(Re)discussing the emergence of genres on the web

Abstract

Since the Paleolithic, genres have always been used in communication and human beings have exploited all semiotic resources to be understood. On the internet, it is common for users to use creative resources available on digital platforms, which serve different purposes, for creative communication. These actions may be the genesis of some genres, which go through distinct stages of formation until they stabilize. This paper aims to suggest criteria that guide the emergence of genres on the web. To that end three memes that circulated on Facebook and a post in Instagram stories were selected. The selection criterion used was the number of shares, likes, or comments, which had to be superior to 100. The analysis is based on the socio-rhetorical approach of genres (Miller, 2009; Bazerman, 2021) and dialogic discourse analysis (Bakhtin, 2016; Volóchinov, 2018). The results show that it is possible to characterize emergence as the first stage of a genre that has yet to be standardized. The features present at this stage are unity of meaning, lack of identity consensus, and remix.