COMM 150: How a student's 'pepper spray cop' photo became an internet sensation

How are social media changing our world?

Chris O'Brien, columnist for the San Jose (Calif.) Mercury News, asked the same question on the paper's website Nov. 23. He not only interviewed whose photo of the pepper spray incident at the University of California Davis went viral. Since San Jose is in the heart of Silicon Valley, where people think about things like that, O'Brien also analyzed the phenomenon in the context of Internet culture. Specifically, the creation of a "meme" as users rapidly spread the photo and commented on it. (The best definition, as you'd expect, is in Wikipedia, which defines a meme as "an idea, behaviour or style that spreads from person to person within a culture.") O'Brien wrote:

As Internet "memes" usually do, the "Pepper Spray Cop" one currently clogging our Facebook feeds started with the simple act of someone posting a photo they wanted to share with a few friends. Three days later, it has been photoshopped and mashed-up more than 1,000 times.

A meme is simply an idea or object that spreads around the Internet. In this case, the photo has been mutated into a wide range of images and captions, some hilarious, some disturbing, some insightful.

The spread of the pepper spray photo captures one of the new ways we now collectively express ourselves. Simple digital tools allow us to edit photos and send them ricocheting around the Internet to be seen by thousand of others.

Like a good reporter, he went to the scene - in this case to the UC Davis campus - and talked to one of the people responsible for starting the meme Friday afternoon. Here's how he tells the story:

Of course, creating an Internet sensation was the last thing on the mind of Louise Macabitas, 22, a psychobiology major at UC Davis, when she grabbed her camera and went down to the protest.

She began snapping photos as Lt. John Pike of the UC Davis police walked along a row of huddled students, spraying a bright orange mist of pepper spray into their faces. He got so close to Macabitas that she got pepper spray on her jeans.

Later, she downloaded the photos, and one in particular stood out, which she posted on her Facebook wall.

That photo was shared by many of her friends. One of them eventually posted it in the online Reddit community, a social news site whose members tend to have a snarky sensibility and strong political views, and who frequently remix various objects to trigger many of the Internet's biggest memes.

The Pepper Spray photo caught fire on Reddit, and then spilled back into mainstream sites, according to Kim. Already, the Pepper Spray meme extends beyond Macabitas' photo.

There are YouTube videos of the incident that have more than 1 million views. People are selling T-shirts with various versions of the Pepper Spray photo. And people have even taken to Amazon.com to write satiric reviews of pepper spray products ...

And so on ...

How do Internet technology and user-generated content on social media allow a student with a camera to change the terms of debate in 21st-century America?