In this research report, I explore how we currently monitor cultural trends in our campaign efforts. I also want to begin mapping out the tools and capabilities that will be needed to fully operate as a “meme spreading” organization in the days ahead. We recently launched the One Party Planet pamphlet and have gathered a suite of social analytics that reveal much—both as indicators of spreading and as a demonstration of how much deeper and more nuanced our understandings will need to become as we adopt more sophisticated tools for cultural research moving forward. The approach I take is to compare the spreading of One Party Planet with several memes that went viral as the United States experienced major racial conflict in the last two weeks. By doing so, we can begin to articulate what kinds of monitoring and analytic tools will be needed to fully implement our mission of taking radical ideas into the mainstream.

1. Exploring the Tools for
Meme Propagation
Cultural Research Report for December 10, 2014
Prepared by:
Joe Brewer
Culture Designer
Change Strategist for Humanity T 206.914.8927 joe@culture2inc.com http://www.changestrategistforhumanity.com

2. Purpose of This Report
In this research report, I want to explore how we currently monitor cultural trends in our
campaign efforts. I also want to begin mapping out the tools and capabilities that will be
needed to fully operate as a “meme spreading” organization in the days ahead. We
recently launched the One Party Planet pamphlet and have gathered a suite of social
analytics that reveal much—both as indicators of spreading and as a demonstration of
how much deeper and more nuanced our understandings will need to become as we
adopt more sophisticated tools for cultural research moving forward.
The approach I take is to compare the spreading of One Party Planet with several memes
that went viral as the United States experienced major racial conflict in the last two weeks.
By doing so, we can begin to articulate what kinds of monitoring and analytic tools will be
needed to fully implement our mission of taking radical ideas into the mainstream.
Sketch of the Cultural Wave for Racial Unrest in the United States
Events flowing from the death of an unarmed black teenager in Ferguson, Missouri earlier
this year reveal deep tidal forces at play in the political culture of this country that is rife
with unresolved tensions that build up and explode in episodic waves.
We could trace these ‘meme dynamics’ back to the introduction of African slaves into the
colonies along the Atlantic seaboard. For our purposes here, I will limit the discussion to
media communication during and after the Civil Rights Movement. This will be a sketch of
the major events that triggered people to share media content far and wide in the last 50
years.
A pivotal moment in the struggle for racial equality was the deployment of a militarized
police force to Birmingham, Alabama where film crews captured television footage of dogs
unleashed onto peaceful protestors and fire hoses used to suppress and disperse crowds
of supporters. This footage was aired nationally—and syndicated overseas, revealing the
depths of hatred and violence on the topic of race to foreign audiences. The effect was a
compassionate wave of shock and awe. The ‘land of liberty’ narrative appeared vacuous
Exploring the Tools for Meme Propagation Cultural Research Report for December 10, 2014

3. and hollow in the face of these atrocities. Also, people felt solidarity in the struggle for
social justice.
Jumping forward several decades—to the early 1990‘s—another highly influential and
televised event triggered violence in the streets when a young black man resisted arrest
and was beaten by a team of white police officers. This Rodney King Affair came to light
when security camera footage was aired—echoing the imagery of police brutality from the
Civil Rights and Vietnam War protests that continued to lurk quietly in the living memory of
many U.S. citizens.
In the early 2000’s police forces became increasingly militarized under the Patriot Act
during the War on Terror propaganda campaign. A scene was set for the events in
Ferguson to unfold in 2014. Of special importance were the viral spread of content
showing police officers and their use of force against peaceful protesters during Occupy
Wall Street. These images were mirrored in every domain of civil unrest around the world
—from the streets of London to the favelas of Rio and the crowds of Tahir Square.
I sketch this outline of history to show how a web of memes became interwoven as pent
up feelings and unresolved sentiments that spanned decades—all of which included a
central theme of oppression and unaccountable authority figures who abuse their positions
of power. These hidden cultural patterns where what made the “internet memes” possible.
Let’s look at a few to see this in more detail.
Just before Thanksgiving, a grand jury released the verdict that the police officer who shot
and killed Michael Brown, the unarmed black teenager in Ferguson, would not even go to
trial for his actions. This ignited a wave of protests in hundreds of cities across North
America. The hashtag #BlackLivesMatter captured the widely shared feeling that our
criminal justice system lacks empathy for African Americans and is demonstrably
unaccountable and broken.
It was accompanied by #DontShoot and #CrimingWhileWhite to convey how the rising
tide of police aggression—disproportionately against black people—left community
members afraid and divided along racial lines. #DontShoot was a gesture depicting a
person holding their hands up to show they are unarmed. It was imitated by professional
Exploring the Tools for Meme Propagation Cultural Research Report for December 10, 2014

4. athletes at sporting events, people posting selfies to social media, and peaceful protesters
out in the street. Thus it was widely shared and became part of the zeitgeist very quickly.
#CrimingWhileWhite emerged as an expression of solidarity from white people who have
experience of unfair privilege in their dealings with the police. This reinforced the
understanding that our justice system is decidedly not blind to the color of a person’s skin.
Black people experience oppression while white people experience unfair privilege. Both
are increasingly uncomfortable with this situation and want to find a way to heal our society
and move forward together
The #BlackLivesMatter hashtag spread like a virus in the next few days, resulting in a
contamination effect on Black Friday later in the week. This term, with its own hashtag of
#BlackFriday, became a semantic blend of rampant consumerism and yet another
expression of racial tension in the U.S. One outcome of this unintended conceptual blend
was that consumer turnout for the big shopping event fell precipitously as people
boycotted in record numbers to show their frustrations with racial inequality—a loose
association of ideas that could not have been anticipated beforehand.
It became commonplace for new cases of police aggression against blacks to pop up on a
daily basis. One such case in New York City was the strangling of Eric Garner that resulted
in his death. Garner was a tall, heavyset man who weighed more than 400 pounds. He
stepped in to break up a fight—committing no crime of his own—and was caught on
camera phone by an onlooker as two police officers placed him in a stranglehold. As he
died in the scuffle, the words “I can’t breathe” were audible in the recording. It was later
revealed that Garner had serious health problems that contributed both to his obesity and
the heightened risk of death.
This prompted birth of the next internet meme, hashtag #ICantBreathe, to take off and
spread like wildfire. Each of these hashtags was shared by tens of thousands of Twitter
accounts, as new waves of feeling were expressed. All of this happening in the span of
two weeks.
At the time of writing this situation continues unabated. Celebrities and athletes are
appearing in public with t-shirts saying I Can’t Breathe and new events are prompted hour
by hour that keep fueling the fires of discontent.
Exploring the Tools for Meme Propagation Cultural Research Report for December 10, 2014

5. Comparison with One Party Planet
After release of One Party Planet we began tracking likes, views, downloads, and shares on
Facebook, Twitter, Slideshare, and blog sites where our articles were published. This will enable us
to start formalizing how we measure impact when we design and deploy new memes into different
conversations around the world.
Initial metrics show that we are getting the word out—as we can see by the roughly 10,000
views of the document on Slideshare, nearly 5,000 Facebook likes of my article on
Truthout, and the steady flow likes and shares each time we post an infographic on our
Facebook page. These metrics are helpful in that they offer glimpses into the reach of our
ideas (how many people were exposed and whether they resonated with the content).
They also indicate some level of relevance by mapping thematically onto conversations
that are already attracting participation among different communities we want to influence
through our work. This can be seen in the linkage with electoral outcomes (and voter
participation) in the United States; wealth inequality and poverty on the world stage;
climate change and the absence of courageous leadership from business or government;
and other domains yet to be discovered.
One glaring distinction between OPP and the Ferguson memes is the absence of
spontaneous and decentralized cultivation of new memes. We have not seen other
people interact with our content and feel compelled to create a new hashtag or insert links
to our material into existing debates. This isn’t a criticism so much as an observation. Our
work with OPP is very early stage, after all.
Assessment of Meme Spreading Tools
There are many directions we could take these observations. We might explore the
structure and content of our memes—the frame semantics and how it maps to trending
topics in the daily media cycle. Or perhaps delve more deeply into the psychological
factors (and group dynamics) that have shaped the evolution of racial issues in the United
States to see what we can learn from them. Another option might be to look more closely
at the details of what is spreading (and what’s not) in our OPP content so far.
Exploring the Tools for Meme Propagation Cultural Research Report for December 10, 2014

6. Each pathway, and others that could be added to the list, is worthwhile in its own right.
What I’d rather do is explore how well we measure cultural change now and compare
it with what is possible to measure to guide us toward greater capabilities down the
road.
We have already set the ambitious goal of replacing the status quo discourse on economic
development with an alternative paradigm that reflects ecological concerns and promotes
shared prosperity. Achieving this will require that we look at more than page views and hits
on the like button. So how might we assess things differently?
What I’ll sketch now is a conversation starter—it is not intended to be fully fleshed out or
comprehensive in its scope. Martin asked me what would be needed to (1) see the
thematic patterns that drive change in culture; and (2) measure our progress at achieving
definable goals through our actions. My initial response involved two research activities,
neither of which is operational right now:
✦ Conduct ethnographically rich case studies of “cultural waves” in prior social
movements that have moved civilization in the direction we want it to go. Go back
and interview participants in Occupy, Arab Spring, Indignados, and other recent
uprisings about the major lines of contention (and pent up frustrations) that ignited
large-scale engagement among those who got involved.
✦ Identify thematic areas that characterize the drivers of these waves as they
evolve and change in time. This includes the construction of a database with a
taxonomy of search terms that we routinely track on social media. The terms we
use should be informed by the case studies and updated in aggregate form to see
the rich details of change in stories as they arise, merge, and subside in time.
There are many tools for doing this kind of work. We can track keywords and phrases on
Twitter, recruit community members to track memes on the internet that tell stories about
the themes we care about, partner with ethnographic researchers in different parts of the
world to increase our diversity of languages and local contexts where we have deep
knowledge about what is spreading and how it is evolving each culture.
Furthermore, we can begin to see how our ideas stick (or don’t!!!) when we push them out
into the world. Right now we are limited to crude tools for two reasons. Firstly, we are still
Exploring the Tools for Meme Propagation Cultural Research Report for December 10, 2014

7. early in developing our capacity to work as a team at meme propagation. Progress is
growing every day we work in this manner. Secondly, we have lacked the capacity to
invest in this more robust kind of research and need to attract funds to commit more
person hours to the effort.
At this point, I think I’ve said enough. Let’s talk about this. What comes to mind as you
read this report? What are the lingering questions? How shall we move forward from here?
Onward,
Joe
Exploring the Tools for Meme Propagation Cultural Research Report for December 10, 2014