REUTILIZATION OF OLD MEMES IN THE CONTEXT OF FRESH NEWSBREAKS

The article deals with pragmatic issues of meme reutilization when memes created as a reaction to one newsbreaks get applied to other newsbreaks, while changing their form and meaning. The articles carries out discourse analysis of a “Petrov and Boshirov” case, actively developed in Telegram posts and user comments to them during the spring of 2023. It is shown that meme reutilization reflects a number of important features of the new media in general, such as their collaborative and collage nature. With time a single meme can be gradually decontextualized and reused in many other contexts, which leads to emergence of the whole meme family and, later, if the meme is sufficiently viral, further blurs the borderlines of the meme family as well. The case study allows to question existing interpretations of the term “meme”. It demonstrates continuity of transformations in its form and content and its inclusion in complex systems of interrelated information products. It becomes itself quite a fluid entity percolating into other information products in the mediaspace. The meme may become a precedent text for intertextual references in the statements of a significant number of users and turns into a hybrid products that combines features of several meme families at once.