ThisaddedfunctionalityenabledtheTwitterplatformtointegratehashtagsbyhyperlink-ingthemtothesearchresultsforalltweetscontainingagivenhashtag.8

Asfarasweknowbasedonextantmaterials,thehashtag’suseinTwitterwasfirstproposedinmid-2007

octothorpe

The@featurewehavejustdiscussedhelpedpeopleorganizeintopairsandcreateconversationalstreams.

hasmadethehashtaganewandpowerfulpartoftheworld’scultural,social,andpoliti

ItisusedroutinelyinsocialmediacommunicationacrossanumberofplatformsincludingTumblr,Instagram,andevenFacebook,butitsmostimpor-tantpointofemergenceandpopularizationwasinTwitter

In contrast, I am concerned with how Grindr enacts power not through messages about queerness but by con-stituting a complex, extractive queer space in the first place.

homoconnectivity as an arrangement of power that extracts profits and potentiality from queer communities through online spaces, social media, technologies, and/or software.

“you consent to the trans-fer and processing of [y]our data in the United States of America and any other jurisdiction throughout the world” (“Use Outside the United States,” para. 1). In a heteronormative world with surveilling govern-ments and corporations unaccountable for their privacy practices, the distribution of risk placed on queer people online calls for further the-orizing and political action.

Oscillating between producing continuous experiences and deploying annoying constraints, platforms like Grindr privatize and monetize user spaces, communities, social production, and lives under the guise of increased connec-tivity.

Social media tacitly promises fame (and subsequent wealth) to‘ordinary’usersand thus encourages practices of micro-celebrity.

Eventually, with consistentjuxtaposition, the human brand can become synonymous with the brand and hencewith the product, service orfirm

Peters thus encouragesindividuals to turn their résumé into a‘marketing brochure’full of‘braggables’for whichthey want to be famous (the term he uses):‘being CEO of Me Inc. requires you to actselfishly–to grow yourself, to promote yourself, to get the market to reward yourself

Central to self-branding isthe idea that, just like commercially branded products, individuals benefit from having aunique selling point, or a public identity that is singularly charismatic and responsive tothe needs and interests of target audiences.

Charlie Bit My Finger” we hear Charlie’s big brother complaining about the biting, yet we see him deliberately sticking his finger into the baby’s mouth.

umor served as a major component of successful memes created between 2000 and 2005.

a quick look at the sample required a change of plan. Men were the leading characters in twenty-four out of the thirty videos, while only three videos featured women as pro-tagonists. This is not, however, simply a story about male hegemony, at least not in the conventional sense.

it provided people with an opportunity to assert their influence via social media. Having seen the video and having been moved by it, users could actually do something with their rage, such as send a premade twit-ter message to a key policy maker.

An individ-ual—Joseph Kony—is portrayed as the ultimate enemy, the worst villain on Earth. Since the problem is simple, the solution offered is equally straightforward.

a striking major-ity (more than 90 percent) of advertisements produced by viral advertising companies include humorous elements.

it puts a smile on the face of the person who gets it, and it will associate the sender with a positive, uplifting message

people are more likely to share positive than negative stories. In ad-dition, they prefer sharing items that are perceived as sur-prising, interesting, or practically useful.

The first dimension relates mainly to the content of a specific text,

In order to be passed along from one per-son to another, memes are “loaded” on various vehicles:

Internet users tend to ascribe the meme tag to observable audiovisual content, such as YouTube videos and humorous images.

According to Michele Knobel and Koline Lankshear, Internet users employ the word “meme” to describe the rapid uptake and spread of a “particular idea presented as a written text, image, language ‘move,’ or some other unit of cultural ‘stuff.’

The word “meme” derives from the Greek mimema, signifying “something which is imitated,”

Examples of memes in his pioneering essay include cultural artifacts such as melodies, catchphrases, and clothing fashions, as well as abstract beliefs (for instance, the concept of God).

The term “meme” was coined by Richard Dawkins in 1976 to describe small units of culture that spread from person to person by copying or imitation.

was the first clip to surpass the one-billion-view mark.

,75percentofrespondentsreceivednewsforwardedthroughemailorpostedonsocialnetworksites,and52percentsharedlinkstonewswithothersviathosemeans

ncomparison,avideoofScottishwomanSusanBoyleauditioningforBritain'sGotTalentwasviewedmorethan77milliontimesonYouTube.Thislatterfigurereflectsonlytheviewershipoftheoriginalupload;YouTubeisaspacewheresuccessoftenencouragesduplication.

Appliedtothedesignofawebsite,companieshopetoachievestickinessbyplacingmaterialinaneasilymeasuredlocationandassessinghowmanypeopleviewit,howmanytimesitisviewed,andhowlongvisitorsviewit

spread,”"spreadable,”or“spreadability”todescribetheseincreasinglypervasiveformsofmediacirculation.“Spreadability”referstothepotential—bothtechni-calandcultural—foraudiencestosharecontentfortheirownpurposes,sometimeswiththepermissionofrightsholders,sometimesagainsttheirwishes.Aswehavebeenworkingonthisbook,somecriticshavechallengedtheterm“spreadable,”suggestingitsoundsmoreappropri-atefordescribingcreamcheeseorpeanutbutter.(Thetermoriginatedinrelationto“stickiness,”aswewillsoonexplain.)However,thinkof“spreadability”asaplaceholder,perhapslikeastubinWikipedia;itissomethingwecanshapeaconversationaround.Ourgoalisnottocreateanewbuzzword

aboutwhethertotweetthelatestgaffefromapresidentialcandidate,forwardaNiemanMarcuscookierecipeemail,orsharevideoofashopliftingseagull—arereshapingbyfireorby“cloud”(sotospeak).Wemustallbecarefulnottosup-posethatamoreparticipatorymeansofcirculationcanbeexplainedsolely(orevenprimarily)bythisriseoftechnologicalinfrastructure,evenasthesenewtechnologiesplayakeyroleinenablingtheshiftsthisbookdescribes.SpreadableMediafocusesonthesociallogicsandculturalpticesthathaveenabledandpopularizedthesenewplatforms,logicsthatexplainw/y/sharinghasbecomesuchcommonpractice,notjusthow.Ourapproachdoesn'tpresumethatnewplatformsliberatepeoplefromoldconstraintsbutrathersuggeststhattheaffordancesofdigitalmediaprovideacatalystforreconceptualizingotheraspectsofculture,requiringtherethinkingofsocialrelations,thereimaginingofculturalandpoliticalparticipation,therevisionofeconomicexpectations,andthereconfigurationoflegalstructures.Throughoutthisbook,weusetermssuchas“spread,”"spreadable,”or“spreadability”todescribetheseincreasinglypervasiveformsofmediacirculation.“Spreadability”referstothepotential—bothtechni-calandcultural—foraudiencestosharecontentfortheirownpurposes,sometimeswiththepermissionofrightsholders,sometimesagainsttheirwishes.Aswehavebeenworkingonthisbook,somecriticshavechallengedtheterm“spreadable,”suggestingitsoundsmoreappropri-atefordescribingcreamcheeseorpeanutbutter.(Thetermoriginatedinrelationto“stickiness,”aswewillsoonexplain.)However,thinkof“spreadability”asaplaceholder,perhapslikeastubinWikipedia;itissomethingwecanshapeaconversationaround.Ourgoalisnottocreateanewbuzzword.Instead,wewanttochallengereaderstothinkthroughthemetaphorsweallusewhentalkingabouthowcontentmovesacrosstheculturallandscape—toresistterminologythatmightdistorthowweunderstandthesetrendsandtocontinueseekingtermsthatallengagewithmediatexts.Ourfocusonterminologyismorethanmeresemantics.Webelievethatlanguagemattersdeeplyandthatthemetaphorsweallusetodescribethepatternsweseeshapehowweunderstandourworld.Webecomeblindtosomephenomenaandbiasedtowardothers.Bydiscussing“spreadablemedia,”weaimtofacilitateamorenuancedthemedialandscapeitself.

ndtheydoingsonotasisolatedindividualsbutwithinlargercommunitiesandnetworks,whichallowthemtospreadcontentwellbeyondtheirimmediategeographicproximity

The GIF shares many qualities with optical toys, the 19th century devices that begin mosthistories of the moving image, though this does not imply causality between the two. Optical toys were educational, focusing attentionon the devices and the physiologicalphenomenon, called ‘persistence of vision’,they revealed. But they share similar‘limitations of storage’ with the GIF, so itis useful to compare the similarities born of these affordances.Both the electric kinetoscope (1894) and the hand-crankedmutosocope (1895) offered short, silent, photographed movingimages as objects of entertainment. Early subjects includedactualities (documentary-like footage of people and events) and loose, often sexually charged narratives. Kinetoscope andmutoscope viewership was both a personal and collectiveexperience: machines were found in social environments like parlors and pleasure piers but only accommodated a single viewer at a time.The GIF began as a data format, certainly: theGraphics Interchange Format is a standard forencoding and decoding a string of 1s and 0s. But today the GIF casts a much longer shadow. It has an ethos, a utility, an evolving context, a set of aesthetics. GIFs areencountered not in theaters or in living rooms, but on networked screens that are physically private but socially public. They are not simply viewed; they are created, used, posted, collected, copied, modified, performed. Today ‘GIF’ is typically used to mean an animated GIF file or an otherwise short, silent, looping, untitledmoving image. It has a creator who is unknown ordeemphasized; it is encountered by an individualviewer on a personal screen whereit is surrounded by text and othermedia; and it is shared casuallyas a form of identity-making, acinema of affiliation.Phenakistoscopes (1832), zoetropes (1834), and praxinoscopes (1877)offered primarily symmetrical and seamless loops, often illustrations of people or animals in motion. These drawn or printed figures loopedcontinuously until the device lost momentumor was stopped by the viewer. More narrativeformations emerged from flip books (1868)because of their linear nature.All of theseobjects were viewer-activated, intended foran audience of one or few in closeproximity to the image.1234frame 1:frame 2:Flip books and mutoscopes remained popular throughout the first half of the 20th century, but cinema and television quickly became the dominant moving image forms. If looped animated images saw any innovation, it was as publicadvertising: ‘spectaculars’ or other electric animated signs. Physicallyproximate encounters with movingimages became uncommon until theintroduction of video games andpersonal computers.The GIF has no maximum resolution and can display up to 256 colors out of a palette ofmillions. (Few computers were capable ofmore colors at the time.) It was designed touse Lempel-Ziv-Welch (LZW) lossless datacompression, which encodes the image bycreating and referencing a ‘dictionary’ ofcommon patterns.

It has a creator who is unknown ordeemphasized

theGraphics Interchange Format

“I would do away with grades altogether,” said Dr Stommel, a senior lecturer in digital studies.

a spontaneous reaction to the coronavirus pandemic that could bring fundamental change across higher education.

I do believe that is one of the main reasons why student struggle as much as they do their first year in college.

Later in 1806 a German pharmacist by the name Freidrich Wilhelm Adam Serturner created a much more potent form of opium by isolating an organic alkaloid compound from the opium poppies resin. He called this substance morphine after the Greek God of Morpheus, the God of dreams.