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The expression ‘Fake News’ inside Internet memes engenders significant online virulence, possibly heralding an iconoclastic emergence of weaponized propaganda for assaulting agencies reared on public trust. Internet memes are multimodal artifacts featuring ideological singularities designed for ‘flash’ consumption, often composed by numerous voices echoing popular, online culture. This study proposes that ‘Fake News’ Internet memes are weaponized iconoclastic multimodal propaganda (WIMP) discourse and attempts to delineate them as such by asking: What power relations and ideologies do Internet memes featuring the expression ‘fake news’ harbor? How might those manifestations qualify as WIMP discourse? A multimodal critical discourse analysis of a small pool of ‘fake news’ Internet memes drawn from four popular social media websites revealed what agencies were often targeted and from what political canons they likely emerged. Findings indicate that many Internet memes featuring ‘fake news’ are specifically directed, revealing an underlying hazard that WIMP discourse could diminish democratic processes while influencing online trajectories of public discourse.

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University English as a foreign language (EFL) programs in expanding circle communities often pressure instructors and students to use globally published EFL textbooks for reasons more socio-political than pedagogical. While some critical studies underscore multimodal discourse to be an under-appreciated source of dominant social narratives in EFL textbooks, few have investigated their live negotiation in classrooms. To address the challenges negotiating potentially harmful social narratives in EFL textbooks, the present study proposes a two-step model for achieving a zone of prioritized curricularivity (ZPC). The model informs reflexive teaching practice in EFL instruction because it necessitates an understanding of a) the curricular commonplaces of a particular EFL program and b) the power and ideologies in the multimodal discourse of their textbooks, to mitigate perceived social injustices in the textbook lessons as they are negotiated “in situ.” Demonstrated in vignettes, featuring two EFL courses at Chung-Buk National University in Cheong Ju city, Korea, two instructors used the ZPC framework to inform their reconstruction of multimodal discourses in their EFL textbooks to inculcate student involvement and participation. A novel, multimodal interactional analysis of video recordings looked at proxemics, gaze, spoken language, head movement, auditory emphasis, and gesture and discovered that each instructor recontextualized, neutralized, or skipped much of the multimodal discourse in the lessons. The findings suggest that a ZPC is achieved when the efforts by instructors to recontextualize textbook lessons in situ is met with positive feedback from students in the classroom – noted as heightened attentiveness, happy or cheerful participation, and enthusiastic discussion. The implications suggest a ZPC can help instructors and students and in EFL programs in any expanding circle culture because it can simultaneously improve student learning/acquisition in the classroom, diminish dominant, culturally marginalizing textbook content, while raising the value of student investment in EFL learning.

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To maximize the advantages of virtual learning, the present study highlights the potential for Internet meme design and creation in English language learning (ELL) courses as an innovative activity that raises student agency, increases multimodal literacy, inculcates intercultural communication, and teaches idiomatic expression. Memes resonate a multimodal feedback loop of popular culture. In the context of language education, multimodal literacy is a necessity for 21st-century education because the affordances of digital learning platforms present the world told alongside the world shown. While some studies feature the usefulness of memes in English as a foreign language (EFL) learning, none have underscored meme creation as a learning activity. To demonstrate the activity in situ, a vignette at two Korean universities features two instructors who ask their respective students ( N = 49) to design one meme using an idiom discovered in their ELL materials from a prescribed list, then asks: 1) What common power relations and ideologies emerge in the multimodal discourse of the collected pool of student “idiomemes”? 2) What do the findings tell us about student attitudes and engagement with the activity? 3) What do the findings tell us about the importance of multimodal discourse in EFL learning? Using a multimodal critical discourse analysis of the student-created Internet memes, the findings reveal that students chose culturally familiar images to complete the assignment, suggesting that their engagement and understanding of multimodal, English discourse increases commensurately with content intuitive to their culture. The implications suggest that empowering students with a measure of agency in expressing culturally relevant, multimodal discourse in ELL course content increases their engagement in virtual classrooms. Designing idiomemes, as a virtual learning activity, is further explored as a curricular augmentation that increases the value of a student's language-learning investment.