09/03/2023; event: Ethotic Thurs seminars; The Laboratory of New Ethos

1. THE
NEW
ETHOS
Piotr Siuda
Darknet
imaginaries:
The discursive
malleability of
the cultural
status of digital
technologies
Ethotic Thurs seminars
09 March 2023

2. Darknet imaginaries in
Internet memes: the discursive
malleability of the cultural
status of digital technologies
JCMC Piotr Siuda (KWU)
Jakub Nowak (UMCS)
Robert W. Gehl (YU)

3. MULTIPLE
DISCOURSES
Technologically, it is a niche system.
Socially, it has a dangerous
reputation.
Discourse: ordered ways of
speaking about a particular
cultural object.
What is darknet?

4. DISCURSIVE
MALLEABILITY
OF NICHE
TECHNOLOGIES
Its socially shared definition is
constructed more by its common
imaginaries, than by people’s
actual experiences with it.
Darknet’s cultural
significance

5. popular culture
and memes

6. AIMS
How memes discuss dominant depiction...
How do internet memes describe
and depict the darknet (and
related technologies, such as the
deep webs)? That is, how do
internet memes contribute to
conceptions of the darknet’s
characteristics, social practices,
and norms?
How do these collectively
created representations discuss
– reinforce or question –
hegemonic depictions and
evaluations of this particular
niche technology, such as those
offered by journalists or
academics?
Cultural studies and...

7. THEORETICAL
BACKGROUND
Double
articulation of
media and
cultural
imaginaries
Any kind of medium is located in spatiotemporal settings
while also being a text or symbolic message located
within the flows of particular socio-cultural discourse.
Any medium is defined not only by how people use it but
also by how people think about it.

8. THEORETICAL
BACKGROUND
Hegemonic
conceptions of
the darknet
Much of the discourse about the darknet is driven by moral
panics about crime and scale.
The idea that the dark web can preserve a freedom of
speech.

9. THEORETICAL
BACKGROUND
Internet memes
discussing the
darknet
Internet memes may be defined as (a) a group of digital
items, images, or videos, sharing common characteristics
of content, form, and/or stance, which (b) are created
with awareness of each other, and (c) are circulated,
imitated, and/or transformed via the internet by many
users.

10. MEMES
Memes communicate voice of meme
creators while...
Memes contribute to the
“polyvocal political discussion”
on what the darknet is and how
it should be approached –
legally and normatively.
As any other pop-cultural
modality, internet memes on
darknet include readings
consonant with the hegemonic
positions, and readings that
negotiate or even ridicule these
dominant depictions.
To systematically reconstruct
these depictions from darknet-
themed internet memes.
...collectively contributing to
cultural definition of the darknet.

11. RESEARCH
DESIGN
Qualitative social semiotics
content analysis.
We 1) analyzed internet memes as
texts; 2) considered: a) contexts
of analyzed images (including the
“ordinary” internet); b) notions
predominantly inscribed into the
genre of internet memes.
Analytic procedure

12. RESEARCH
DESIGN A total of 505 memes meeting the set criteria were collected.
The data was gathered in July 2021.
A four-stage process.
Apsgeyser
(apsgeyser.blogspot.com),
9GAG (9gag.com) and
Reddit.
PC was used with a freshly
installed browser and
without logging on to the
author profile.
Data collection

16. RESEARCH
DESIGN
Limitations of the study...
1) Two authors manually and
separately went through the
collected 505 memes.
2) Those two authors separately
classified the memes into
broader themes/categories.
Then a more detailed
exploration, focusing on the most
important themes and
pinpointing their significance.
"Cases"...

18. Theme 1: the iceberg – the
darknet vs the clear web

19. Theme 2: darknet
”technology” and its insiders

20. Theme 3:
the shadowy darknet

21. Theme 4: the unexpected
side of the darknet

22. Theme 5: darknet dark humor

23. Theme 6: demystifying the
darknet

26. Theme 7: darknet drug trade

27. Theme 8: law enforcers

28. Theme 9: the darknet and
political activism

29. REPRESENTATIONAL
MAP OF THE
DARKNET
The bottom-up voice on the darknet
is complex and inconclusive and
discusses several issues in various
contextual positions.
Nine themes contribute to the
cultural imaginaries that may be
seen as...

32. THE DISCURSIVE
MALLEABILITY
OF NICHE
TECHNOLOGIES
The lower the number of users of a particular technology, the greater the
role of its second articulation in the process of developing its cultural
status.
Memes on the darknet
(and other niche
technologies) do not
construct a coherent
depiction. Instead, they
contribute to an unstable,
diverse, polysemic, and
sometimes contradictory
matrix of characteristics.
The darknet’s (and other
niche technologies)
malleable discursive
status makes it a flexible
object for groups such as
policymakers to deploy in
larger discussions of
internet regulation.

33. DISCURSIVE
STRUGGLES
OVER THE
STATUS OF
DIGITAL
TECHNOLOGIES
Utopian and dystopian imaginaries...
Internet memes on the darknet
reflect people’s positions toward
digital technologies and we
need to include these in debates
on digital technologies.
Discursive struggles over the
darknet may be read as another
chapter in the long history of
digital technologies’ cultural
“formation” and its
“naturalization” in the daily lives
of its users.
Darknet becomes a lens...

34. Implications for darknet studies, discursively malleable niche
technologies, gender aspects, various online spaces.
FUTURE RESEARCH
THREADS

35. CONCLUSIONS
Rrepresentational map of the
darknet reveals how internet
memes may work as the medium
of the collective redefinition of
the internet.
Internet memes are fun.
They are also serious
business as they
contribute to how people
see things, especially
obscure, malleable
cultural objects like the
darknet.

36. FUNDING
This research is supported by the Polish National Science
Center (Narodowe Centrum Nauki) grants:
2020/37/B/HS6/00941 and 2021/43/B/HS6/00710.

37. PIOTR@UKW.EDU.PL
Piotr Siuda, Jakub Nowak, Robert W Gehl (2023) Darknet
imaginaries in Internet memes: the discursive malleability of the
cultural status of digital technologies, Journal of Computer-
Mediated Communication, Volume 28, Issue 1.
THX