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Thesis Survival of the Fittest THESIS SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST: AN EXAMINATION OF THE HIGH PARK FIRE NEWS MEME LIFECYCLE ON NEWS ORGANIZATIONS' FACEBOOK AND WEB PAGES Submitted by Angela Shugarts Department of Journalism and Technical Communication In partial fulfillment of the requirements For the Degree of Master of Science Colorado State University Fort Collins, Colorado Spring 2013 Master's Committee: Advisor: Jamie Switzer Pete Seel Chad Hoffman Copyright by Angela Shugarts 2013 All Rights Reserved ABSTRACT SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST: AN EXAMINATION OF THE HIGH PARK FIRE NEWS MEME LIFECYCLE ON NEWS ORGANIZATIONS' FACEBOOK AND WEB PAGES This study employs a mixed methods content analysis of 14 news organization's Facebook and website posts of the High Park fire news meme to identify the reasons behind how and why news memes propagate within social media and news website environments. This study gauges the feasibility of forecasting the spread of online news content based on specific features including photos, videos, article length, and span of time. News memes are defined as cultural units of information presented as written text, images, or videos whose existence is determined by the frequent behaviors of imitation and transmission, produced by media personnel from news organizations. The field of memetics, social media, and normative theories of the media serve as foundational areas for this study which extends the knowledge of the emerging domain of web memetics, which seeks to identify and track the evolution, spread, and implications of news memes by media personnel. Results show that specific characteristics (i.e. text, links, and photos) contributed to news meme propagation via reader comment contributions and likes. Additionally, results indicate that website environments are more frequent platforms for news memes to exist and thus perhaps more nurturing environments for High Park fire news memes to propagate within. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT .................................................................................................................................... ii LIST OF TABLES ...........................................................................................................................v LIST OF FIGURES ....................................................................................................................... vi Introduction ......................................................................................................................................1 Statement of the problem ............................................................................................................3 Purpose and Rationale .................................................................................................................7 Literature Review......................................................................................................................11 Meme Theory ............................................................................................................................11 Definition of Meme...................................................................................................................15 Meme Environments .................................................................................................................20 The News Meme .......................................................................................................................21 News Memes and Media Platforms ..........................................................................................24 Facebook ...................................................................................................................................27 Concept Map .............................................................................................................................29 Research Questions ...................................................................................................................30 Methods..........................................................................................................................................32 Content Analysis Overview ......................................................................................................34 Why Mixed Methods?...............................................................................................................35 Artifact Selection ......................................................................................................................37 Sampling Rationale ...................................................................................................................38 Artifact Retrieval and Archiving ..............................................................................................38 Variables ...................................................................................................................................39 Codebook ..................................................................................................................................40 Coding Pretest, Intercoder Reliability, and Validity .................................................................45 Pretest Results ...........................................................................................................................46 Reliability and Validity .............................................................................................................48 Results ............................................................................................................................................47 Data Analysis ............................................................................................................................52 Measurement of Meme Characteristics ....................................................................................53 Relationship Between Fidelity and Fecundity Characteristics .................................................57 Outlier Data Results ..................................................................................................................59 Discussion ......................................................................................................................................66 Prominent News Meme Features ..............................................................................................66 Multiple Feature Comparisons ..................................................................................................67 Comment Types and Likes .......................................................................................................68 Visual Typology........................................................................................................................69 Longevity ..................................................................................................................................70 Connection to Meme Theory ....................................................................................................71 iii Research Questions Answered .......................................................................................................72 Conclusion .....................................................................................................................................76 Study limitations and future research recommendations ...............................................................77 REFERENCES ..............................................................................................................................78 APPENDICES ...............................................................................................................................84 iv LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Contingency table for Scott's Pi reliability statistic calculations .................................... 43 Table 2: Example of contingency table of comments and likes ................................................... 49 Table 3: Chi Square results of statistical significance between comment types and likes (original data set) ......................................................................................................................................... 50 Table 4: Chi Square results of statistical significance between comment types and likes (outliers eliminated) .................................................................................................................................... 51 Table 5: Relationship between posts and article length ................................................................ 58 Table 6: Relationship between posts and fidelity characteristics ................................................. 59 Table 7: Relationship between fidelity characteristics and fecundity characteristics ................... 59 Table 8: Relationship between fidelity characteristic posts, comments, and likes ....................... 60 Table 9: Relationship between comment types and likes ............................................................. 60 Table 10: Relationship between fidelity characteristics and fecundity characteristics (outliers eliminated) .................................................................................................................................... 62 Table 11: Relationship between fidelity characteristics, comments, likes (outliers eliminated) .. 63 Table 12: Relationship between comment types and likes ..........................................................
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