Our very own grounded investigation recognized five chief categories of meme quiddities you to definitely joined days on the exact same household members: Target, specific reputation, simple character, action, and you will keywords. Pursuing the distinction between real visual quiddities and you will conceptual textual of them (Lewis, 2012 ; Spitzberg, 2014 ), we constructed a measurement getting quiddity concreteness. The first two classes-things (such as Mentos for the “Diet plan Mentos”) and you will certain characters (for example Bert when you look at the “Bert is Evil”)-are very noticeable and concrete. Generic letters (like the various cats in the “LOLcats”) and you will methods (such as the dancing motions inside “New Development away from Moving”) are nevertheless visible, but their manifestation you are going to go from one to for example to a different. Eventually, in the place of noticeable things, phrases is the minimum concrete and/or most conceptual of all of the kinds. Next division, we mentioned the latest portion of hours in the per friends that consisted of provides off each of the classes. For every single meme such in a family had to include at least one kind of quiddity. The brand new quiddity concreteness height was acquired for each and every meme family members established with the weighted an incredible number of the 5-quiddity teams: target and you may particular reputation (1), general reputation and procedures (0), and terms (?1).
Quiddity designs
In RQ1 i questioned exactly what are the prevalent kind of quiddities you to definitely join meme parents along with her. Our very own analysis showed that step is one of frequently employed quiddity regarding the try (42.2% from meme hours), with terminology (38.5%). Particular profile (29%) and you can target (23%) have been less frequent, with common profile (fifteen.7%) at the rear of at the rear of. You should note that our very own findings reveal that the fresh new chief quiddity was mainly different from the simple functions lookin when you look at the this new codebook for many meme household. Indeed, during the 90% of your own meme parents, the fresh new quiddity are specific and therefore wasn’t as part of the generic properties. Eg, about “Celebrity Wars Boy” household members, the newest work regarding assaulting with laser beam swords try a highly specific quiddity, which means that could not feel captured because of the universal options that come with the newest codebook.
During the RQ2 we questioned and this themes, variations, and contribution structures are commonplace (and marginal) during the latest internet sites memes. We found that preferred people (26.5%), eating (19.1%) and you will the fresh new news (16.3%) was indeed the most popular subjects; nationality (2.6%), current occurrences (3.2%), and you may work and you will a career (step 3.3%) was in fact minimum of prominent topics. With respect to gender, male professionals (59.4%) were illustrated twice more frequently while the ladies players (twenty-seven.3%). Family and you may young people (38.7%) looked most, when https://datingranking.net/filipino-dating/ you are senior people was in fact the least illustrated (5.6%) regarding age group. Caucasian players (49.5%) were many illustrated cultural class, when you find yourself Latina or Latino participants at least (0.2%). Ultimately, in terms of function, very days were images (56%) otherwise films (42.6%) instead of sheer textual memes (1%). As a whole, these conclusions corroborate certain findings made in new qualitative studies revealed above, in which the memetic industries are described as dominated by young, white males. When it comes to themes, media-dependent playfulness seemingly have come significantly more significant than simply engagement that have government. Thus centered on descriptive statistics at least, politics is rather limited about memetic industries. Yet, since unfolded lower than, community data will inform united states a more cutting-edge story.
The brand new cohesiveness off generic attributes in meme family
As the in depth significantly more than, among the aims regarding the studies would be to evaluate the latest the quantity off cohesiveness out of meme family when it comes to the general services (RQ3). Figure dos suggests the newest network of memes revealing comparable articles features. Which will make the newest visual data better, i tell you right here only four meme household you to display a few otherwise a lot more features. The dimensions of the brand new node signifies the system knowledge, this means that, how many other meme era it offers articles characteristics which have. Like, the original meme off “Get off Britney By yourself” is the biggest node, discussing about a couple content features with 56 (out of 83) other meme instances. “Graffiti” and you may “Birmingham” try both instances of the newest “Pepper Spray Cop” meme loved ones. They are the tiniest nodes about circle, discussing several articles attributes which have a few almost every other meme period. The new thickness of your link represents what number of mutual qualities. Including, the brand new links between instances of the fresh “Hop out Britney Alone” have become thick, meaning that he’s nearly the same as one another with regards to regarding posts. The initial meme and its own times express to nine (from 16) blogs functions collectively.
