The memeification of "woke culture": a multimodal critical discourse analysis of its articulation in Essence; O, The Oprah Magazine; and Teen Vogue

Abstract

[EMBARGOED UNTIL 12/1/2023] The African American English (AAE) word "woke," remains underappreciated for its significance in American history and in the current Movement for Black Lives discourse. The replication and oversaturation of the concept--which stands for awareness and social consciousness--in cultural products threatens to delegitimize this powerful symbol of culture, the Black freedom struggle, and a social movement looking to combat police brutality. Recently, scholars have focused on the word being used as a framework to explore the social consciousness of advertising campaigns. I argue in this multimodal critical discourse analysis of "woke" and an emerging "woke culture" represents not only consumerism and political activism but also community, identity, and agency. I demonstrate this by analyzing the discourses in Essence; O, The Oprah Magazine; and Teen Vogue magazines from 2016-2020, using Stuart Hall's encoding/decoding model to create a new typology of interpretation for articulations of race, gender, and class in lifestyle journalism. Then, I discuss the memeification of the concept across the sample and its negotiation between communicating and commodifying social consciousness. Finally, I suggest future lines for research and challenge women-centric lifestyle magazines and their editors to serve as editorial beacons for facilitating the discourse on social consciousness in contemporary society.