A more systematic analysis of the families’ cohesiveness based on T-Tests for the mean differences between generic attributes within and outside a meme families reaffirmed this tendency. We found significantly more common attributes between meme instances from the same family. In general, each instance shared more attributes with other family members (3.49) than with nonfamily members (2.39), T(18865) = , p < .01. This similarity between instances of the same family is significant in terms of content (T(6534) = , p < .01), participants (T(12755) = , p < .01), and form (T(16379) = 41.2, p < .01).
Yet, when https://datingranking.net/fr/rencontres-philippines-fr/ searching on their own at the stuff, participation, and you can form features, there had been of numerous family members that have nonsignificant differences between this new suggest interior and you may outside popular characteristics. This is particularly true into the stuff characteristic. Simply a dozen of 50 meme group shared more articles attributes inside family unit members. Simply put, posts services was indeed reduced natural in the most common meme parents. Likewise, into the family was indeed content was found to be significantly more natural, it absolutely was together with more novel and you can unique.
Furthermore, most meme family got men together with teen and young mature users as his or her well-known have. Most other age range, such older people, grownups, babies, and children together with ladies, celebrities, and particularly animal users was basically a whole lot more unique to certain meme families. Finally, with respect to setting, very meme household used easy image with text otherwise video. Meme families where form try a great deal more natural common remix and you can visual manipulation as well as acronyms and you will wordplay.
This new association ranging from cohesiveness and you will individuality
The cohesiveness of meme families around more unique generic attributes already provided a partial answer to RQ4, regarding the link between cohesiveness and uniqueness in meme families, and a Pearson correlation between the two revealed a very strong and significant positive correlation (r = .911, p < .001). In other words, the more unique the shared attributes within a meme family, the higher the difference between shared attributes within and outside a meme family. When looking at each group of attributes separately, it was mainly the uniqueness of form (r = .870, p < .001) and content (r = .726, p < .001) attributes that positively correlated with family cohesiveness. The uniqueness of participation attributes had a weaker correlation with family cohesiveness (r = .366, p < .01).
Quiddities, concreteness, individuality, and you can cohesiveness
In response to the last research question, we found a significant positive correlation between quiddity concreteness and both the cohesiveness (r = .363, p < .01) and uniqueness (r = .431, p < .01) of Internet memes. In other words, a meme family with a more concrete quiddity was also more cohesive and unique in its generic attributes.
In particular, a significant positive correlation was found between the percentage of instances in a meme family sharing a similar object and the cohesiveness (r = .286, p < .05) and uniqueness (r = .349, p < .05) of their content. This suggests that instances of meme families in which the quiddity is a specific object tend also to deal with the same unique themes. Thus, for example, instances of the “Flying Spaghetti Monster” family always included this specific character or object, and many of them also contained references to religion, which is a unique theme in the memetic sphere.
Meme families in which the quiddity is a character, such as “Charlie the Unicorn,” are more cohesive, but also unique in terms of participation. This is typically reflected in a higher percentage of instances containing animal participants. Perhaps less obvious is the negative correlation between action and uniqueness of participation (r = ?.329, p < .05). This means that the participants in meme families in which the main quiddity is an action are not unique, but rather part of the mainstream. Thus, for example, most participants of “Caramelldansen,” “The Evolution of Dance,” or “Planking” are teens or young adults.