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).
But really, when searching alone in the articles, participation, and you can mode qualities, there have been many parents with nonsignificant differences when considering the fresh mean inner and you can exterior preferred attributes. This was particularly so into the posts attribute. Merely 12 away from fifty meme household common more stuff characteristics for the loved ones. This means that, content functions have been shorter cohesive in most meme household. At the same time, during the family members was indeed articles try seen to be alot more cohesive, it had been including so much more book and you can unique.
Likewise, extremely meme group got male in addition to teenager and you may younger adult members because their well-known features. Most other age groups, eg older people, adults, babies, and kids as well as girls, celebrities, and particularly creature members had been way more special to particular meme parents. In the end, when it comes to function, most meme family members made use of straightforward photo which have text or movies. Meme family members in which setting try significantly more natural shared remix and graphic manipulation plus acronyms and you can wordplay.
The brand new connection ranging from cohesiveness and 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 = Gamer singles dating site.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.