It is not well recognized, considering its success, that the meme has its roots in the academic world. The word “meme” is rooted in evolutionary biology, and in his famous 1976 book, The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins coined it. A meme is a unit of cultural transmission or imitation. According to Dawkins; his examples include the idea of God, nursery rhymes and jokes, catchphrases and trends in fashion (Aslan, 2018). The study published by Diaz (2013) entitled Defining and characterizing the concept of Internet Meme, it is time to address the idea of “internet memes” a formalized notion of meme, operationalized in terms of communication disciplines. Roughly speaking, an expression, picture or video is an internet meme. It can be generated or centered on a real-life event that spreads across the internet allowing people to duplicate it. Often it spreads in the same way and sometimes it spreads by means of transition. Moreover, the internet meme is characterized as the deliberate creation and distribution by an individual or group of people of a group of digital objects and that these digital objects are transformed by the transmission of several users through the internet (Herbert, 2019). Taking to the following definitions, Shifman (2014) authored the book Memes in Digital Culture clearly said that Internet memes (hereinafter referred to as memes) are best understood as groups of digital items or texts that many people create and share separately, but are aware of each other and have common features of content, shape, and/or place.

Furthermore, Quinal (2019) noted to her study entitled Philippines vs. America Filipino Generated Memes as Stimuli for Xenocentrism, Internet memes are now widely regarded as a type of “cultural artifact” by scientists and sociologists that helps spread cultural knowledge or philosophy about certain aspects of everyday life. Therefore, the meme definition itself is good introduction to diagnoses in broader perspective (Nowak, 2016) (Swafford).

A meme involves a memetic message and a meme performance and has a range of characteristics, including but not limited to salience, frequency, adaptability, argumentativity, sociality, embeddedness, embodiedness, locality, relativity, emotionality and dynamicity, if driven by a logical way of thinking (Xie, 2020). Also, Padgett & Swafford (2016) on their study entitled A Critical Case Study of Teacher Education Student Created Memes, without feeling forced to react in a certain way, memes are a creative way to convey an opinion or reveal true feelings.

In an article posted in High Five History by Deehan (2016) students focus on what they learned through comedy to make things more engaging (and to tap into critical thinking and creativity). Student were asked to construct amusing memes about the subjects we were looking at, events and individuals. Another example, in the study conducted by Reddy, Singh, Kapoor & Churi (2020) entitled Joy of Learning Through Internet Memes, they asked the students to construct political memes based on their own evidence-based political arguments to improve the critical thinking capacity of students and this will enable students to be critical of the content of the memes they are exposed to day-today life. In addition, Pontillas et al. (2020) published a study entitled Filipino Memes: Generation Z’s Way of Indirectness noted that Memes that talk in a funny way about serious matters. But the content still has this underlying sense. Therefore, students must learn the ability to identify problems, gather information that will help them to approach the issues objectively, balance the issues against values, and make accurate decisions in order to exercise the components of critical thinking as defined by Glaser (Nappi, 2017). Evidently, Harvey & Palese (2018) clearly stated on their study entitled #Nevertheless Memes Persisted: Building Critical Memetic Literacy in the Classroom that in the 21^st century classroom, memes provide teachers with a strong and appropriate way of addressing critical thinking and debate. For instance, A webpage Kapwing Resources (2019) posted an article entitled Make History Lessons Relevant Using Memes in the Classroom,they said that many educators and students are starting to realize the power of memes to cultivate storytellers and link students with past experiences and people.

This is because today’s generation is realistic and wants to learn skills and does not want conventional teaching that enforces memory instead of knowledge. They want to be imaginative in class-room-based teaching methods (Reddy, Singh, Kapoor & Churi, 2020).

The Foundation for Critical Thinking (2019) defines Critical thinking as the process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or assessing data obtained from or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication as a guide to belief and action that is intellectually disciplined. In addition, Critical thinking involves conceptualizing the data, applying the data to problems, analyzing the data, and synthesizing it before a final assessment is made (Lynch, 2018).

Shattuch-St. Mary’s School (2018) stated on their article entitled Critical Thinking in the 21^st Century, one will be able to analyze intelligence, explain concepts, search for possibilities and alternatives, and solve problems using reasoning, resourcefulness and creativity by thinking critically. Another primary aspect of critical thought is reviewing and comparing the effectiveness of evidence and concepts (Singh, 2020).

Nappi (2017) published a Journal entitled The Importance of Questioning in Developing Critical Thinking Skills on which she identified the three characteristics of Critical Thinking:

an attitude of being able to consider the issues and subjects that fall within the context of one’s experience in a reflective way;

One of the four features (communication, teamwork, critical thinking, and creativity) that learners must have in the 21^st century is critical thinking itself. Critical thinking is important, as the world community faces great challenges in the 21^st century (Tapung, Maryani, Supriatna, 2018).

Social studies teachers should be aware of the changes in the 21^st century and should design instructions to promote living abilities in the 21^st century. For this reason, the development of critical thinking skills in education is becoming more relevant (Pandeeka & Maneekul, 2019). International Journal of Social Sciences: Vol. 9 • No. 4 • December 2020 215

Hence, teachers should be able to meet the mandate of developing critical thinking for learners as a frontier of education (Fuad, Zubaidah, Mahanal, & Suarsini, 2017). Also, each instructor must able to teach students how to collect data, analyze it, screen distractions, and think for themselves. Since critical thinking is so important, some claim that every teacher has the duty to integrate the application of critical thinking into his or her subject area (Kasten, 2017). Furthermore, Habibah, Setyowati & Mustika (2018) discussed on their study, Improving Critical Thinking Skills of Students through the Development of Teaching Materials, that the logical thinking ability of students can be increased by a successful learning process. For that, it is important to package the learning process in such a way that students are actively engaged in the classroom. However, Nelson (2017), on his review of the book The Critical Advantage: Developing Critical Thinking Skills in School, suggests that, at young age, the building of critical thinking skills must begin.

In the study conducted by Wang and Seepho (2017), it is stated that several teaching techniques have been used to facilitate the development of critical thinking abilities, the most important of which are group discussion, concept mapping and critical questioning. Also, Mahanal et al. (2019), on their study entitled RICOSRE: A Learning Model to Develop Critical Thinking Skills for Students with Different Academic Abilities, formulated the learning model of RICOSRE. It is structured to facilitate higher-order thought for students. The RICOSRE syntax consists of reading, identifying a problem, constructing the solution, solving the issue, reviewing the solution, and expanding the solution. Finally, Field trips, extracurricular events, project-based learning, and even use of YouTube in classrooms are all ways to start thinking critically (Nelson, 2017).

On the other contrary, Harshavardhan, D & Kumar (2019) published a study entitled Humour Discourse in Internet Memes: An Aid in ESL Classrooms suggests that teaching needs to be creative in order to be successful in the ever-changing classroom dynamics of the twenty-first century. Members of virtual communities interacting mainly through the digital medium are the youth of the present era. This digital contact has its influence on conventional lectures in the classroom. In addition, based on the study of Purnama (2017) entitled Incorporating Memes and Instagram to Enhance Student’s Participation stated that the teaching and learning of today faces more challenges because technology continues to upgrade itself. Teachers are expected to incorporate as many technology items as possible to facilitate the participation of students in classroom activities. Evidently, Bruyckere, Kirschner & Hulshof (2016) discussed on their article entitled Technology in Education: What Teacher Should Know has confirmed that learning effectiveness is largely measured by the manner in which the medium is used and the consistency of the training that accompanies that use. The choice of medium does not affect learning when media (or multimedia) are used for instruction. For instance, Internet memes have been developed by the newest types of media (Cannizzaro, 2016).

Moreover, Boa Sorte (2019) revealed that Internet memes are massively embedded into the everyday lives of students, and a few taps on the mobile phone screen that can easily access or create them. They are part of digital community in which students are engaged in an inevitable way. Furthermore, Clayton (2019) discussed on her study entitled ‘Meme-orising’ visual literacy in the classroom: Investigating the role of meme in literacy development, memes are pictures containing few words introduces them as acceptable visual texts because the manner in which materials are perceived is questioned. Beyond what has been simply spelled out in words, they involve analysis and interpretation, and the absence of interplay between image and text may challenge…readers as they read…to consider visual texts’ potential for meaning. Also, Internet memes that involve verbal and visual elements play an important role in the autonomous and intrinsic development of meaning. They are also used not only to amuse the reader by humorous messages, but also to express moral messages (Ariyoga & Rahyono, 2020). For example, students find examples of memes that deal with the subject and examine the underlying subtext of each as a way to start exploring the cultural commentary around a topic. This contributes to a rich debate and ties course material to current events (Reyes, Kaeppel & Basayne, 2018). Therefore, the use of memes helps educators to see how students view a specific problem and where they are thinking about it (Navera, Garinto & Valdez, 2019).

In a research journal published by Suseno (2015) his article entitled Building the Digital Learners’ Motivation and Critical Thinking by Using Internet Memes (A Practical Classroom Approach of English Language Learning, he identified pointers for using meme:

When coping with the critical thought of various students, teachers should treat the content of memes differently. It is proposed to use simple pictures and simple words for children or young learners. An important theme for children’s memes is how they feel, what they do every day or about a good/bad habit. For adolescents, the message is best tailored for teenagers to reveal comedy, parody, or current lifestyles or common issues. Meanwhile for adult learners, the material may touch on society’s satires, social protest, cultural issues, political comedy, or other complex problems that happen.

Indeed, Meme’s position in the classroom is not only funny, but also educational (Harshavardhan, D & Kumar, 2019).