Understanding Memes

A particular scholarly journal analysis focuses on insights to internet memes which I used to help apply to my specific artifact. The article defines an internet meme as a “phenomenon of content or concepts that spread rapidly among Internet users” (Dawkin, 1976) We as a generation of internet users, have most likely many times been exposed to memes. These memes we are often exposed to gain popularity quite quickly amongst the internet and are spread within different social contexts and cultures.

This article is studying too see if these memes spread by sharing from person to person or if this is just simply an assumption while also paying much close attention to the time frame in which these memes are popularized. The study looks at 150 most popular internet memes paying particular attention to time to see how quickly these memes became famous. Researchers collected information from a series of internet sites.  They use differential equation models to look at all of the possible distributions of these popular internet memes. They want to see all of the ways they were shared and distributed amongst those who are sharing and viewing these very well-known memes. Researchers also factored in how quickly theses memes grew in popularity and how quickly the popularity declined.

The article uses plenty of examples such as pictures of people, animals, videos and many more artifacts which were turned into memes. Researchers conducted charts measuring the data in which when the memes was invented by the creator, when the memes were most popular, when their popularity began declining, and where the meme was currently when the data was completed. The research also took into factor, the platforms in which these memes were being shared and viewed on. I thought that the way researchers studied these memes were very interesting. I had never thought about the ways to look at memes and the processes in which they go through to get onto on cell phone and computer screens.

I had never really thought about these concepts and studies until reading this article. I just thought we as internet users randomly stumble upon these hilarious internet memes from time to time or simply get “tagged” in one from another user. I had wondered once before how these internet memes get shared and become so popular so quickly although I just figured that’s the case with almost everything on the internet. For instance, my Bruce Jenner meme I randomly stumbled upon when his issues were largely being talked about and many situations of his were surfacing the web. I have come to realize that memes are created through different cultures and societies which is why they differ amongst these platforms. I think depending on how new something is, the more likely it will be shared more quickly rather than a meme which has been around forever not being shared so often. If I had to do research on my specific meme, I would certainly look into seeing when the meme was invented, most popular, and popularity decreased just as in their studies.