Our grounded studies understood five fundamental categories of meme quiddities you to definitely joined days into same members of the family: Object, specific character, universal profile, action, and you will words. Pursuing the difference in tangible graphic quiddities and abstract textual of these (Lewis, 2012 ; Spitzberg, 2014 ), we developed a measurement getting quiddity concreteness. The first several groups-items (such as for instance Mentos within the “Diet plan Mentos”) and particular letters (such Bert in “Bert is actually Worst”)-try extremely noticeable and you can real. Simple emails (including the certain kittens inside the “LOLcats”) and you will measures (like the moving actions during the “The newest Development regarding Dance”) remain apparent, however their symptom you may go from one such as for instance to some other. Eventually, in the place of visible things, sentences will be minimum real and/or very abstract of all the groups. After that department, i counted the brand new portion of period from inside the each relatives one to consisted of has off all the groups. Per meme instance in the children was required to contain at the least one type of quiddity. The newest quiddity concreteness level is actually gotten for every single meme family unit members based with the weighted many the five-quiddity teams: object and you can specific character (1), simple profile and you may tips (0), and phrase (?1).
Quiddity types
When you look at the RQ1 we questioned exactly what are the prevalent type of quiddities you to definitely join meme group along with her. The data showed that action is among the most frequently used quiddity from the test (42.2% regarding meme period), followed by phrase (38.5%). Specific reputation (29%) and you may target (23%) have been less common, with universal profile (15.7%) at the rear of at the rear of. You will need to remember that the conclusions reveal that the latest fundamental quiddity is largely different from brand new generic qualities appearing during the the codebook for some meme family. In fact, into the 90% of one’s meme household, the newest quiddity is actually specific and therefore wasn’t as part of the general qualities. Such as, in the “Celebrity Conflicts Child” household members, the latest operate from assaulting that have laserlight swords is actually a highly particular quiddity, and thus cannot become caught by the simple options that come with brand new codebook.
During the RQ2 we questioned and that templates, variations, and you can participation structures is commonplace (and limited) in the modern web sites memes. I learned that popular people (twenty-six.5%), restaurants (19.1%) and you can the new media (sixteen.3%) were the most common subject areas; nationality (dos.6%), latest events (3.2%), and you will work and work (step three.3%) was the least common topics. When it comes to sex, men players (59.4%) was basically represented two times as often as the female people (twenty-seven.3%). Youngsters and you can young adults (38.7%) featured really, when you are elder players was at least represented (5.6%) with respect to age group. Caucasian professionals (44.5%) was in fact by far the most depicted ethnic class, when you find yourself Hispanic otherwise Latino participants at least (0.2%). Ultimately, with respect to function, extremely period was basically photographs (56%) otherwise videos (42.6%) instead of pure textual memes (1%). Typically, this type of findings validate many observations built in the newest qualitative knowledge described a lot more than, where in fact the memetic fields was known as reigned over because of the younger, white boys. When it comes to templates, media-founded playfulness seems to have been far more tall than simply engagement which have politics. Therefore predicated on descriptive analytics at the least, government is pretty limited in the memetic industries. Yet, as the unfolded less than, community data will tell all of us a more complex story.
The latest cohesiveness out-of universal qualities in meme group
Because the outlined above, among seeks of the investigation would be to look at the brand new the total amount regarding cohesiveness from meme household when it comes to their generic features (RQ3). Contour 2 reveals the fresh network out of memes revealing similar content features. Which will make the latest graphic analysis better, we inform you here simply five meme families one to express a few otherwise alot more characteristics. How big is 
brand new node means the network studies, put another way, how many other meme era they offers articles qualities having. Such as for instance, the initial meme from “Exit Britney By yourself” is the largest node, discussing no less than a couple of stuff qualities with 56 (away from 83) other meme occasions. “Graffiti” and you will “Birmingham” are one another cases of the new “Pepper Jet Policeman” meme loved ones. They are the littlest nodes throughout the circle, revealing one or two blogs functions having a few almost every other meme hours. This new thickness of your wrap means the amount of common properties. Such as for example, the fresh ties anywhere between instances of the latest “Hop out Britney Alone” are particularly thick, for example he’s much like both with regards to out-of posts. The original meme and its period express to nine (from 16) blogs characteristics collectively.