Strengthening the brand new sample
The sample is based on fifty categories of preferred memes, most of which incorporated a starting meme such as and you may 20 some other types (including, the first “Charlie Piece My Little finger” videos and you will 20 imitations/remixes from the video). Preferably, a full test do comprise 1050 meme instances (50 group X 21 period), but not, because specific meme family members did not have a releasing meme instance (e.grams. “Facepalm,” “Lolcats”), our very own latest take to contained 1013 units for analysis. Identifying the most common meme household is probably an impossible task as a result of the vibrant character from memes and the various methods having contrasting the prominence (evaluate counts, likes/ballots, quantity of derivations, number of states searching overall performance, and stuff like that); yet not, i recommend here an organized techniques to recognize quite popular meme family members considering a variety of academic and you will internet-centered present.
Basic, with the aid of the KnowYourMeme databases (get a hold of together with Phillips, 2012 ; Shifman, 2013 a good, 2013 b), we built a list of 1168 approved meme household. To filter brand new fifty hottest of those, i triangulated lists of preferred memes searching in instructional documentation (Bauckhage, 2011 ; Knobel & Lankshear, 2007 ; Shifman, 2012 , 2013 b) making use of their google dominance. and Bing (to the legitimacy and you will reliability of this strategy select and additionally ).
Whenever a great meme had multiple you can easily headings, such as “Charlie Portion Me personally” and you may “Charlie Bit My personal Hand – Again!,” we searched for the brand new label you to definitely produced the best level of listings and then have appeared in the best level of instructional supply. I ranked the fresh meme parents predicated on its internet search engine popularity while the number of academic present you to approved them. Out from the fifty meme parents, forty have been picked using this method. In the long run, since educational supply indexed simply memes until 2010, so you’re able to are more recent memes, i additional ten most common memes adopting the the same processes, however, as opposed to triangulating the knowledge having academic supply.
We made use of a mixture of several popular meme-oriented social media other sites (Reddit and you can Tumblr), to help you to track down 20 more cases of all the fifty meme parents. I made use of the titles of fifty selected memes (e.grams., “Charlie Bit Me”) since the search question Internet throughout these social media sites. In the place of medium-specific google such YouTube, this technique enabled us to choose a combination of prominent video, photos, and text message models of your own meme family members. These sites and enabled sorting according to the inner ranks options: Getting reddit, i utilized the vote rating, figuring the difference between confident (upvotes) and you can bad (downvotes) opinions; to own Tumblr, we accumulated the number of “likes” and you will “reblogs” (shares) a circulation gotten. Adopting the inner positions options, the new 20 most widely used instances of for every single meme was basically tested, typically playing with fifteen out of reddit and you may 5 from Tumblr, just like the previous is actually found to be a very legitimate and prolific resource. This procedure is actually selected so you can better reflect the cumulative opinion and taste of one’s profiles just like the expressed from the productive voting otherwise discussing, seeking to locate the most accepted meaning that very representative days of each meme family relations. Since in depth lower than, which shot try exposed to both stuff and you may system analyses.
Content studies
Brand new hit try try learnt using decimal posts studies. The original stage away from coding concerned about identifying the particular quiddities inside for every single meme nearest and dearest. For every single meme such as for example, new programmers indexed the main possess one to stayed from the totally new meme or was generally speaking mutual by the most other cases of the same friends (instance, a main profile, a specific statement, or an object). A great grounded, qualitative research one used this initial phase produced four categories of quiddities, hence accounted for the instances i checked: target, step, specific character, universal reputation (elizabeth.g. “child” or “cat”), and words. The entire corpus ended up being re also-analyzed quantitatively, with respect to the five kinds: For each and every meme such as for instance try coded from the a couple coders in order to have you to or even more of five quiddity products. At this stage, a keen intercoder precision test was presented (discover below).