Short presentation about Virality and Memes

1. virality & memes
Marlene, Tania, Anders & Emil Kjeldsen

2. Index
1. Virality
1.1. Definition
1.2. What makes Online Content viral?
1.3. Virality example
2. Meme
2.1. Definition
2.2. Memes on Reddit
2.3. Meme example
3. Open question
4. Sources 2

3. Definition “virality”
“The tendency of an image, video, or piece of information to be circulated
rapidly and widely from one Internet user to another.”
(Oxford University Press, 2015, n. p.)
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4. Definition “virality”
“The degree to which a piece of internet content has been or might be shared
in a short amount of time.”
(Urban Dictionary, 2015, n. p.)
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5. Definition “virality”
“One important observation [Broxton et al.] found is that viral videos are the
type of video that gains traction in social media quickly but also fades quickly.”
(Broxton, Interian, Vaver & Wattenhofer, qtd. in Jiang et al., 2014, p. 193)
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6. Definition summary “virality”
● Online
● Rapidly circulation
● Widely spread in a very short time
● Fast loss of interest
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7. What makes Online Content viral?
● Milkman states: “Positive content is more likely to go viral than negative
content”
● Content that evoked high arousal emotions—positive or negative—is
more viral than content without emotion
● High degree of “social links” makes content more viral, compared to non-
social inlinks
● Communities share social norms and rules (N., Baym)
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8. Virality example
“Open Your Mouth!” - A german newsspeaker goes viral. 8

9. Definition “meme”
“[A meme is] an idea, behavior or style that spreads from person to person
within a culture”.
(Merriam-Webster, 2015, n. p.)
Meme(tics) is a theory of mental content based on an analogy with Darwinian
evolution, originating from the popularization of Richard Dawkins' 1976 book
“The Selfish Gene”.
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10. Definition “Internet meme”
“A meme spread online could be just about anything that is voluntarily
shared, including phrases, images, rumors and audio or video files”.
(TechTarget, 2015, n. p.)
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11. Memes on Reddit
● Much of reddit’s activity is about original/remixed content, where memes
is a prime example
● Research has showed that popular memes are remixed with other
popular content at the same time
● Memes in general encourages play, and re-invoking memes becomes a
kind of cultural “touchstone” for the community
(Massanari, 2015, p. 96)
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12. Memes on Reddit
“.. playful interactions move beyond ‘mere play’ to reflect the cultural values
of the community”
(Massanari, 2015, p. 125)
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13. Meme example - Almost politically correct redneck 13

14. Open question?
Are all memes remixes?
What about “original” memes?
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15. Sources
Baym, N. (2010). Personal Connections in the Digital Age. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Berger, J., & Milkman, K. (2012). What Makes Online Content viral?, Journal of Marketing Research, 49 (2), 192-205.
Broxton, T., Interian, Y., Vaver, J., & Wattenhofer, M. (2013). Catching a viral video, Journal of Intelligent Information
Systems, 40 (2), 241-259.
Jiang, L., Miao, Y., Yang, Y., Lan, Z., & Hauptmann, A. (2014). Viral Video Style: A Closer Look at Viral Videos on
YouTube. In M. Kankanhalli, S. Rueger & R. Manmatha (Ed.), ICMR '14 International Conference on Multimedia
Retrieval (S. 193-200). New York: ACM.
Massanari, A. (2015). Participatory Culture, Community, and Play: Learning from Reddit. New York: Peter Lang
Publishing.
Merriam-Webster (2015). meme. Available at: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/meme.
Oxford University Press (2015). virality. Available at: http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/virality.
Urban Dictionary (2015). virality. Available at: http://da.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Virality.
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