Building new shot
The shot lies in fifty families of common memes, most of which included an introducing meme eg and you will 20 some other products (for-instance, the original “Charlie Bit My Hand” movies and you can 20 imitations/remixes of this clip). Preferably, the full try manage comprise 1050 meme instances (50 group X 21 era), but not, once the certain meme family did not have a launching meme like (age.grams. “Facepalm,” “Lolcats”), our final attempt contained 1013 units to have analysis. Identifying the best meme group could very well be a hopeless task considering the active nature away from memes plus the different methods to own researching the prominence (have a look at counts, likes/votes, number of derivations, level of mentions browsing overall performance, and stuff like that); yet not, we strongly recommend right here a structured procedure to understand quite popular meme family centered on a variety of academic and web-dependent source.
Earliest, with the help of the new KnowYourMeme databases (see along with Phillips, 2012 ; Shifman, 2013 a good, 2013 b), i constructed a listing of 1168 approved meme family members. To help you filter out the brand new 50 top of them, we triangulated listings of most well-known memes lookin in the academic documents (Bauckhage, 2011 ; Knobel & Lankshear, 2007 ; Shifman, 2012 , 2013 b) due to their online search engine dominance. and Bing (on legitimacy and you can reliability on the means pick along with ).
When a meme got numerous you’ll be able to titles, including “Charlie Bit Myself” and you will “Charlie Section My Hand – Once more!,” i sought after the new name that yielded the highest number of search results and just have appeared in the highest quantity of informative source. I rated the meme group based on their 
website popularity while the number of informative provide one to approved her or him. From the fifty meme parents, 40 had been selected using this method. In the end, just like the informative sources indexed merely memes until 2010, so you’re able to were new memes, i added 10 more popular memes following a comparable procedure, however, without triangulating the knowledge with academic supply.
We used a variety of one or two well-known meme-based social network other sites (Reddit and Tumblr), in order to locate 20 more instances of each of the 50 meme household. I made use of the headings of the fifty selected memes (e.g., “Charlie Piece Myself”) since the research requests throughout these social media sites. As opposed to average-specific search engines like google like YouTube, this technique allowed me to choose a combination of preferred video clips, photo, and you can text message brands of the meme families. Those sites plus enabled sorting considering its interior ranking solutions: For reddit, we utilized the choose score, calculating the difference between positive (upvotes) and negative (downvotes) opinions; to have Tumblr, we gathered just how many “likes” and you can “reblogs” (shares) a distribution received. Following inner positions options, the newest 20 most popular cases of for every single meme had been tested, generally speaking playing with fifteen from reddit and you will 5 regarding Tumblr, because former try seen to be an even more reliable and you can prolific supply. This method try picked in order to greatest echo the fresh new collective viewpoint and you may preference of the pages once the indicated of the effective voting or sharing, looking to find the most preferred and therefore extremely member hours of every meme household members. Since in depth less than, it decide to try was confronted with one another content and you can circle analyses.
Posts study
This new reached shot was read having fun with decimal stuff studies. The initial stage out-of programming worried about identifying this quiddities inside per meme loved ones. For every meme such as for instance, the brand new coders noted the main possess that stayed throughout the completely new meme otherwise was generally shared by most other cases of an equivalent nearest and dearest (including, a main profile, a specific phrase, otherwise an object). A beneficial grounded, qualitative studies one adopted so it early stage produced four types of quiddities, hence taken into account all cases we tested: object, step, certain character, simple reputation (elizabeth.g. “child” or “cat”), and you will phrase. The complete corpus ended up being re also-examined quantitatively, according to the five kinds: For every single meme eg is actually coded by the a couple coders in order to have you to definitely or more of one’s five quiddity brands. At this time, a keen intercoder precision try are used (look for less than).