We examined the influence of meme consistency (vs. inconsistency) and intragroup status on the spread of memes in virtual communities. Prior research suggests that information consistent with the theme of the group is remembered better and that ideas threatening to the group identity are rejected. In addition, previous research shows that low-status group members mimic high-status members and c...

We introduce the concept of Data Memes as artistic visuals of data in which users can merge data visualizations with an image such that the structure of the image supports the user’s intended meaning (or interpretation) of the data. Since Data Memes can represent very personal views, it is natural to employ them in the visualization of personal data. Hence, in this paper we focus on the use of ...

Although more blatant forms of discrimination have declined, racial prejudice continues to manifest itself in subtle ways. For example, People of Color experience racial microaggressions (i.e., subtle slights or ‘put downs’) in their face-to-face interactions (Nadal, 2011) and in online contexts (Clark et al., 2011). This study investigates whether experiencing subtle racial discrimination offl...

This paper re-examines the concept of ‘‘meme’’ in the context of digital culture. Defined as cultural units that spread from person to person, memes were debated long before the digital era. Yet the Internet turned the spread of memes into a highly visible practice, and the term has become an integral part of the netizen vernacular. After evaluating the promises and pitfalls of memes for unders...

Internet memes are phenomena that rapidly gain popularity or notoriety on the Internet. Often, modifications or spoofs add to the profile of the original idea thus turning it into a phenomenon that transgresses social and cultural boundaries. It is commonly assumed that Internet memes spread virally but scientific evidence as to this assumption is scarce. In this paper, we address this issue an...

In this article we examine the effects of the emergence of a new replicator, memes, on the evolution of a pre-existing replicator, genes. Using a version of the NKCS model we examine the effects of increasing the rate of meme evolution in relation to the rate of gene evolution, for various degrees of interdependence between the two replicators. That is, the effects of memes' (suggested) more ra...

A number of recent studies of information diffusion in social media, both empirical and theoretical, have been inspired by viral propagation models derived from epidemiology. These studies model the propagation of memes, i.e., pieces of information, between users in a social network similarly to the way diseases spread in human society. Importantly, one would expect a meme to spread in a social...

Memes have recently come into vogue in the context of 'viral' transmission of basic information units in online social networks. However, from their original general definition in a sociological context, there is still much work to be done from an information technology viewpoint. This includes such issues as how to process memes from real text corpus, formal definitions for knowledge represent...

Humorous images can be seen in many social media websites. However, newcomers to these websites often have trouble fitting in because the community subculture is usually implicit. Among all the types of humorous images, Internet memes are relatively hard for newcomers to understand. In this work, we develop a system that leverages crowdsourcing techniques to generate explanations for memes. We ...

We propose tools and methods to track visual memes on community-centric rich-media repositories, such as YouTube. Visual memes refer to frequently reposted short video segments. Our method can be used to monitor the reflections of real-world events in rich media, including images and videos. We first design a large-scale event-based social video collection system to continuously monitor events ...