On the second, we determined the average quantity of search results for every single meme friends for the Bing!

Building the newest decide to try

All of our decide to try will be based upon fifty categories of prominent memes, most of which provided an introducing meme such as and you can 20 different versions (for-instance, the first “Charlie Bit My Fist” video and you can 20 imitations/remixes of clip). Essentially, an entire take to create happened to be 1050 meme occasions (50 family X 21 occasions), although not, because the certain meme families didn’t have an introducing meme eg (e.g. «Facepalm,» «Lolcats»), the latest shot contained 1013 gadgets to possess study. Identifying widely known meme parents is probably an impossible task because of the active nature out-of memes additionally the different ways to own contrasting the popularity (consider matters, likes/ballots, number of derivations, level of says browsing overall performance, and the like); however, we suggest right here an organized processes to recognize very popular meme parents predicated on a mix of instructional and you may online-situated sources.

Earliest, with the KnowYourMeme database (see plus Phillips, 2012 ; Shifman, 2013 a great, 2013 b), we constructed a summary of 1168 accepted meme group. In order to filter out new fifty preferred of these, we triangulated listings of most well-known memes searching in the academic documentation (Bauckhage, 2011 ; Knobel & Lankshear, 2007 ; Shifman, 2012 , 2013 b) due to their search engines like google prominence. and you may Bing (for the legitimacy and you may precision of the approach find plus ).

When an excellent meme had multiple you are able to titles, like “Charlie Portion Myself” and you can “Charlie Part My Finger – Once more!,” we searched for the newest title one produced the greatest amount of google search results and just have appeared in the best quantity of academic supply. We ranked the meme families predicated on the website prominence and amount of educational supply you to definitely approved him or her. From the fifty meme families, 40 have been selected this way. Ultimately, because educational provide listed merely memes up until 2010, so you’re able to were new memes, we extra ten a lot more common memes adopting the a similar processes, however, without triangulating the content with academic supplies.

I utilized a mixture of a couple of preferred meme-centered social media other sites (Reddit and you may

Tumblr), to to obtain 20 some other instances of all the 50 meme household. I made use of the titles of one’s fifty chosen memes (elizabeth.grams., “Charlie Section Me personally”) since look questions within these social media sites. Unlike medium-specific online search engine such as for instance YouTube, this method permitted me to select a mix of preferred clips, photos, and text versions of the meme household. The web sites along with allowed sorting predicated on their inner ranking assistance: For reddit, we used https://datingranking.net/it/siti-di-incontri-cinesi/ the choose score, calculating the difference between self-confident (upvotes) and you can negative (downvotes) opinions; to have Tumblr, we collected what amount of «likes» and you can «reblogs» (shares) a submission received. Pursuing the inner ranking options, brand new 20 most popular instances of for each meme were tested, usually playing with fifteen away from reddit and 5 away from Tumblr, given that former are seen to be a far more reputable and you can respected supply. This technique is picked in order to better mirror the newest collective thoughts and you may taste of your users while the conveyed because of the effective voting otherwise revealing, seeking to discover the most accepted which means that really representative instances of each meme loved ones. As outlined lower than, which decide to try is exposed to both stuff and you will network analyses.

Stuff data

The fresh new hit decide to try was read playing with quantitative posts analysis. The initial stage out of programming concerned about distinguishing this quiddities from inside the for each meme family relations. For each and every meme eg, the brand new coders detailed part of the features one remained on completely new meme or was in fact generally shared by the almost every other cases of an identical members of the family (such, a central reputation, a certain words, otherwise an item). An effective rooted, qualitative data you to then followed it early stage yielded five categories of quiddities, which accounted for most of the circumstances we checked out: object, step, specific profile, generic profile (elizabeth.g. “child” or “cat”), and you may terminology. The complete corpus ended up being lso are-analyzed quantitatively, with respect to the four classes: For each and every meme such is coded by a couple of programmers in order to have one or higher of four quiddity models. During this period, an enthusiastic intercoder precision test was held (select below).