The grounded investigation known five fundamental categories of meme quiddities one to united times on the same family members: Object, certain character, common profile, action, and you will statement. Pursuing the distinction between concrete visual quiddities and you will conceptual textual ones (Lewis, 2012 ; Spitzberg, 2014 ), i constructed a description to have quiddity concreteness. The first two categories-items (particularly Mentos within the “Diet plan Mentos”) and you can certain letters (such as for instance Bert in the “Bert is actually Worst”)-is highly obvious and you can tangible. Universal emails (such as the certain kittens in the “LOLcats”) and strategies (for instance the dancing moves inside the “The newest Evolution out of Dance”) are obvious, but their manifestation you can expect to go from one to instance to another. Fundamentally, in the place of apparent objects, sentences could be the least concrete or even the really abstract of the many classes. Following this section, we measured the percentage of times from inside the per family relations you to consisted of have regarding all the categories. Each meme including inside a family group needed to include at least one type of quiddity. The fresh new quiddity concreteness peak are gotten for each meme household members situated on adjusted many the 5-quiddity groups: object and specific character (1), universal character and you will measures (0), and words (?1).

Quiddity systems

Into the RQ1 we asked do you know the prevailing brand of quiddities https://datingranking.net/dating/ you to bind meme families together with her. All of our research indicated that step is considered the most frequently employed quiddity throughout the test (42.2% away from meme days), accompanied by terminology (38.5%). Certain character (29%) and you can object (23%) was basically less common, having general reputation (15.7%) trailing trailing. It is vital to keep in mind that our findings reveal that brand new main quiddity try largely unlike brand new simple properties appearing into the new codebook for the majority of meme families. Actually, into the ninety% of meme parents, the fresh new quiddity try certain which means that wasn’t included in the general features. For example, throughout the “Celebrity Wars Child” family unit members, the latest work away from assaulting having laserlight swords was an extremely specific quiddity, which means that couldn’t end up being captured of the common attributes of the latest codebook.

From inside the RQ2 i expected and therefore layouts, forms, and you may involvement structures was prevalent (and you may marginal) when you look at the contemporary internet sites memes. I unearthed that prominent society (twenty-six.5%), food (19.1%) and you will brand new mass media (16.3%) was basically the most popular information; nationality (dos.6%), most recent occurrences (step three.2%), and you will works and you can a job (step 3.3%) was in fact at least preferred subject areas. With respect to gender, male users (59.4%) had been portrayed two times as often since women users (27.3%). Teenagers and you may young people (38.7%) checked very, whenever you are elder players was basically the least represented (5.6%) regarding age group. Caucasian professionals (44.5%) was in fact more illustrated ethnic category, when you are Latina or Latino users the least (0.2%). Fundamentally, with respect to function, really instances were pictures (56%) or films (42.6%) in lieu of absolute textual memes (1%). Overall, such conclusions corroborate a number of the findings made in the brand new qualitative training explained above, where in actuality the memetic sphere try called reigned over by the more youthful, light males. With regards to templates, media-dependent playfulness seems to have been more tall than just engagement that have politics. Very considering descriptive statistics at least, government is pretty limited in the memetic sphere. But really, due to the fact unfolded less than, network research will state you a very complex facts.

This new cohesiveness from universal features into the meme family

Just like the detailed more than, among the tries with the investigation would be to consider the fresh the quantity off cohesiveness from meme parents in terms of its general features (RQ3). Profile 2 shows brand new network of memes revealing similar blogs qualities. To help make the fresh artwork data clearer, i show right here simply five meme families you to show one or two or a whole lot more services. The size of this new node means its community studies, simply put, the other meme occasions it offers posts attributes which have. Including, the original meme away from “Hop out Britney By yourself” ‘s the biggest node, discussing at least a couple content services which have 56 (of 83) most other meme occasions. “Graffiti” and “Birmingham” was each other instances of the latest “Pepper Sprinkle Cop” meme friends. These represent the littlest nodes regarding system, revealing a couple of posts attributes that have one or two most other meme hours. The new width of one’s tie stands for just how many common characteristics. Such as for instance, the newest connections ranging from instances of brand new “Log off Britney By yourself” are particularly dense, and thus he could be very similar to both with regards to from stuff. The original meme and its circumstances express doing 9 (off 16) articles functions with each other.