How Memes Spread Through Networks
Memes are an incredibly popular internet phenomenon, to the point that they are becoming increasingly common in offline life as well. They can be seen being used (and misused) in advertisements, Public Service Announcements and political movements, as well as by celebrities or politicians who wish to make themselves appealing the the young adult demographic among which memes are the most popular. An article by Forbes analyzes how memes spread, using Facebook as an example platform. A meme spreads when it is shared by another person, and can mutate into alternate versions of the same meme.
This memetic spread can be examined using the cascading effect model, where a node (in this case a person) adopts a certain behavior, or takes a certain action (in this case sharing or mutating the meme) if a certain percentage of their neighbors have done so as well. Memetic spread can be modeled this way because evidence shows that people rarely re-post the same meme twice; that is once they have posted it (adopted it), it is a final state. The initial state of Facebook as a social network is one where nobody has shared this particular meme. However, by some mechanism a few initial adopters will appear. If the meme was created on Facebook, initial adopters could be the creator and his or her friends and family. In the case where the meme came to Facebook from the outside, a similar mechanism might act causing people to share the meme on Facebook after viewing it on more specialized meme-viewing sites such as Reddit, 4chan or 9Gag.
The meme then spreads based on its q-value, which the Forbes article is related to its quality. The higher the quality of the meme, the lower the threshold of sharing will be (q will be lower). For example, a grammatically and orthographically correct meme will spread more easily than one containing mistakes in these areas. Playing the meme to a target audience, as well as giving it a “clickbait”-style title or caption can have a similar effect. However, where this differs slightly from the traditional model, as well as where it becomes interesting, is that the q-value of these memes can change as they spread. A meme is category of information rather than a specific picture or phrase. The same image captioned with different phrases is still considered to be the same meme. As such, adopters of the meme can change (mutate) the meme before passing it on, likely decreasing its q-value for their neighbors. For example, a person that views a meme with a spelling mistake might correct the mistake before sharing it. A bilingual person viewing a meme in one language might translate it into another, vastly decreasing its q for those neighbors that speak this language. An especially powerful example of this is parody, as mentioned in the Forbes article. Mutating an originally serious meme into a humorous one will make those who saw the original meme far more likely to share it, to the point that even people who shared the original can be convinced to share the parody again.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevecooper/2014/01/16/how-facebook-memes-evolve-and-spread/