Creativity in restriction Memes, templates and participatory culture

Internet memes are one of the most characteristic participatory communicative forms of the web 2.0. In order to be humorous but also to express feelings, ideas and opinions in creative and easily understandable ways, users create memes based in preexisting formats usually named templates. In this paper we analyze the use of templates in memes from both an empirical and a theoretical perspective and also other ways in which memes are semiotically structured by preexisting forms.