Legal

BBC Four HD

How to Go Viral: The Art of the Meme with Richard Clay

BBC Four

Richard Clay

Russell Barnes

Katie Johns

Henry Norgrove

Clare Burns

Documentaries

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media: Arts

BBC Four - How to Go Viral: The Art of the Meme with Richard Clay

Art historian Richard Clay explores how memes are shaping our culture and politics.

Art historian Professor Richard Clay explores how internet memes are shaping our culture and politics, experimenting by devising and releasing some himself.

Art historian Professor Richard Clay immerses us in the febrile world of viral media, exploring the popularity and meaning of internet memes, from LOL cats to emoji, pratfall videos to ‘dank’ alt-right satire. Playfully fusing the conventions of a BBC Four authored documentary with a throwaway YouTube video style, the film examines the rise and rise of this new visual language and asks what makes a few memes cut through and spread so intensely, while the vast majority fall quietly by the wayside.

To explore this question, Richard Clay experiments with devising and releasing his own memes, applying what he finds out in interviews with meme creators and influencers. These include Tom Walker, the comedian who plays YouTube sensation Jonathan Pie; Amanda Brennan, meme ‘librarian’ at Tumblr; Richard Dawkins, the biologist who coined the word ‘meme’; Christopher Blair, a self-proclaimed liberal troll; and Sam Oakley from LADBible, a video creator company that reaches a billion people a month.


Knowledge, arts, music and culture from the UK and the world.

BBC Four reflects arts, music and culture with an ambitious range of intellectually and culturally enriching programmes, taking an expert and in-depth approach to its subjects.

Accessibility links

Programme Index

How to Go Viral: The Art of the Meme with Richard Clay

Contributors

Genres

Formats

BBC Four HD

About BBC Four