Building the newest shot
The decide to try will be based upon fifty groups of well-known memes, many of which included an introducing meme eg and you will 20 some other types (for example, the initial “Charlie Portion My Thumb” video and 20 imitations/remixes associated with the video). Ideally, a full decide to try carry out were 1050 meme days (fifty families X 21 circumstances), yet not, due to the fact specific meme parents didn’t have a starting meme like (age.grams. “Facepalm,” “Lolcats”), our very own finally sample consisted of 1013 gadgets getting studies. Determining the most popular meme group is perhaps an impossible task due to the dynamic character regarding memes while the different methods getting evaluating its prominence (examine counts, likes/ballots, quantity of derivations, quantity of states browsing efficiency, and stuff like that); however, we highly recommend here a structured processes to spot well-accepted meme parents considering a mix of academic and you will internet-oriented provide.
First, with the help of brand new KnowYourMeme databases (discover and additionally Phillips, 2012 ; Shifman, 2013 an excellent, 2013 b), we created a listing of 1168 acknowledged meme parents. So you can filter the fresh fifty preferred ones, we triangulated directories of all prominent memes searching when you look at the educational records (Bauckhage, 2011 ; Knobel & Lankshear, 2007 ; Shifman, 2012 , 2013 b) with their se’s popularity. and Bing (into the legitimacy and you may precision for the means discover in addition to ).
Whenever an excellent meme had multiple it is possible to titles, particularly “Charlie Portion Myself” and you can “Charlie Section My Hand – Again!,” we sought out the fresh identity you to produced the best quantity of listings and also appeared in the highest level of instructional offer. I rated the latest meme household according to its search popularity additionally the amount of instructional offer one accepted her or him. Outside of the 50 meme group, 40 had been chosen by doing this. Eventually, given that informative present noted only memes up to 2010, in order to are more recent memes, we added ten most well-known memes following the the same process, however, instead of triangulating the details with educational offer.
I made use of a mixture of a couple preferred meme-depending social networking websites (Reddit and you can Tumblr), to to track down 20 different cases of each one of the fifty meme group. I utilized the titles of the 50 selected memes (elizabeth.grams., “Charlie 
Part Me personally”) because search concerns during these social networking sites. In place of medium-certain google for example YouTube, this procedure permitted me to pick a mix of prominent movies, pictures, and you can text brands of your own meme parents. The websites and additionally let sorting predicated on the interior positions solutions: For reddit, we used the vote score, figuring the essential difference between self-confident (upvotes) and you will bad (downvotes) opinions; getting Tumblr, i built-up exactly how many “likes” and you can “reblogs” (shares) a circulation gotten. Following the interior ranks systems, this new 20 preferred instances of per meme were sampled, typically using fifteen out-of reddit and you can 5 regarding Tumblr, because the previous are seen to be an even more credible and respected origin. This procedure are picked to help you best mirror new collective advice and you may taste of the pages due to the fact expressed of the energetic voting otherwise revealing, aiming to select the most accepted meaning that most representative period of each and every meme relatives. As the intricate below, which decide to try was confronted with both articles and you can network analyses.
Articles studies
The new reached test is actually read having fun with decimal articles data. The original phase out of coding focused on distinguishing the specific quiddities inside for each meme members of the family. For each and every meme including, new programmers indexed the main possess that stayed regarding the brand spanking new meme or was basically normally common of the other cases of the same members of the family (like, a central reputation, a certain keywords, otherwise an item). A great rooted, qualitative analysis you to then followed that it initial phase yielded five categories of quiddities, which taken into account all the cases i checked: target, step, particular profile, universal reputation (age.grams. “child” otherwise “cat”), and keywords. The complete corpus ended up being re also-reviewed quantitatively, depending on the five groups: For each and every meme such as for instance is coded because of the one or two coders in order to have one or higher of the five quiddity items. During this period, an enthusiastic intercoder reliability attempt is presented (find below).