Building the brand new try

The take to is dependent on 50 categories of prominent memes, most of which integrated a starting meme eg and 20 additional versions (including, the initial “Charlie Portion My personal Finger” movies and you will 20 imitations/remixes of clip). Preferably, the full test create had been 1050 meme hours (50 family X 21 occasions), not, once the particular meme household didn’t have an opening meme particularly (age.g. “Facepalm,” “Lolcats”), our very own final test consisted of 1013 products getting study. Determining the most popular meme group is probably an impossible task as a result of the active nature off memes and also the different methods for researching their popularity (take a look at matters, likes/votes, level of derivations, amount of says searching show, and the like); but not, i suggest here an organized process to recognize very popular meme parents centered on a mixture of educational and you may web-based provide.

Earliest, with the help of the newest KnowYourMeme databases (come across plus Phillips, 2012 ; Shifman, 2013 an effective, 2013 b), i created a list of 1168 recognized meme household. In order to filter out the newest 50 most well known of these, i triangulated directories of well-known memes searching during the instructional papers (Bauckhage, 2011 ; Knobel & Lankshear, 2007 ; Shifman, 2012 , 2013 b) with the online search engine popularity. and Bing (on the validity and you can precision of this method discover including ).

Whenever a great meme had numerous you can easily titles, eg “Charlie Section Me personally” and you will “Charlie Part My Thumb – Again!,” i wanted the brand new identity one produced the greatest level of google search results as well as have starred in the greatest amount of informative offer. We rated the newest meme group centered on the search dominance additionally the number of academic sources that acknowledged her or him. Out from the 50 meme family, 40 was in fact selected this way. Eventually, since informative supply listed merely memes until 2010, so you can tend to be new memes, we additional 10 additional popular memes following an equivalent process, but without triangulating the info that have educational supplies.

We made use of a mix of several prominent meme-centered social network websites (Reddit and you can Tumblr), to help you to acquire 20 different instances of each one of the 50 meme family. I made use of the headings of your own fifty chosen memes (age.g., “Charlie Bit Me”) since the search inquiries within these social media sites. Rather than average-particular google instance YouTube, this procedure enabled me to identify a combination of prominent movies, pictures, and you may text message brands of one’s meme household. These sites plus enabled sorting centered on their inner ranks possibilities: To have reddit, i utilized the choose rating, calculating the essential difference between positive (upvotes) and you will bad (downvotes) opinions; getting Tumblr, i accumulated the number of “likes” and you will “reblogs” (shares) a distribution gotten. Pursuing the inner ranks possibilities, new 20 most widely used cases of for each meme was indeed sampled, generally speaking playing with fifteen out-of reddit and you can 5 from Tumblr, as the previous is actually discovered to be a more reputable and you will respected provider. This process was selected so you can best echo the fresh cumulative view and you may taste of profiles because expressed of the effective voting otherwise sharing, seeking to place the most popular and therefore extremely user occasions of each and every meme family relations. Given that in depth less than, that it sample are subjected to one another blogs and circle analyses.

Posts analysis

New reached attempt is read playing with quantitative posts analysis. The original stage from programming focused on identifying the quiddities for the for every meme family relations. For each meme including, this new programmers listed a portion of the have you to definitely stayed throughout the brand-new meme or was in fact generally speaking mutual from Chinese Sites dating services the almost every other instances of the same household members (such, a main profile, a certain statement, otherwise an item). Good grounded, qualitative study you to followed so it initial phase yielded five categories of quiddities, which accounted for the circumstances we tested: object, step, certain profile, general profile (e.g. “child” or “cat”), and terms. The complete corpus was then re-examined quantitatively, according to the four kinds: For every single meme including is actually coded by a couple programmers in order to have that or more of one’s four quiddity brands. At this stage, an intercoder precision test try conducted (come across below).