Prewriting and 10 tentative sources

The Content of Memes and the Effect of Content on Meme Dissemination

 

Topic: Memes and how content affects how they spread.

Goal: Compare how different content profiles for memes spread

 

Research Questions:

1.     How does the content of a meme affect how fast a meme spreads?

      Content: specifically- text, imagery, meaning, rhetorical value

2.     How does the content of a meme affect how widespread a meme becomes?

 

Type of research to be conducted: Empirical

 

Methods: Quantitative analysis using several constructed memes measuring the instances of each meme’s propagation over a set time periods.

 

 

Aspects I need to understand before getting to original research:

 

What is and isn’t a meme?

            What is a meme? The term meme comes from Richard Dawkins in 1976. Basically, the cultural equivalent of a gene, a small scrap of information that mutates as it reproduces by spreading from person to person over time. For the purposes of this research, it refers to the internet phenomenon only. There are other ways to spread meme material via traditional methods, but those will not be addressed here.

 

The importance of the topic:

            Memes are a social phenomenon, but are also relevant to biology, computer science, systems, and, increasingly, in marketing. Several of my sources work from one of these disciplines. Marketers are strongly interested in memes as a way to rapidly shape impressions of brands and products using virality and fairly low costs for meme generation.

 

Encyclopedia Britannica.

. Can be backed up with Tsur & Rappaport

           

History of memes

            When did memes become a thing? From the 70’s-1990’s. especially along with the internet boom. (Burman, p.97)

 

Main types of memes

            Meme Categories | Know Your Meme

            This isn’t academic, but it is an extremely large database of memes that also groups them category. The list of categories and the number of entered memes in each category gives an indication regarding ubiquity. The site also shows some of the most viewed memes, which can be helpful when doing a comparative analysis of what characteristics make a meme successful

 

Key research on memes as rhetoric

 

Are memes rhetoric?   

     generally, most have some rhetorical value. but in the strict sense of attempting to persuade to do something, there are many memes that are not. If the goal is merely to influence the way someone thinks of a certain thing or situation, then it would seem most are a form of rhetoric. I need to look into this area more. specifically, does having a rhetorical aspect to a meme affect its ability to go viral and if so, how?

Modes of persuasion with respect to memes:

            Logos:

            Pathos: Berger and milkman found that arousing certain emotions in consumers of content such as memes increases chances of going viral. This article is cited by Barnes et al.

            Ethos:

            Kairos:

 

What other relevant work has been done on memes?

 

Key research on the spread of memes

 

Barnes et al, in their Dank Memes paper, conducted a study to measure how content in both text and image affected meme popularity and spread. They did pretty much exactly what I would aim to do, except they limited their sample to reddit.

 

How is the spread of a meme measured?       methodologies

 

What affects meme spread?

Tsur & Rappaport- brevity of meme text strongly affects meme popularity. Font and ease of text reading also. See their other findings for relevant factors.

Burman also mentions the memepool. This also comes from early biological work on a meme, but is informative about the cultural ecosystem and climate in which memes either thrive or die. A cultural virus does seem like an informative way to look at it. Valensise also seems to study it from this perspective, but also while integrating computer methods. I need to reread that one.

Myrick, Nabi & Eng found that cuteness in memes was effective. Also during the pandemic specifically found that memes dealing with stressful current situations can help people emotionally cope with those situations. This might lend credence to the timeliness of memes and the impact of timing on the rate of spread and popularity of memes.

Target audience: 

Berger & Milkman also concluded that specifically crafting memes for virality using social and psychological factors works better than targeting influencers and spreading through them. Extrapolating to a strategy of casting the widest possible net for audience…needs support. Obviously, the wider an audience one tries to create content for, the more obvious and pop and bland that content tends to be, which at some point limits its appeal.

 

How is what I want to do different?

I would want to use what was learned by previous studies in terms of content factors and locations to create experimental memes attempting to maximize the spread across reddit as well as social media etc., tracking propagation as well as time required to reach that level of propagation. Also, I believe the Barnes study was conducted during the pandemic as well, when more people were at home and there was greater time to consume and create memes. Unless such conditions soon become “the new normal,” such conditions should be considered abnormal, and observations and behaviors may be significantly different under more “normal” conditions. 

Tentative 10 Sources

Barnes, K., Riesenmy, T., Trinh, M. D., Lleshi, E., Balogh, N., & Molontay, R. (2021). Dank or not? Analyzing and predicting the popularity of memes on Reddit. Applied Network Science, 6(1), NA. https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A654364898/AONE?u=dixiesta&sid=bookmark-AONE&xid=37e200d0

 

Berger, J., & Milkman, K. L. (2012). What Makes Online Content Viral?? Journal of Marketing Research (JMR), 49(2), 192–205. https://doi.org/10.1509/jmr.10.0353

 

Burman, J. T. (2012). The misunderstanding of memes: Biography of an unscientific object, 1976-1999. Perspectives on Science, 20(1), 75. https://doi.org/10.1162/POSC_a_00057

 

Jones, M., Beveridge, A., Garrison, J. R., Greene, A., & MacDonald, H. (2022). Tracking memes in the wild: Visual rhetoric and image circulation in environmental communication. Frontiers in Communication, 7. https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2022.883278

 

Meme Categories. (n.d.). Know Your Meme. Retrieved September 14, 2022, from https://knowyourmeme.com/categories

 

Muthukumar, S., Muthukrishnan, S., & Chinnadurai, V. (2019). Dynamic behaviour of competing memes’ spread with alert influence in multiplex social-networks. Computing, 101(8), 1177–1197. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00607-018-0667-9

 

Myrick, J. G., Nabi, R. L., & Eng, N. J. (2022). Consuming memes during the COVID pandemic: Effects of memes and meme type on COVID-related stress and coping efficacy. Psychology of Popular Media, 11(3), 316–323. https://doi.org/10.1037/ppm0000371

 

Rogers, K. (2021, July 19). meme. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/meme

 

Tsur, O., & Rappoport, A. (2021). Don’t Let Me Be #Misunderstood: Linguistically Motivated Algorithm for Predicting the Popularity of Textual Memes. Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media, 9(1), 426-435. Retrieved from https://ojs.aaai.org/index.php/ICWSM/article/view/14603

 

Valensise, C. M., Serra, A., Galeazzi, A., Etta, G., Cinelli, M., & Quattrociocchi, W. (2021). Entropy and complexity unveil the landscape of memes evolution. Scientific Reports, 11(1), 20022. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-99468-6

 

 

 *I'm still working on my prewriting, and I will probably use many more sources by the time I'm done. This is turning out to be a complex topic.