon the future of research on the topic, and what questions might need to be asked moving forward.

The paper is part of the authors Ph.d.-project.

The paper adopts the criteria for a scoping review as suggested by Arksey and O’Malley (2005, pp. 4), with the aim of “examining the extent, range and nature of research activity … to summarize and disseminate the research findings” (Arksey & O’Malley, 2005, pp. 4), and identifying the possible gaps in the collection of literature on the research topic. Further criteria are borrowed from Cohen et al. (2018, pp. 181-185), emphasising the context of the research with regards to the time of research, the geopolitical status, and the place the research has taken place, as well as the theoretical understandings of the concepts used in the field. Several searches have been made with different iterations of the terms “memes”, “pedagogy”, “learning”, “socialisation”, “democracy”, “participation”, “education”, “political education”, citizenship” and “youth culture”. Different combinations gave several different samples. These samples were scanned by title and keywords, where those deemed relevant were downloaded to and placed in an endnote folder. Duplicates were subsequently removed with endote. 130 peer-reviewed articles were chosen from the searches in SCOPUS and Web of Science, a further 20 were found snowballing, by looking into the references of the relevant articles. The final sample of 77 is based on a stricter view on pedagogical and democratic relevance, made through skimming the abstract of the articles – the chosen articles had to have some pedagogical value, in that they examined terms such as “education”, “learning”, “socialization”, “identity” etc. Excluded were articles looking mainly at other contexts, among others covid-19 and far-right extremism, or articles in others disciplines such as linguistics or medicine. The preliminary categorization was made while reading through the abstracts. Categories that emerged were "memes as main focus", "general political", "specific political", "political engagement", "social justice", pedagogy as main focus", "climate change", "AI" (excluded), "covid-19" (excluded), and "far right" (excluded).

This sample shows both different methodologies and perspectives pertaining to the pedagogical value of memes in learning democracy and participation. A pattern regarding the research is the possible need for more interview-data, as this method is less used than for example content analysis. Further the theoretical understanding of memes leans largely on Shifmans definition, with few perspectives differing from this view. Critical perspectives through theoretical inquiries may open up for further research on the topic.

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