Be Cautious with Meme playing The Boundary of Online Defamation

Against the backdrop of the growing popularity of online social interaction, meme playing has emerged as a prevalent online behavior, and the issue of its boundary with online defamation has gradually become prominent. This study focuses on the youth group as the main research object. By collecting typical cases from 2021 to 2023, conducting a questionnaire survey among young people aged 18 22, and combining interdisciplinary analysis from linguistics and law, it explores the boundary between meme playing and online defamation. The research finds that the youth group has a certain awareness of meme playing behaviors that obviously cross the line. However, due to factors such as group conformity, there are still cases where they participate in such behaviors even though they know it may be an infringement. The boundary of meme playing is not only related to legal provisions but also closely linked to factors such as social psychology, the intimacy of social relationships, the degree of public exposure of the occasion, and technological development. This study aims to clarify the boundary of meme playing and provide theoretical and practical references for guiding the youth group to standardize their online behaviors and maintain the order of the online space. Hou Rudan "Be Cautious with "Meme-playing": The Boundary of Online Defamation" Published in International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development (ijtsrd), ISSN: 2456-6470, Volume-9 | Issue-5 , October 2025, URL: https://www.ijtsrd.com/papers/ijtsrd97474.pdf Paper URL: https://www.ijtsrd.com/humanities-and-the-arts/other/97474/be-cautious-with-memeplaying-the-boundary-of-online-defamation/hou-rudan