How Stuff Spreads
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The document analyzes how different types of videos or memes spread online. It finds that while all memes are volatile, their time to peak popularity, diffusion velocity, shareability, lifespan and audience demographics can vary significantly. Memes either spread as "spikers" with high volatility and velocity but short lifespan, or as "growers" with lower volatility and longer lifespan. Having a highly connected audience network correlates with faster spreading, while a more fragmented audience network correlates with slower spreading. The demographic diversity of the audience also impacts the fragmentation, with more diverse audiences tending to spread memes more slowly.
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How Stuff Spreads
- 1. How Stuff Spreads How Video Goes Viral Francesco D’Orazio @abc3d | PulsarPlatform.com
- 2. mem
- 3. Back in March 2013, we started by mapping replica memes, memes based on an original piece of content that spreads and gets replicated into variably successful variations
- 7. 5% 1%
- 8. We learned, updated the framework and repeated the experiment with 4 new types of meme: a music video, a citizen journalism video, an ad, a web series
- 9. Diffusion Patterns How the meme gets passed on from person to person via tweets and retweets @abc3d | PulsarPlatform.com
- 35. Size How many people shared the link to the meme and how many posts did they generate? @abc3d | PulsarPlatform.com
- 40. Narrative How did the viral narrative develop? @abc3d | PulsarPlatform.com
- 41. 60,000 Peaks at 51,600 shares on 13 May 50,000 40,000 30,000 Launched at 10pm GMT on 12 May, & 20,000 gets 11,400 Twitter shares in 2 hours Perfect power law decay – no spikes after launch after a big influencer finds it belatedly Within a week it's below 1000 shares per day (17 May) 10,000 0 11-May 18-May 25-May 1-Jun
- 42. 14,000 12,000 10,000 Peaks on Day 3, the 17 April. Doesn't show the rapid power-law decay of the newsdriven searches 8,000 Secondary peaks when it spreads into new communities & is noticed by new influencers. E.g. @DoveUKI on 19 Apr 6,000 4,000 Continuing ripples even a month after a launch, as new communities and community influencers discover the video 600 people find & tweet/RT the video on 15 April, before 2,000 Dove officially tweet it (@Dove_Canada on 16th) 0 15-Apr 22-Apr 29-Apr 6-May 13-May 20-May 27-May 3-Jun 10-Jun
- 43. 12,000 10,000 Very sharp decay for this news-driven video, which gained its value from showing events in Gezi Park when Turkish TV channels weren't. 8,000 6,000 4,000 Day 3: only 197 shares 2,000 0 1-Jun 8-Jun 15-Jun 22-Jun
- 44. 4,000 Unlike other videos this is serialised content. Peaks when (a) new video released (b) picked up by top influential Vine account 3,500 3,000 2,500 2,000 1,500 1,000 500 0 21-Apr 28-Apr 5-May 12-May 19-May 26-May 2-Jun 9-Jun 16-Jun 23-Jun
- 45. Shape Quantifying virality. Which variables are best for identifying a viral phenomenon? @abc3d | PulsarPlatform.com
- 46. All memes are volatile Coefficient of variation (%) Dove Real… Ryan Gosling Cmdr Hadfield Turkish protest 197% 194% 355% 435%
- 47. Time to Peak varies 1 (shares/day) 60000 Day 50000 40000 30000 Commander Hadfield Dove Turkey Ryan Gosling 1 Day 20000 3 10000 18 Days Days 0 1 8 Days since video launch 15 22 29 36 43 50 57
- 48. Diffusion Velocity varies 7000 (shares/hour on peak day) Commander Hadfield Dove Turkey Ryan Gosling 6000 5000 4000 3000 2000 1000 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24
- 49. Shareability varies Social currency (shares per 1m views) Dove Real… Ryan Gosling Cmdr Hadfield Turkish protest 1,088 View count not available on Vine 5,108 12,886
- 50. Lifespan varies (continuous period at 500 shares/day) Dove Real Beauty 20 Ryan Gosling 8 Cmdr Hadfield 8 Turkish protest 2
- 51. Although none of the variables alone proved useful to identify a viral phenomenon, all of them correlate around two main models of viral spread
- 52. Spikers vs Growers High Volatility Fast to Peak High Velocity High Shareability Shorter Lifespan Lower Volatility Slower to Peak Lower Velocity Lower Shareability Longer Lifespan
- 53. But what makes a meme spread along the first or the second model? We looked at the audience of the memes to answer this question…
- 54. Audience Can the audience composition explain why memes develop along one of the other model? @abc3d | PulsarPlatform.com
- 55. All memes are similarly amplified (average Visibility of a post containing the meme) 35 Dove Real Beauty Ryan Gosling 30 34 Cmdr Hadfield Turkish protest 29
- 56. Globality rate varies (% of shares from countries other than the top one) 75% 63% 34% 14%
- 57. Since both Amplification and Globality seemed not to correlate with one or the other model of virality we then looked at the demographics engaged with each meme
- 58. White 34% Technology 66% 30 Science News Christian Jewish Years 55% Photography Music Comedy 36% London Toronto 5% New York 3% Dublin 3% Vancouver 2% 11% Students 9% @NASA Journalists 9% @StephenFry Web devs 8% @BarackObama Senior Managers 7% Musicians 6% @DalaiLama @Conan O’Brien
- 59. 21% White Comedy 81% Black 79% Music Hispanic 19 Years London 5% Toronto 5% Christian Muslim 67% 24% Students New York 4% Sales 10% Riyadh 3% Journalists 4% Photographers Artists Stylists Admin Staff 15% Fashion TV/Film Health Issues Sports @KatyPerry @E.DeGeneres @TaylorSwift @JustinBieber @LadyGaga @KimKardashian
- 60. 50% White 50% Muslim 26 Years Instanbul Izmir 32% Ankara 4% Bursa 1% News Tech 94% Students 50% Politics 99% Football Music Musicians 8% @CemYilmaz @SertabErener Senior Managers 8% @AbdullahGül Web Developers Journalists Engineers Graphic Designer Teachers @BarackObama @ConanO’Brien @WikiLeaks @Nytimes @BBCNews 12%
- 61. 26% White Comedy Black 74% Music Hispanic 18 Christian Years NYC 6% London 3% Los Angeles 2% Chicago 2% Muslim 84% 9% Students Dating Extreme Sports Musicians 13% @JustinBieber @TaylorSwift Actors 4% @KatyPerry 33% @MileyCyrus @DanielTosh @SnookiPolizzi
- 62. As we couldn’t find any correlation between demographic traits and virality models we then turned to the structure of the audience by mapping the social graph (followers/friends) of the people who shared the meme
- 64. Highly connected audiences (higher average degree in the audience network) make the meme spread faster
- 66. High audience fragmentation into subcommunities (high modularity of the audience network) makes the meme spread slower
- 67. 130 communities 3 connect up to 50% of the audience
- 68. 1356 communities 8 connect up to 50% of the audience
- 69. 51 communities 2 connect up to 50% of the audience
- 70. 382 communities 5 connect up to 50% of the audience
- 71. 130 1356 51 387
- 72. But what is causing higher or lower fragmentation within an audience?
- 73. 32, male, white, CAN/USA, i nto science, tech and comedy 16, female, white/hispanic, US A/LA, into teen pop and reality tv 32, female, white, USA/NYC , marketing professional 30, male, white, UK, into tech, comedy and music 25, mixed, white, Turkey/Istanbul , into politics, sports, web 21, mixed, white, Turkey/Izmir , into politics, sports, web 17, female, white/black/hisp anic, USA/Texas, into teen pop and reality tv 19, female, white, Global, int o comedy, music, tv
- 74. High demographic diversity correlates with high modularity and slower meme velocity
- 76. Trigger > Validation > Escalation
- 78. community relevance provides validation (topicality & timing)
- 79. Gatekeepers activate the communities within the audience and escalate the diffusion
- 80. Vs. But it’s the social structure of the audience that determines the diffusion model
- 81. Thank You @abc3d | PulsarPlatform.com
Editor's Notes
- Pulsar is a new generation of social media analysis platform.The main idea behind it is that we don’t just look at the content of the conversation, we store and analyse everything around it, such as social graph, interest graph, behaviours of the author. Which gives us the most important thing in research for social media: contextSo with this technology, we can do a bunch of types of research in social media----------------------------------Back in March we embarked in a series of studies to understand virality, or better how stuff spreadsAfter years of hearing people commissioning viral videos and viral campaigns, we had to do somethingWe had two objectives: To develop a framework for mapping viralityToidentify common factors and potential models to replicate virality
- To do this, we tracked a series of memesMemes can be of three kinds: single, serie, replicasWithin this typology we started looking at videos (but can be images, sounds, tweets, hashtags etc.)Within videos we differentiated by genre: music, news, ads, story----------------------Definition of memeA meme (/ˈmiːm/; meem)[1] is "an idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture."[2] A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols, or practices that can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena. Supporters of the concept regard memes as cultural analogues to genes in that they self-replicate, mutate, and respond to selective pressures.The word meme is a shortening (modeled on gene) of mimeme (from Ancient Greek μίμημα Greek pronunciation: [míːmɛːma] mīmēma, "imitated thing", from μιμεῖσθαιmimeisthai, "to imitate", from μῖμοςmimos "mime")[4] and it was coined by the British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene (1976)[1][5] as a concept for discussion of evolutionary principles in explaining the spread of ideas and cultural phenomena. Examples of memes given in the book included melodies, catch-phrases, fashion, and the technology of building arches.
- To do this, we tracked a series of memesMemes can be of three kinds: single, serie, replicasWithin this typology we started looking at videos (but can be images, sounds, tweets, hashtags etc.)Within videos we differentiated by genre: music, news, ads, story----------------------Definition of memeA meme (/ˈmiːm/; meem)[1] is "an idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture."[2] A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols, or practices that can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena. Supporters of the concept regard memes as cultural analogues to genes in that they self-replicate, mutate, and respond to selective pressures.The word meme is a shortening (modeled on gene) of mimeme (from Ancient Greek μίμημα Greek pronunciation: [míːmɛːma] mīmēma, "imitated thing", from μιμεῖσθαιmimeisthai, "to imitate", from μῖμοςmimos "mime")[4] and it was coined by the British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene (1976)[1][5] as a concept for discussion of evolutionary principles in explaining the spread of ideas and cultural phenomena. Examples of memes given in the book included melodies, catch-phrases, fashion, and the technology of building arches.
- 강남스타일We started with replicas.We learned a lot, and prepared for the next one, which I’m going to share in detail today.
- 강남스타일We started with replicas.We learned a lot, and prepared for the next one, which I’m going to share in detail today.
- 강남스타일We started with replicas.We learned a lot, and prepared for the next one, which I’m going to share in detail today.
- 강남스타일We started with replicas.We learned a lot, and prepared for the next one, which I’m going to share in detail today.
- To do this, we tracked a series of memesMemes can be of three kinds: single, serie, replicasWithin this typology we started looking at videos (but can be images, sounds, tweets, hashtags etc.)Within videos we differentiated by genre: music, news, ads, story----------------------Definition of memeA meme (/ˈmiːm/; meem)[1] is "an idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture."[2] A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols, or practices that can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena. Supporters of the concept regard memes as cultural analogues to genes in that they self-replicate, mutate, and respond to selective pressures.The word meme is a shortening (modeled on gene) of mimeme (from Ancient Greek μίμημα Greek pronunciation: [míːmɛːma] mīmēma, "imitated thing", from μιμεῖσθαιmimeisthai, "to imitate", from μῖμοςmimos "mime")[4] and it was coined by the British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene (1976)[1][5] as a concept for discussion of evolutionary principles in explaining the spread of ideas and cultural phenomena. Examples of memes given in the book included melodies, catch-phrases, fashion, and the technology of building arches.
- So the first thing we looked at was Diffusion Patterns
- Singing astronaut Commander Chris Hadfield gave a rendition of David Bowie’s ‘Space Oddity’ while he was orbiting the Earth aboard the International Space Station.
- Tweets & RT: Total Tweets:Total Retweets:Unique Authors:Connected Authors:
- Tweets & RT: Total Tweets:Total Retweets:Unique Authors:Connected Authors:
- Tweets & RT: Total Tweets:Total Retweets:Unique Authors:Connected Authors:
- Tweets & RT: Total Tweets:Total Retweets:Unique Authors:Connected Authors:
- The 2013 protests in Turkey started on 28 May 2013, initially to contest the urban development plan for Istanbul's TaksimGezi Park. The protests were sparked by outrage at a brutal eviction of a sit-in at the park protesting against the plan.Subsequently, supporting protests and strikes took place across Turkey protesting a wide range of concerns, at the core of which were issues of freedom of the press, freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, and the government's encroachment on Turkey's secularism. Much of Izmir population is jumping with outrage at the policies of the current Turkish government, parallel with the better known protests at Gezi Park in Istanbul (see video of the national police clearing away squatters, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bl7dxwNrl5M).Prominent among those Izmir protestors has been the mayor, Aziz Kocaoğlu, in response to which the central government charged him with 33 counts of fraud and other offenses, could result in a combined 397 years in jail. Understanding why Izmir is Turkish sauna of protest, even to its mayor, requires a bit of history.Izmir is a very progressive, secular and cosmopolitan enclave historically in tension with Istambul.When the protest explodes in Istambul Izmir is well ready to explode, lead by its mayor. (who is now been charge in retaliation with 33 counts of fraud and offences and 39 years in jail.http://therealnews.com/t2/component/content/article/81-more-blog-posts-from-john-weeks/1650-economics-for-the-99-going-hot-turkey-the-protests-in-izmir
- This video took its creative expression through Vine as a pop culture gem, comprising a series of six-second clips of A-list actor Gosling being offered spoonful’s of breakfast cereal.The videos, created by @RyanWMcHenry, were carefully seeded with key influencers in the world of Vine such as @BestVinesEver and @VineLoops. This ensured that the videos went viral quickly, echoing the online journey of a major breaking news story.
- ONE FIRST THING IS CLEAR > memes spread in very different ways, there isn't one single pattern for virality. to make sense of this let's look at the spread from a few different angles.
- What we define “Viral” is not necessarily big, or not “big” in the same way
- viral doesn't mean big. size of a viral phenomenon is related to the size of the audience it appeals to (an individual will eventually receive a message if a certain proportion of his or her friends already have that message.)
- Ryan McHenry spreads it on Twitter at 19.12 on the 21stRyan McHenry posts 3 more times, and with the 4th he announces on 20.19 of the 22nd that his video has gone viral on Vine (has made the most popular page, with 350 likes)Then the main community hubs on Vine start endorsing the video
- Commander Hadfield’s tweet at 22.00 on the night of the 12 makes it go viral with 22.000 RT . At time of sharing, Commander Hadfield had already 759.281followers. His Following increased massively in Jan 2013 from 84k to 122kBut he is not the first to tweet. 3 minutes before him a Polish guy posts it. No one retweets. Inspirational for music, science, science fiction and space fansPeople like Bryan Fuller (screenwriter, producer e.g. Hannibal, 27k Followers) tweet on the 25th, no wavesKey insight - Link mentions peaked fast and were driven by global influencers. The viral effect demonstrated sustained growth that was driven by a single person’s effort. Hadfield’s link was much more appealing to the crowd because of its unique nature than a more earthbound video and as a result he featured much more prominently in the sharing of this video than other viral examples.
- Starts from digitalmarketeers, ad/planners and studentsStarts in Australia, spreads to the States, then South America, then EuropePulls the women for the inspirational message, pulls the man for the experimental settingThe video for Dove’s Real Beauty Sketches #WeAreBeautiful campaign spread very differently to any of the others, and was largely driven by a long tail of link-sharing and by positive audience sentiment.Key insight - This video showed less burnout than the others, and there were also fewer influencer-induced spikes. Instead, conversation existed in clusters of communities spread around the world — showing the value of local engagement — and highlighted the good use of a digital outreach programme.
- First tweet to get traction is a Izmir resident doing citizen journalismThe second tweet is from a political organization called Chronic Dissidence Then it starts spreading to the journalism, media, art and social media / web community
- Ryan McHenry spreads it on Twitter at 19.12 on the 21stRyan McHenry posts 3 more times, and with the 4th he announces on 20.19 of the 22nd that his video has gone viral on Vine (has made the most popular page, with 350 likes)Then the main community hubs on Vine start endorsing the video
- Memes are volatileWe wanted to quantify how much the attention to the memes varied on a day by day basisThe coefficient of variation is a mathematical way to quantify how much day-to-day variation there is in the number of video shares. The higher the %age, the "spikier" the video is.Attention to all memes varied massively on a day to day basis, which means that all memes spread in waves. First point is that all are essentially fairly "uneven", with variation of 200% (2x) or more of the mean average daily shares. Lesson for video managers: don't ever expect a totally smooth ride!But it's the news-driven videos, especially the Turkish protests, which are the most spikey. This saw a huge burst of interest in the first couple of hours, even matching the much bigger Commander Hadfield video for shares-per-hour. But after a few hours it was essentially done – as Turkish and international TV picked up coverage of Taksim Square
- It took both Hadfield and Turkish just 1 day to peak.Dove peaked at day 3 and Gosling peaked at day 18.So high velocity correlates with faster peak
- Commander Hadfield & Turkey: Real velocity here – the first two hours are the fastest moving. both saw their peak velocity in the first houHadfield = 105/min Turkish = 95/minTurkish protest > while a much smaller video, its shares-per-hour match Commander Hadfield.Both videos were shared by accounts with hundreds of thousand of followersDove and Ryan Gosling: a slower diffusion, rising over several hours to a peak. Indicative of a more gradual, peer-led generation of momentum
- We then wanted to quantify how compelled were people to share the memes.We measured Shareability as the number of shares per million of views on Youtube (not available on Vine)Turns out that the memes with a high shareability are the ones with with the highest velocity, the fastest peakThree factors driving sharing:1. Surprise – pure newsiness(Turkish protests) or novelty & "wow" (Commander Hadfield)2. Community relevance – Dove Real Beauty Sketches (appealing to women and liberal feminism-lite)3. Endorsement – from the celebrity / hero figure themselves (Ryan Gosling) or Bowie (Commander Hadfield)
- But they are also the ones that die faster.And finally we looked at the Lifespan of the memes.We define 'lifetime' as the period when the video gains over 500 Twitter shares per day. While all the videos show a "long tail" of shares happening days and weeks after they were launched, it's interesting to examine this peak duration as that's when the videos have most social momentum. Many more people will be seeing them in their Twitter streams, more likely with multiple friends sharing – and as such the impact on awareness is much higher.But the duration of some top videos is short – 8 days for Commander Hadfield. There's a narrow window that brands & music promoters have to play with: then it's essentially over.Ryan Gosling> The most uneven distribution – reached over 500 shares/day on several occasions, but not consecutivelyThe higher the Velocity, the Faster the Peak and the Variability (and Volatility) of the meme, THE SHORTER THE LIFESPAN
- To do this, we tracked a series of memesMemes can be of three kinds: single, serie, replicasWithin this typology we started looking at videos (but can be images, sounds, tweets, hashtags etc.)Within videos we differentiated by genre: music, news, ads, story----------------------Definition of memeA meme (/ˈmiːm/; meem)[1] is "an idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture."[2] A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols, or practices that can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena. Supporters of the concept regard memes as cultural analogues to genes in that they self-replicate, mutate, and respond to selective pressures.The word meme is a shortening (modeled on gene) of mimeme (from Ancient Greek μίμημα Greek pronunciation: [míːmɛːma] mīmēma, "imitated thing", from μιμεῖσθαιmimeisthai, "to imitate", from μῖμοςmimos "mime")[4] and it was coined by the British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene (1976)[1][5] as a concept for discussion of evolutionary principles in explaining the spread of ideas and cultural phenomena. Examples of memes given in the book included melodies, catch-phrases, fashion, and the technology of building arches.
- But most of these variables seem to correlateBased on these correlations, there seem to be two types of memes: Spikers and GrowersSpikerHigher VolatilityFaster PeakHigher VelocityHigher ShareabilityShorter LifespanGrowerLower VolatilitySlower PeakLower VelocityLower ShareabilityLonger LifespanBut what makes a meme spread in one or the other way?We looked at the audience to answer this question.
- To do this, we tracked a series of memesMemes can be of three kinds: single, serie, replicasWithin this typology we started looking at videos (but can be images, sounds, tweets, hashtags etc.)Within videos we differentiated by genre: music, news, ads, story----------------------Definition of memeA meme (/ˈmiːm/; meem)[1] is "an idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture."[2] A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols, or practices that can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena. Supporters of the concept regard memes as cultural analogues to genes in that they self-replicate, mutate, and respond to selective pressures.The word meme is a shortening (modeled on gene) of mimeme (from Ancient Greek μίμημα Greek pronunciation: [míːmɛːma] mīmēma, "imitated thing", from μιμεῖσθαιmimeisthai, "to imitate", from μῖμοςmimos "mime")[4] and it was coined by the British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene (1976)[1][5] as a concept for discussion of evolutionary principles in explaining the spread of ideas and cultural phenomena. Examples of memes given in the book included melodies, catch-phrases, fashion, and the technology of building arches.
- First thing we looked at is amplificationAmplification is a measure of the average "visibility" of the meme. Where there more influential people in the audience of one of the memes that helped it spread faster?Lower for Turkish protests – primarily shared in Turkey, a slightly newer (though still very active) Twitter marketLower on Ryan Gosling – perhaps as funny content appeals to a younger audienceHighest for Dove (video with a message) and Commander Hadfield (tapping into an older Bowie fan audience, plus big influencer RTs)Mostly equivalent, so NO.
- Isglobality affecting speed? Does a more global or a more local meme spread faster?The answer is again, no
- To do this, we tracked a series of memesMemes can be of three kinds: single, serie, replicasWithin this typology we started looking at videos (but can be images, sounds, tweets, hashtags etc.)Within videos we differentiated by genre: music, news, ads, story----------------------Definition of memeA meme (/ˈmiːm/; meem)[1] is "an idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture."[2] A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols, or practices that can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena. Supporters of the concept regard memes as cultural analogues to genes in that they self-replicate, mutate, and respond to selective pressures.The word meme is a shortening (modeled on gene) of mimeme (from Ancient Greek μίμημα Greek pronunciation: [míːmɛːma] mīmēma, "imitated thing", from μιμεῖσθαιmimeisthai, "to imitate", from μῖμοςmimos "mime")[4] and it was coined by the British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene (1976)[1][5] as a concept for discussion of evolutionary principles in explaining the spread of ideas and cultural phenomena. Examples of memes given in the book included melodies, catch-phrases, fashion, and the technology of building arches.
- We then took to baesyan statistics to analyse the demographics of the audienceDoes the demographics of the audience affect the way content goes viral?There doesn’t seem to be any correlation with demographics as they are completely different
- We then took to baesyan statistics to analyse the demographics of the audienceDoes the demographics of the audience affect the way content goes viral?There doesn’t seem to be any correlation with demographics as they are completely different
- We then took to baesyan statistics to analyse the demographics of the audienceDoes the demographics of the audience affect the way content goes viral?There doesn’t seem to be any correlation with demographics as they are completely different
- We then took to baesyan statistics to analyse the demographics of the audienceDoes the demographics of the audience affect the way content goes viral?There doesn’t seem to be any correlation with demographics as they are completely different
- To do this, we tracked a series of memesMemes can be of three kinds: single, serie, replicasWithin this typology we started looking at videos (but can be images, sounds, tweets, hashtags etc.)Within videos we differentiated by genre: music, news, ads, story----------------------Definition of memeA meme (/ˈmiːm/; meem)[1] is "an idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture."[2] A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols, or practices that can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena. Supporters of the concept regard memes as cultural analogues to genes in that they self-replicate, mutate, and respond to selective pressures.The word meme is a shortening (modeled on gene) of mimeme (from Ancient Greek μίμημα Greek pronunciation: [míːmɛːma] mīmēma, "imitated thing", from μιμεῖσθαιmimeisthai, "to imitate", from μῖμοςmimos "mime")[4] and it was coined by the British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene (1976)[1][5] as a concept for discussion of evolutionary principles in explaining the spread of ideas and cultural phenomena. Examples of memes given in the book included melodies, catch-phrases, fashion, and the technology of building arches.
- But the audience gets more interesting when you start to look at its structure.We mapped the social graph of the audience of each meme by looking at who they were following and who they were followed by.Which highlighted some really interesting differences.First of all we looked at the Average Degree of each audience network > The audiences of the 2 spikey memes are more internally connected
- To do this, we tracked a series of memesMemes can be of three kinds: single, serie, replicasWithin this typology we started looking at videos (but can be images, sounds, tweets, hashtags etc.)Within videos we differentiated by genre: music, news, ads, story----------------------Definition of memeA meme (/ˈmiːm/; meem)[1] is "an idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture."[2] A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols, or practices that can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena. Supporters of the concept regard memes as cultural analogues to genes in that they self-replicate, mutate, and respond to selective pressures.The word meme is a shortening (modeled on gene) of mimeme (from Ancient Greek μίμημα Greek pronunciation: [míːmɛːma] mīmēma, "imitated thing", from μιμεῖσθαιmimeisthai, "to imitate", from μῖμοςmimos "mime")[4] and it was coined by the British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene (1976)[1][5] as a concept for discussion of evolutionary principles in explaining the spread of ideas and cultural phenomena. Examples of memes given in the book included melodies, catch-phrases, fashion, and the technology of building arches.
- We then looked at how these connections are organised.To do this we look at Modularity, or how fragmented the audience is in sub-communities and how many communities are thereThe lower the modularity, the less fragmented the audience is into sub-communities, the more cohesive it is and the easier to reach it isThe audience is split into communities - the audience social structure, the way connections are arranged, communities, shapes the way something goes viral.Audiences with a low Average Degree, low connectedness or density, are more fragmented
- To do this, we tracked a series of memesMemes can be of three kinds: single, serie, replicasWithin this typology we started looking at videos (but can be images, sounds, tweets, hashtags etc.)Within videos we differentiated by genre: music, news, ads, story----------------------Definition of memeA meme (/ˈmiːm/; meem)[1] is "an idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture."[2] A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols, or practices that can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena. Supporters of the concept regard memes as cultural analogues to genes in that they self-replicate, mutate, and respond to selective pressures.The word meme is a shortening (modeled on gene) of mimeme (from Ancient Greek μίμημα Greek pronunciation: [míːmɛːma] mīmēma, "imitated thing", from μιμεῖσθαιmimeisthai, "to imitate", from μῖμοςmimos "mime")[4] and it was coined by the British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene (1976)[1][5] as a concept for discussion of evolutionary principles in explaining the spread of ideas and cultural phenomena. Examples of memes given in the book included melodies, catch-phrases, fashion, and the technology of building arches.
- so the connectedness of an audience correlates with the velocity of the spread and therefore viralitymodel spike or grow.But what causes the high or low modularity? Is demographic diversity responsible for network fragmentation?
- To do this, we tracked a series of memesMemes can be of three kinds: single, serie, replicasWithin this typology we started looking at videos (but can be images, sounds, tweets, hashtags etc.)Within videos we differentiated by genre: music, news, ads, story----------------------Definition of memeA meme (/ˈmiːm/; meem)[1] is "an idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture."[2] A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols, or practices that can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena. Supporters of the concept regard memes as cultural analogues to genes in that they self-replicate, mutate, and respond to selective pressures.The word meme is a shortening (modeled on gene) of mimeme (from Ancient Greek μίμημα Greek pronunciation: [míːmɛːma] mīmēma, "imitated thing", from μιμεῖσθαιmimeisthai, "to imitate", from μῖμοςmimos "mime")[4] and it was coined by the British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene (1976)[1][5] as a concept for discussion of evolutionary principles in explaining the spread of ideas and cultural phenomena. Examples of memes given in the book included melodies, catch-phrases, fashion, and the technology of building arches.
- We run demographics analysis on the top clusters within each audience and identified higher demographic diversity in Gosling and Dove, and lower demographic diversity in Hadfield and Turksih
- To do this, we tracked a series of memesMemes can be of three kinds: single, serie, replicasWithin this typology we started looking at videos (but can be images, sounds, tweets, hashtags etc.)Within videos we differentiated by genre: music, news, ads, story----------------------Definition of memeA meme (/ˈmiːm/; meem)[1] is "an idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture."[2] A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols, or practices that can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena. Supporters of the concept regard memes as cultural analogues to genes in that they self-replicate, mutate, and respond to selective pressures.The word meme is a shortening (modeled on gene) of mimeme (from Ancient Greek μίμημα Greek pronunciation: [míːmɛːma] mīmēma, "imitated thing", from μιμεῖσθαιmimeisthai, "to imitate", from μῖμοςmimos "mime")[4] and it was coined by the British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene (1976)[1][5] as a concept for discussion of evolutionary principles in explaining the spread of ideas and cultural phenomena. Examples of memes given in the book included melodies, catch-phrases, fashion, and the technology of building arches.
- Pulsar is a new generation of social media analysis platform.The main idea behind it is that we don’t just look at the content of the conversation, we store and analyse everything around it, such as social graph, interest graph, behaviours of the author. Which gives us the most important thing in research for social media: contextSo with this technology, we can do a bunch of types of research in social media
- But most of these variables seem to correlateBased on these correlations,memes seem to spread according to two patterns of viralitySpikerHigher VolatilityFaster PeakHigher VelocityHigher ShareabilityShorter LifespanGrowerLower VolatilitySlower PeakLower VelocityLower ShareabilityLonger LifespanBut what makes a meme spread in one or the other way?We looked at the audience to answer this question.
- Emotion is the trigger, or impulse to share
- The impulse needs social validation in the shape of community relevanceA meme has to be relevant to a community in terms of topicality and timing
- Celebrity or media endorsement escalate the reach to the critical mass within a specific community, contributing to reaching the tipping point within a given audience.The tipping point is when every member of the audience is likely to receive the meme by another member of the audience
- When the escalation kicks in, the viral meme can develop as a spiker or as a grower.But it’s the social fabric of the audience of the meme that determines whether it’s going to be a spiker or a grower.And that’s why when planning a campaign, mapping the communities within your potential audience is key to find the right trigger, identify the right gatekeepers to escalate the diffusion and have the right strategy in place to support a spiking or a growing meme.