Entropy and complexity unveil the landscape of memes evolution

On the Internet, information circulates fast and widely, and the form of content adapts to comply with users’ cognitive abilities. Memes are an emerging aspect of the internet system of signification, and their visual schemes evolve by adapting to a heterogeneous context. A fundamental question is w...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Scientific reports Vol. 11; no. 1; pp. 20022 - 9
Main Authors: Valensise, Carlo M., Serra, Alessandra, Galeazzi, Alessandro, Etta, Gabriele, Cinelli, Matteo, Quattrociocchi, Walter
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 08.10.2021
Nature Publishing Group
Nature Portfolio
Subjects:
639/766/259
639/766/530/2801
Clustering
Cognitive ability
Communication
Datasets
Entropy
Evolution
Humanities and Social Sciences
Humans
Hypotheses
Information Dissemination
Internet
Investigations
Language
Machine learning
multidisciplinary
Neural networks
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
Social Media
Social Networking
Social networks
ISSN:2045-2322, 2045-2322
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:On the Internet, information circulates fast and widely, and the form of content adapts to comply with users’ cognitive abilities. Memes are an emerging aspect of the internet system of signification, and their visual schemes evolve by adapting to a heterogeneous context. A fundamental question is whether they present culturally and temporally transcendent characteristics in their organizing principles. In this work, we study the evolution of 2 million visual memes published on Reddit over ten years, from 2011 to 2020, in terms of their statistical complexity and entropy. A combination of a deep neural network and a clustering algorithm is used to group memes according to the underlying templates. The grouping of memes is the cornerstone to trace the growth curve of these objects. We observe an exponential growth of the number of new created templates with a doubling time of approximately 6 months, and find that long-lasting templates are associated with strong early adoption. Notably, the creation of new memes is accompanied with an increased visual complexity of memes content, in a continuous effort to represent social trends and attitudes, that parallels a trend observed also in painting art.
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ISSN:2045-2322
2045-2322
DOI:10.1038/s41598-021-99468-6