Religious Communications Blog

Kirsten Jacobson kirsten.jacobson123@gmail.com My research and reflection this week set in the perspective of Aguilars idea of both genres and frames, and finding meaning in the meme collection I have gathered so far through those terms. So far my collection of memes seems to have a strong overlying presence of the 'promoting' and 'playful' genre.  Almost all of the memes in my collection so far shed a positive view of the Buddhist community in the sense of having a promoting genre, in other words, these memes highlight the peaceful nature of the faith and those who identify within the faith by often depicting peaceful prayer and inner thought as making someone better or less hateful than people outside the community who participate in popular culture and violence. An example of this being one of my first memes I presented in which someone is meditating and the text overlay sarcastically states that other people are out there fighting wars while he is just pray

Kirsten Jacobson kirsten.jacosbon123@gmail.com      So far throughout my research there does seem to be a reoccurring message through the religious stock figure of Buddha praying, the message of peaceful and solitary prayer being the true value all practicing Buddhist live by. This clearly supports the understanding of the rituals within the religious community and their belief in finding inner peace away from the main stream world, secluded, peaceful, and quietly self exploring their faith.       The article I read this week was extremely interesting in that it actually brought rise to opposition to the constant portrayal of Buddhist being alone and peaceful. Not to say that they aren't, but the article proposed a very interesting idea by comparing practicing Buddhists to practicing Islamic people today and how they are perceived differently by the outside world because of they way they are presented in the media and then perceived by the American public.       As state

     Kirsten Jacobson      Kirsten.jacobson123@gmail.com      Throughout the memes I have researched so far, meditation and prayer are images that are highlighted as key markers of the Buddhist religious group This speaks to a major belief by practicing Buddhists because it highlights the importance of finding inner peace to obtain nirvana, blocking out the outside world to be with God. These memes idealize Buddah as someone to follow in both worship and wardrobe and depict an insider view that the religion is peaceful and personal rather than group minded. The repetition of the depiction of men in orange robes sitting and praying engrains in the audiences view the prominence of peaceful and solo praying   to those in the Buddhist community.   Lastly, the memes I have been looking at use well known topics to appeal to both outside and insiders.             I think the observations made on these memes relates very well to the topics discussed in class, specifically that of iden

Kirsten Jacobson  kirsten.jacobson123@gmail.com The main strategy I plan on using in order to select memes for study is going to be to gather the memes themselves from Google images, using that source consistently, and only taking memes from the first couple of rows that appear from the search. My reasoning for this is that the first few rows presented on Google images, or any Google search appear to contain the most relevant content and content from more reliable sources (not made by an individual person and put on their personal account but accessible through a larger platform like Pintrist etc.,)             Through the memes I gathered for my last blog post as well as the ones presented with todays, the Buddhist rituals revolving around notions of transcendence seem to be rather clear.   Members seem to derive their meaning internally though mediation and eternal peace. The closer one is to inner peace and further away from wanting worldly possessions (tangible and non) th

Kirsten Jacobson kirsten.jacobson123@gmail.com Originally I was interested in studying memes related to the Muslim faith and community because I learned so much in the past section of the course and wanted to continue to educate myself on a different culture than my own. However, after further investigating religious memes I found that I was more curious to learn about memes centered around the Buddhist religion, as well as more about the Buddhist religion in general. I want to continue to broaden my knowledge on other religions by branching out from both my own personal and familiar Christian faith as well as the Muslim faith recently learned about in class. Buddhism is something that I have always admired and been curious about so I am excited to learn more about it especially through something I already enjoy, memes. Specifically I want to discover how memes challenge or promote certain stereotypes of practicing Buddhists in terms of how they view gender divisions (if any), if th