Assessing global diffusion with Web memetics: The spread and evolution of a popular joke

Abstract

Memes are small units of culture, analogous to genes, which flow from person to person by copying or imitation. More than any previous medium, the Internet has the technical capabilities for global meme diffusion. Yet, to spread globally, memes need to negotiate their way through cultural and linguistic borders. This article introduces a new broad method, Web memetics, comprising extensive Web searches and combined quantitative and qualitative analyses, to identify and assess: (a) the different versions of a meme, (b) its evolution online, and (c) its Web presence and translation into common Internet languages. This method is demonstrated through one extensively circulated joke about men, women, and computers. The results show that the joke has mutated into several different versions and is widely translated, and that translations incorporate small, local adaptations while retaining the English versions' fundamental components. In conclusion,Web memetics has demonstrated its ability to identify and track the evolution and spread of memes online, with interesting results, albeit for only one case study.

Factor Analysis on Internet Hot Concept Being Popular in China

“…Meme is a unit of cultural evolution, which realize interpersonal communication through copy or imitation. [1] Compared to traditional media, Internet has more technical capacity to achieve globalized spread of memes. [1] Internet memes is a high-profile phenomenon often referring to a certain kind of behavior, concepts, and popular words that spread quickly on the Internet so as to draw public attention.…”

“…[1] Compared to traditional media, Internet has more technical capacity to achieve globalized spread of memes. [1] Internet memes is a high-profile phenomenon often referring to a certain kind of behavior, concepts, and popular words that spread quickly on the Internet so as to draw public attention. [2] It exists in the form of pictures, videos, and spreads among network users through blogs, social networking and so on.…”

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“…Whilst initial hopes for a science of memetics largely evaporated around the middle of the 2000s with the death of the one discipline's one dedicated journal (Edmonds, 2005), interest has been maintained in relation to so 'Internet memes' which includes hared online jokes and other digital material which are subject to forms of evolutionary change (Shifman and Thelwall, 2009, Ward, 2008, Weng et al, 2012, Rintel, 2013, Christensen, 2011, Bauckhage et al, 2013, Shifman, 2012. The term pop-cultural meme was coined as a more accurate distinction with the academic meme as some have suggested that the Internet meme must originate online, rather than simply proliferating there (see discussion in Sparkes- Vian, 2015).…”

“…In their study of the diffusion of an Internet meme in the form of an online joke, Shifman and Thelwall (2009) noted that the meme they were studying developed a distinctive 'call-response' pattern. In that case, as the initial joke revolved around stereotypical gender roles that pat tern took the form of a male/female call-response.…”

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“…For example, Shifman and Thelwall (2009) tracked the online manifestations of a widely circulated joke and discovered that while the core structure of the joke remained intact, certain elements evolved to become more relevant, and therefore funnier, to different national and cultural groups. Such adoptions and adaptations are consistent with how globalization theorists view the circulation of cultural products through the entanglement of global and local forces (Kraidy, 2005).…”