Memes, memetics and their applications: A systematic review of literature

Abstract

Memes are not new concepts, but they have garnered popularity recently. They are a prevalent form of communication on various social media platforms. However, due to a lack of concrete literature (Al Rashdi, 2020), there is still some initial scepticism surrounding them. This paper uses a systematic literature review to create a pool of research papers to be examined to chart the conceptual development of memes, determine how they are used in different fields, and present a vision of memes in the near future. It identifies eleven areas which were studied in parallel to memes, suggesting possible meme applications and development. It adopts the PRISMA 2020 framework to ensure systematic screening and reporting of relevant papers from various databases.