The development of classes and you can a good pilot precision try survived step 3 days, when go out new codebook is altered several times. To take to reliability, several programmers (graduate college students) individually coded a batch from one hundred randomly picked meme days (about ten% of your try). The fresh agreement rates are tested making use of the Krippendorff ( 2004b ) try, with .66 since the minimum rating to simply accept a varying while the recommended (Krippendorff, 2004a ). In the course of time, one or two parameters, subculture (content) and you can photo record (form) obtained an inadequate get, and were taken off the brand new codebook, making 48 details to your real programming (Get a hold of also for the complete codebook of your own general features into the the data). Immediately after precision had been built, the remainder try is actually split between the two coders.
Network research
I functioning community studies procedure (Barabasi & Frangos, 2002 ; Newman, Barabasi, & Watts, 2006 ) to chart the content, participation, and you can function similarities ranging from meme circumstances as well as their cohesiveness. Our very own actors on network were the latest meme occasions, and their undirected ties was the common blogs, involvement, and you will mode functions. Eg, if the meme circumstances A 
and B show about three simple attributes from inside the preferred, their tie perform weight three. I built around three separate undirected networks for stuff, setting, and you can participation, plus a network that mixes most of the facets with her. The latter signifies the entire distance certainly one of meme times inside our shot.
Circle data permitted distinguishing the quintessential main meme occasions, this means, those people that shared the highest amount of posts, participation, and you can form functions with people, together with people who was indeed a whole lot more peripheral, for example had novel or rare features ( ). Likewise, taking a look at the general construction of your circle, we could select groups off meme era with high cohesiveness of articles, participation, and you can function. We could following check hence meme group was in fact more cohesive than simply anybody else and you will show the link anywhere between universal characteristics and you can family cohesiveness.
Calculating the fresh new cohesiveness out of meme parents
Structural cohesion into the channels possess certain dimensions (White & Harary, 2001 ). We find the most straightforward that, and you may opposed the brand new connections certainly one of instances of a comparable family having connections outside the relatives. The fresh cohesiveness varying was created to discuss about what the quantity meme occasions had been exactly like other period about exact same family members within the terms of simple articles, contribution, and you can means. First, we computed the newest circle degree (Barabasi & Frangos, 2002 ; Newman, Barabasi, & Watts, 2006 ) of every meme instance, i.e., what number of popular articles, participation, and you can function features so it shared with other occasions in the same relatives with circumstances from other parents. Then, for every of the 50 meme parents within our test, i calculated brand new indicate number of popular characteristics their occasions common contained in this and you may beyond your family. Fundamentally, the cohesiveness adjustable try defined as the real difference throughout the suggest number of popular services within and you will external a good meme family unit members.
Computing the newest individuality from meme parents
The new dimension of individuality peak was designed to mention how unique an excellent meme nearest and dearest was at regards to their universal blogs, involvement, and you can form characteristics. To phrase it differently, individuality level shown the brand new gap between your universal popular features of an effective meme family unit members in addition to popular (typically the most popular simple attributes from the entire sample). First, i calculated the latest percentage of content, contribution, and you may setting characteristics from inside the for each and every family; second, we calculated the newest portion of each feature regarding whole test; and finally, for every meme family unit members, we determined the latest square-root of your own sum of the fresh new square differences when considering both (such as the newest algorithm to have simple departure). This is standard in order to cover anything from 0 and you may 1, in which 1 represents the greatest uniqueness away from a beneficial meme friends into the terms of its generic characteristics.