El meme como artefacto cultural mediador de procesos identitarios en jóvenes estudiantes de psicología de la Universidad Santo Tomás

Abstract

The significance of social identity in research lies in its ability to elucidate the construction of collective subjectivities and their expression in diverse communicative contexts. Social identity is dynamic, constantly transforming through social interactions, cultural influences, and historical changes. Memes serve as a manifestation of this identity dynamic, revealing how individuals recognize themselves as part of a group, differentiate from others, and negotiate their positions within the social system. Moreover, memes influence identity processes such as self-concept, self-esteem, perception, and even learning. This research project is positioned within the Psychology, Subjectivity, and Identities research line of the psychology group at Santo Tomás University. The project aims to understand the formation of identity and subjectivation processes across different stages of the life cycle and characteristic processes of modernity. The goal is to comprehend the importance of generating new knowledge and subsequently creating pathways for intervening in these processes, with a specific focus on the role of memes as cultural artifacts mediating identity processes in young individuals, particularly psychology students at Santo Tomás University. The research framework encompasses cultural psychology, social identity, social constructionism, narratives, cultural artifacts, meme concept, concluding with a review of national and international legal frameworks. The qualitative methodology follows a constructivist research paradigm and ethnographic design, with convenience sampling of two female psychology students. The primary instrument used was in-depth interviews, structured around three categories: social network, social identity, and cultural artifact. Data analysis strategies included categorization and thematic analysis. Key findings demonstrate how these young individuals develop specific identity processes through resources shared in characteristic events of their life cycle, especially through the use of social media and memes. The study reveals that memes are a prevalent everyday communicative tool for these individuals, leveraging images, stickers, and multimodal resources to create meaning, symbols, and cultural references that facilitate new forms of identity representation. In conclusion, the results suggest that social identity, as a psychological phenomenon, is strongly influenced by the use of memes as mediators in social representations and meaning-making processes within group identification. Memes function as tools for knowledge, expanding our understanding of phenomena through complex processes of symbolization inherent in communication. This contributes to the evolution of language, learning methods, the socialization of shared experiences, and the trend toward unification of these elements into a more complex, diverse, and multidirectional reality.