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Quezon City 1107, Philippines
Memes in Social Media Platforms and its Effect on the Selected Humanities and
Social Sciences Students’ Conversational and Vocabulary Skills at New Era
University
S.Y: 2019-2020
Ayson, Ires Weyne B.
Dizon, Dana M.
Garcia, Shaine Z.
Naquita, Joemayleen L.
Ramirez, Ashley Branzel C.
Rosellosa, Khim Jade S.
Solayao, Bianca
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INTRODUCTION
Nowadays, memes are influential form of media as it continue to become popular in
various social media platforms. Social media users such as students, workers, people who
like to browse the internet, tend to apply this kind of media in their lives unconsciously.
Memes are types of media that have different kinds of connotations that need common
sense although it sometimes has several different meanings depending on its context.
Memes are mainstream media forms which students at this time are very familiar with.
Studying this social case on how Memes influence students in communicating with
people, ways they adapt memes on their conversations and how they use this types of
media in their daily interactions can help in raising awareness regarding the integration of
Memes.
An Internet meme is a concept or idea that spreads from one person to another
through the social media platforms. A meme could be anything from an image to a video
file. However, the most common meme is an image of a person or animal with a funny or
witty caption. The term meme was first introduced by Richard Dawkins in 1976 in his
book "The Selfish Gene" by presenting the cultural way information spreads while Mike
Godwin was the first proponent of the concept of Internet Meme in June 1993 in issue of
Wired.
Internet users or netizens are hooked by the creative creations of Millennials and
Generation Z called memes. Through this, netizens have mutual understanding with their
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unified and collective ideas about social media viral and trends. Memes are not just in
internet world but also they are adapted and integrated in the real world by the means of
applying memes into daily conversations.
The research is conducted to provide the significant effect of Memes on the daily
conversational and vocabulary skills of the selected Grade 12 Humanities and Social
Sciences students at New Era University.
OBJECTIVES
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This study aims to asses the integration of Memes in Social Media platforms on the
vocabulary and conversational skills of students. Specifically, this study aims to inquire
about the demographic profile of the respondents in terms of gender and section. To
determine the factors that affects students’ conversational and vocabulary skills and to
identify other cognitive reverberations it inputs to the student vis-a-vis the memes they
consume. And finally, the finding of this study will be utilized to propose a guide to raise
students’ awareness regarding the integration of Memes on their daily conversations.
NULL HYPOTHESIS
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The Memes in Social Media platforms has no significant relationship on the
vocabulary and conversational skills of the selected Grade 12 Humanities and Social

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SCOPE AND LIMITATION
This study will focus solely on the effect and impact of using memes on the daily
conversational and vocabulary skills of students. It is intended to determine how a student
who knows or uses memes applies it in his daily conversations and how it affects the way
he interacts with other people whether in verbal or written communication.
Moreover, the study is also conducted to distinguish the relevance of memes in
enhancing and broadening the vocabulary range of a student as well as his ways in
engaging socialization. The respondents of this study are the selected Grade 12 Humanities
and Social Sciences students at New Era University during the school year 2019-2020.
This study, however, does not intend to interfere with the effects of excessive usage
of memes in conversations. Furthermore, this study will not be able to discuss the roles
and functions of memes as well as its application on the academic field.
SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

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This study was conducted to determine the implication of memes in various social
media platforms to the students’ conversational and vocabulary skills. The study will
provide a deeper understanding of the integration and adaptaion of memes on
conversations.
With the help of this study, memes in social media platforms and its effects on the
conversational and vocabulary skills can thereby benefit the following:
Readers will know the effects of memes and how it influence students on
their daily interactions.
Students will be aware that memes are becoming a medium of communication
while they are having a discourse with other people.
Parents will understand what their children are pertaining to when they speak
to other people of the same age as them and to avoid confusion and vague
interpretation of memes.
Professors can catch up and evaluate the students’ level of conversational
and vocabulary skills.
Social Media Users will be able to learn the adaptation and integration of
memes on the way they communicate.
Future Researchers will have the opportunity to apply this knowledge and
expertise that they have learned from this study.

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Language Communicators can expand the medium and ways of
interaction through media.
Therefore, we expect from this study to enhance the understanding of students on
how memes in social media platforms affect their conversational and vocabulary skills
when they interact with other people.
DEFINITION OF TERMS
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The researchers of this study provided the operational definitions of the following
terms based on the usage of the words in this study.
Memes are pictures or videos of sorts combined with text which is spread via the
World Wide Web to communicate jokes, behavior, ideas, or feelings.
Social Media are forms of electronic communication mechanisms such as social
networking websites through which users create online communities for sharing
information, ideas, personal messages, images and videos.
Netizens or citizen of the internet is an active participant in online communities
or the internet in general.
Millennials are people reaching young adulthood in the early 21st century. They
grew up in an increasingly digital and socially networked world filled with electronics.
Generation Z is the demographic cohort succeeding the Millennials.
Demographers and researchers typically use the year 1995 as starting birth years.
Platform is a group of technologies that are used as a base upon which other
applications, processes or technologies, are developed.
Conversational skills are effectively communicating ideas to others, which are
essential in order to deliver and understand information quickly and accurately.
Vocabulary is the range of language either used or understood by a person or
group of people.
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Interaction is a process that occurs as two or more people have an effect upon
one another. The idea of two-way effect is essential in the concept of interaction.
Socialization is the act of adapting behavior to the norms of a culture or society.
It is the process whereby an individual learns to adjust a group or society and behave
in a manner that that is accepted in a society.
Integration is the act of combining or adding parts to make a unified whole.
CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
Social Media Platforms

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MEMES
Students
Conversational Vocabulary
Skills Skills
Effect on Daily
Interactions
Figure 1: Illustrates the Researchers’ Conceptual Framework

This framework illustrates that memes in social media platforms affect the students’
conversational and vocabulary skills in ways they adapts memes on their daily interactions
with other people. Henceforth, the researchers claim that the use of memes to amuse and
vent out annoyance and frustrations in a humorous way are influencing factors to the
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students' conversational and vocabulary skills. Nowadays, memes are constantly changing
and emerging, which can result in many different ways it influence and impact students.
In the illustration, the double-bladed arrow between the social media platforms and
memes shows the relationship of the two. Thus, the correlational relationship of memes in
social media platforms has brought its impact on the students. The researcher made us of
a straight line to show the two independent variables. We used a single bladed arrow to
easily distinguish the effect of the in the dependent variable which are the students and
how the independent variables conversational and vocabulary skills affect their daily
interactions.
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
Jakub Nowak's theory of multiparticipant popular content (2016), explores the
significant changes in the sphere of new media usage. The process makes modern media
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studies both interesting and quite difficult, as the rapid development of new (digital) media
is occurring along-side deep structural transformations in the media and culture. Nowak
(2016), proposed a theoretical model of internet meme perceived as multiparticipant online
content and analytically review shifts in the roles of media audiences given increasingly
participation-oriented media tools.
Internet memes provide a lot of recreations which make students spend longer time
browsing the internet that they begin to adapt memes in communication and soon become
applied as their inventive skills. Moreover, social media contributes in giving information
and entertainment that can generate negative outputs as well as inappropriate memes.
Positive memes deliver humorous concept and serve as entertainment that makes students
more creative, constructive and productive. It educes logical and analytical thinking that
will help students develop their critical thinking abilities.
As students adapt memes in their conversational and vocabulary skills, it serves as
an entertainment to amuse themselves and drift them away from feeling frustrated and
irritated. It also urges their capacity to think creatively in producing a meme content along
with witty captions. A student's effective communication skills allow him to communicate
with others through mutual understanding of memes that makes conversation a lot easier.
Memes which students may find relatable can also develop their sense of humor and put
them in a better and lighter mood.

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Chapter 1
REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

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IMPACT OF STATUS AND MEME CONTENT ON THE SPREAD OF MEMES
IN VIRTUAL COMMUNITIES
The popular usage of the meme concept is synonymous with the spread of funny
words or phrases or Internet pictures or videos. However, this definition is narrower than
the original meaning of the word and therefore scholars have begun to use the term
“Internet meme” defined as “a piece of culture, typically a joke, which gains influence
through online transmission” (Davison, 2012). Thus, manipulating and sharing a picture
on the Internet and imitating the language of another user in a post are examples of
information transmission and transfer. “When the meme is altered, either from
transmission errors or recombination with existing ideas, variation occurs (p. 149).
Variations from either transmission errors or through recombination with other ideas can
produce a new meme (although the point where a variation becomes a new meme is
difficult to pinpoint). A meme that is successfully expressed and transmitted goes through
the cycle again in another individual’s brain.
Memes is a widely connection of exchanging ideas from online world into personal
thoughts though different in interpretation depends on the person's delivery. As it was said
that internet memes revived public attention, it is because internet is used worldwide and
netizens are socially and actively communicating and is curious of what are trends.
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THE ROLE OF INTERNET MEMES IN SHAPING YOUNG PEOPLE'S
HEALTH-RELATED SOCIAL MEDIA INTERACTIONS
Understanding how social media influences knowledge and behaviour is even more
challenging given that this medium is in a constant flux of change. New platforms,
functions, and features are frequently introduced and adopted in youth culture (Miller et
al. 2016). Pertaining to the youth, memes are popular to them and so they quickly adapt
even the continuous alterations of memes. It affects their knowledge, either a positive or a
negative influence and behavior. It is a matter of social media usage and how will youth
apply it in their interconnection and interaction. Because of new social media platform's
presence, youth continuously conform as they correspond to it.
Despite young people’s prolific engagement with social media, we, like others
(Buckingham 2016; Hopkins 2010), are cautious of referring to the current generation as
digital ‘natives’ or a digital youth generation. Nonetheless, we suggest that young people’s
very specific levels and forms of expertise in social media use should be recognised and
accommodated. It is clear that young people are avid users and drivers of this
contemporary, participatory, and user-driven online culture and, to this extent, they can be
understood as highly skilled and knowledgeable. Understanding the ways in which young
people use social media as a space for communication, entertainment, and learning could
certainly challenge the social and cultural norms and expectations of adults (Ito et al. 2010;
Livingstone et al. 2018). If people apply this through acquiring a meme, little by little they
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will acquire unique idea that will make them have fun and at the same time, gives them
high intelligence quotient but a different interpretation of youths and adults.
To understand how to better support young people’s engagement with health-related
social media, we argue that there is a need to learn from the experiences of young people.
Any new guidelines or proposed interventions must chime with young people’s needs and
the ways in which they engage with social media. Developmentally, we know that
adolescence is characterised by dynamic brain development and that interaction with the
social environment shapes the capabilities an individual takes forward into adult life
(Patton et al. 2016).
"ONE DOES NOT SIMPLY SEND MEMES" - PERFORMATIVITY OF
INTERNET MEMES IN SYNCHRONOUS MEDIATED COMMUNICATION
Several scholars have recognized the importance of researching the Internet, in
particular with regard to two issues: 1. If they actually act as memes or not; 2. if they
constitute trivial and uncultural reality. First, according with Davison (2012) and Shifman
(2013a; 2013b), internet memes are a good example of successful cultural replication and
they follow the systematic mechanism of transmission. They also well exemplify the
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difference in speed between genes and memes: “compared to genetic changes (which span
generations upon generations), memetic changes happen in the blink of an eye. Internet
memes are even faster” (Davison 2012:122). On the other hand, some differences are
recognized: in particular, Shifman (2013a), addressing the debate on the “deterministic
inclination” of Dawkins’ theory, highlights the active role of users in the transmission. He
yet defends the use of the term meme: not only it “is a great meme” itself "enthusiastically
picked up by internet users", but there is also “a fundamental compatibility between the
term ‘meme’, as Dawkins formulated it, and the way contemporary participatory culture
works” (Jenkins 2014a). Shifman supports the possibility to move from extreme
acceptations of the analogy with the genes to a “social/cultural perspective” (2013a:365).
The cultural perspective assumes an interesting role also in acknowledging the value of
internet memes as social phenomenon. One first argument is related to the application of
the concept of cultural industry: despite the humorous and often vulgar function of internet
memes, it is important to identify the value of specific processes of production (Chen
2012), which are central in present popular culture and sometimes can also reach offline
sector of mainstream culture. Moreover, maybe interesting to analyze business companies
directly related with internet media.
The last two aspects concerning the cultural relevance are more related to the
communicative dimension of internet meme, which involves the production of languages
and meanings into specific groups. Both the passive use and the active production of
internet meme include specific subcultural codes and norms, which often evolve from
smaller user communities, and thus cannot be always understood by the broader public,
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especially if not active online (Shifman 2013b). Starting Marco Ciorli from the simpler
Emoticon to the very common Image Macros, there is a set of stylistic rules for using
internet memes, as well as a common knowledge for their successful decoding. For
example, Chris (2015) analysis the case of the image macro “One does not simply…X”,
in terms of digital habitus. Mitt Romney’s odd phrase “binders full of women”, has been
used for a “current event meme” (Figure 1), based on the typecast meme of Boromir, from
the movie “The Lord of the Rings”, who says “One does not simply walk into Mordor”.
The latter generally describes something surprisingly difficult to do and/or that isn't
just a simple action. To understand, it is necessary to know this memory, the movie and
this sort of dynamic as well as to know the original phrase of Romney.
Internet memes are also characterized by their own terminology (e.g. "herp derp," "le
me" or graphical codifications themselves). We build "provinces of sense," make
distinctions (in Bourdieu terms) and offer participation in a social community that is more
or less institutionalized. The access to these groups, as well stated by Chris (2015), should
be understood in terms of social capital, achieved through experience and memetic
production. The role of internet meme in the production of collective identities may go
definitely behind the mere entertainment. Noam, Shifman and Kampf (2016), for instance,
have analyzed the case of the “It Gets Better” campaign on the themes of homophobic
bullying and suicides of gay teens, while Chen (2012) has highlighted the connection
between some internet memes and political positions such as Anonymous’ one.
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THE EFFECT OF HUMOUR ON VIRALITY: THE STUDY OF INTERNET
MEMES ON SOCIAL MEDIA
In the 21st century, the growth of social networking sites and blogs has changed
communications significantly. Social media is the Internet and web-based platform
designed to encourage social interaction of user-generated contents between individuals,
groups, and organisations (Mills, 2012; Kaplan & Haenlein, 2011). According to Mills
(2012), social media enables the communication transformation from broadcasting (one to
many) into social dialogues (many to many) through the networks of active users (Kilian,
Hennigs, & Langner, 2012). The advent of social media therefore transformed users'
position from the consumer to the creator of content.
Harlow (2013), states that “In the digital era, the online social media and
communication have evolved into a broader collective dimension, which transcends
different platforms, reaching new authors and audiences.” The boundaries between several
actors in the social network are blurred; the difference between professional/amateur,
bottom-up/top-down is not as clear as in the past (Shifman, 2013). The younger
generations now have different media views than their parents.
Digital natives or Millennials, the generation that were born after 1982 (Oblinger,
2003; Prensky, 2003), are attracted to social media because it can satisfy different needs
they have. According to Kilian et al (2012), motives for media uses are (1) Information:
information and advice seeking, satisfying curiosity (2) Integration and Social Integration:
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gaining sense of belonging, connection with family, friends, society (3) Personal Identity:
personal value reinforcement and (4) Entertainment: relaxation, emotional release.
Humor is one of the key elements of social media digital interaction, because it tends
to fulfill the most, if not all, the needs stated. Social media users are engaging in humorous
content more than ever, and the effort has contributed to a viral impact or virality, in which
people become consumers by spreading the message to others within their networks. The
Internet memes are the tool often used to canalize laughter.
This study focuses on the Internet via the social media, Facebook. The definition and
characteristics of memes are examined in this section. The authors have provided some
examples of the articles and addressed the principle of propagation (virality).
The contagious or viral process where memetic ideas move between ideas via texts,
objects, images, sound, or behaviours is also called diffusion (Sci & Dare, 2014). Memes
are viewed figuratively as organic objects because they are selfishly driven to survive by
replicating, circulating, and evolving in order to capture public attention (Sci & Dare,
2014).
Memes can carry cultural patterns from religions and political belief such as
Communism to more transient fads such as catch phrases and fashion (Hahner, 2013).
From the examples mentioned, the advancement and proliferation of digital
technology and social media evidently drove the birth and development of memes in the
digital era (Sci & Dare, 2014). The Internet meme is a term commonly applied to the
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propagation or spread of digital and online contents such as jokes, images, rumours,
videos, or websites from person to others via the Internet (Shifman, 2013). The
phenomenon is also helped by the user-generated websites and social media such as
Reddit, Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube (Sci & Dare, 2014).
Characteristics of memes
The study of memes is initially called the science of memetics (Hahner, 2013). When
memes travelled from person to person, they exert influence over what we believe, want,
and do. Memes, like genes, undergo the processes of variation, competition, selection, and
retention. They also compete among themselves for the attention of hosts or people
(Shifman, 2013). Memes that are suited to the environment spread successfully while
others become extinct (Shifman, 2013). Furthermore, powerful memes, desirable or
undesirable, can be replicated consciously or unconsciously. Shifman (2013) concluded
the three attributes of memes.
(1) Cultural Information: memes are cultural information that began as a single
event and gradually scale into a shared social phenomenon.
(2) Imitation: memes are reproduced by various means of imitation; copying,
mimicking, remixing, or repackaging.
(3) Competition and Selection: memes have varying degrees of fitness to the
sociocultural environment that makes them survive or extinct. The analogies of meme
are based on the biological concepts of viruses and genes.

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Both the analogies are valid and have flaws in the definitio of the memes. Meme-as-
virus comparison considers Memes as infection agents capable of propagating from
individual to individual. That metaphor, however, seems to be a weak, passive person who
is vulnerable to infectious diseases that pervade their minds. Meme-as-gene analogy
focuses on the evolutionary characteristics of gene but the analogy fell short because
memes behave very differently and are seemingly more complex than biological genes
(Shifman 2013).
According to Shifman (2013), memes should not be looked upon as singular ideas
but cultural items that employ three dimensions; content, form, and stance. The first
dimension is content, referring to the ideas and the ideologies conveyed. Form is the
physical incarnation of the message, visual, audio, animation, etc. Lastly, stance is the
ways in which addressers position themselves in relation to the content (Shifman, 2013).
UTILIZING MEMES TO PROMOTE STUDENTS’ MOTIVATION IN

LANGUAGE CLASSROOM
The basic definition of meme is something that is transmitted from person to person.
This particular something can take diverse kind of forms: idea, instruction, behavior, or a
fragment of information. The word meme is coined by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book,
The Selfish Gene, as an attempt to explain the way cultural information spreads (Shifman,
2014).
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Initially a concept, meme's photos, video, hashtags, songs, and many more,
are widely spread via social network, blogs or emails as a result of rapid internets advances.
Later a new type of memes, Internet memes, is created through communication between
memes and the Web. Internet Memes are a variation of this general concept of Meme that
blends into the Internet's culture and environment. The concept of the internet meme is
first proposed by Mike Godwin in June 1993. Later on, in 2013, Dawkins characterizes an
internet meme as a meme which is being deliberately altered by human creativity.
Memes provide a powerful new way to combine few things such as creativity, art,
message, and humor in the internet culture (Kariko, 2012). In educational field, memes are
not something uncommon. As cited in Kariko (2012), Scott Stillar, an English teacher at
the University of Tsukuba in Japan, thinks that one type of internet memes, the Rage
comics, is one of great ways to teach the English language. Rage comics are cartoons using
an ever-growing set of internet memes. They contain faces and expressions – cold, anger,
loss, disappointment, joy, accomplishment and fear, so that common sentiments and
emotions of various degrees can be seen in many circumstancesRage comics are therefore
used to express laughter experiences.
Kariko’s (2012) study examines how students use their creativity in employing these
memes. The research by Kariko explores how web users define internet memoirs, by
deconstructing what internet meme is and what it is doing. Analyze how the relationships
between images, text and meanings interconnect to form social messages, political
messages, and universal emotions or just to make humor and entertainment for its users.
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Kariko examines five samples of internet memes taken from the internet and decodes their
relation between images, texts, and meanings using semiotics. These samples are then
introduced as writing assignments to: a) two BINUS University’s English department
classes, and b) one Global English Class. The study reveals that humor and creativity in
using internet memes are related to the students’ achievement in their studies.
Teachers had the new challenge to recognize and improve appropriate instruction for their
students. It was a very necessary task-based on technology, indiscussably unlike our
students, known as "Digital Natives". The researchers have therefore presented a new
approach that can match this concept. Meme was a product of digital world and as a part
of community of Digital Natives, students were very much addicted to visual things
(Kleinschmit, 2015). The production of Memes can renew the very limited student
attention. Memes reflect preferences of digital natives to graphics before and not before
text, before graphics text. The Digital Natives undoubtedly favoured a joyous pursuit with
their high perseverance for immediate satisfaction and flood bonuses. An activity often
recognized as fun and less serious. They asked educators to build a specific learning
atmosphere in which they can increase their level of performance and motivation. This
was an excellent opportunity for teachers or educators to connect second-language skills
and the desired performance results of students. Motivation should not be overlooked to
succeed in the learning process. The example of authentic materials was taken by Meme.
This offered students valuable learning material as they created their masterpiece, a term
based on their experience and reality.

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USE HUMOR TO IMPROVE STUDENT LEARNING
"Memes are very popular with students, making them a very relatable and engaging
medium (Quality Matters, 2018). And since memes are fun, students may not even realize
they are learning.” Students use both creative and critical-thinking skills while creating
memes. Memes can also spark complex conversations since they often deal with current
events or social issues. Also, learners adopt certain technology skills throughout their
awareness. Students can create memes to define or use new vocabulary.
WHAT STUDENT PROBLEM MEMES TELL US ABOUT STUDENT LIFE
TODAY
Memes have been established as objects that bear meaning beyond mere internet
frivolity. Studies in vernacular cultures have framed memes as “the propagation of
content items such as jokes, rumours, videos, or websites from one person to others,” and
as a form of “pop polyvocality” or a “pop cultural tongue that facilitate[s] the diverse
engagement of many voices.” Other studies from media and communications have found
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that memes are a “shared social phenomenon,” and still others from the socio-cultural
perspective have asserted them as a “common instrument for establishing normativity.”
Student Problem memes characterise the average student as one who is overwhelmed,
stressed, and ashamed. In these narratives, “the primary directive is to display and
highlight one’s agony to solicit acknowledgement and publicity rather than to seek
practical solutions.” This is especially because the tone of the memes frame student
problems as ubiquitous, impossible to change, and an inescapable experience of student
life, to the extent that the only option is to endure the agony. "
Apart from communicating student pain, the overtone of successful student problem
memes that register high circulation and reaction from users tend to convey self-
deprecating humour. Meme producers use self-deprecating humour to craft a flexible
repertoire of potential interpretations to amplify their meme’s resonance with a potential
audience. For the more casual users who may only glean the surface of a meme for humour
– unaware of the subtext and code-switching in which structural and generational problems
of student life are embedded – student problem memes may come across as mere humour.
Further, self-deprecating humour is usually employed in tandem with the rhetorical
device of exaggeration as silliness, enabling students to comment on the severity of their
problems from a more emotionally-distant and consequentially-safe space.
…between the self-exposed vulnerability of student struggles and the self-
celebratory irony of competitive memeing, students demonstrate a meta-commentary

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of powerlessness and loss-of-control by using internet media and lexicon to
communicate that memes are all they have to convey and cope with their pain.
As vehicles of emotive visual display, student problem memes allowed users to build
a sense of community, camaraderie, and commiseration, albeit clouded in the language of
humour and wit.
MEMES: WHAT ARE THEY AND WHY THEY ARE IMPORTANT
"Meme (pronounced /’miːm/, me-mm) describes a basic unit of cultural idea or
symbol that can be transmitted from one mind to another and, inherently, everyone
knows what memes are. In our everyday lives we live with memes; for example,
catchphrases and clichés often serve the purpose translating non-literal, cultural ideas,
while similes and metaphors hint at what words portray. Those are all memes (Wu,
2013)."
Memes are now part of our everyday lives, mostly on the teenagers because it is what
they are learning from the internet or social media platforms. Memes has a wide variety of
topics. That's why students nowadays use memes as their new way of communicating.
"The reason is: we live in a different time, where culture and international exchange
is pervasive, especially with technology closing that gap. And, precisely because of this,
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as well as the emergence of the Internet society, multifaceted, non-standardized memes
emerge to take the role for cultural and sub-cultural descriptors."
What’s fascinating about the present meme culture is its dependency on virality. If it
lacks the audience and their appreciation (either on the positive or negative spectrum), then
it will simply fade into obscurity. Presently, although an Internet meme is often correlated
with pictures with offensive or funny taglines, it has proliferated for a much longer time.
The intricacies of a meme lies in what the masses find appropriate to express an idea,
regardless how simple or pointless it may be.
MEME TEMPLATES AS EXPRESSIVE REPERTOIRES IN A GLOBALIZING
WORLD: A CROSS-LINGUISTIC STUDY
The significance of Internet memes is rooted, to a certain extent, in their apparent lack
of significance. As small pieces of content that are mundanely passed around by Internet
users, memes do much more then entertain; indeed, a growing body of research has
demonstrated that they are used for an array of purposes such as emotional expression,
community building, and political protest (Milner, 2016; Shifman, 2013). While memes
have been filling such roles in an expanding list of locales (Ekdale & Tully, 2013; Mina,
2014; Pearce, 2015; Wiggins, 2016), to date their modes of appearance across the world
have not been examined comparatively.

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Meme templates as glocal expressive repertoires
The term “meme” was coined by Richard Dawkins as a cultural parallel to genes.
According to his conception, a meme is a cultural unit that is spread from one person to
another through copying and imitation. Recently, the term has been adopted to mark the
more specific phenomenon of Internet memes: groups of digital items sharing common
characteristics, created with awareness of each other (Shifman, 2013). An Internet meme
is thus comprised of multiple related instances; its creators take an item (text, image, or
video) and change parts of it to input their own ideas, while keeping a consistent
resemblance to the memetic group (Milner, 2016; Wiggins & Bowers, 2014). This
dynamic locates Internet memes between individual and collective creation. Memetic
templates are essentially collective, as they are formulated among members of
communities or groups with common cultural knowledge and affinities (Burgess, 2008).
In fact, the ability to understand a meme instance often requires knowledge of cultural
conventions, and those who do not follow its template in a satisfactory manner are likely
to be ignored or punished (Miltner, 2014; Nissenbaum & Shifman, 2017). Yet, individual
input is required to create different instances of a meme and authors use the memetic
template to express personal experiences or identities (Phillips & Milner, 2017). In short,
memes allow the individual to use a collectively created template to deliver a personalized
message. Drawing on the aforementioned literature and the collective/individual

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interdependence it describes, we argue that Internet memes ultimately present a limited
range of expressive options at any given time and place. Although the memetic sphere is
continuously evolving and changing so that memes can be applied to communicate a
diverse array of ideas, being template-based, they are still limited and thus limit those using
them. In this sense, we suggest viewing Internet memes as an expressive repertoire, which
is collectively authored and developed as a means of communication. In a broad
metaphorical sense, Internet memes are akin to De Saussure’s foundational structural ideas
concerning language. Meme templates can be seen as a parallel to langue; socially
constructed and systematic, they create a binding structure for expression, while directing
its range of possibilities. Meme instances—specific items created and shared on the web—
are thus the parole, an individual expression of a personal message that relies on social
constructs and their structures. Building on this idea, our comparative analysis of memetic
templates aims to reveal such repertoires and the cultural choices and power relations that
compose them. While memetic culture’s historical foundations are by and large American
or Western (Milner, 2016), this phenomenon has now reached many other parts of the
globe and its impact has been studied in countries as far flung as China, Chile, Azerbaijan,
Russia, and Kenya (Ekdale & Tully, 2013; Miller et al., 2016; Mina, 2014; Pearce, 2015).
Memes can thus be analyzed as potential agents in processes of globalization. A simple
account of this contested concept would depict globalization as “transplanetary process(es)
involving increasing liquidity and growing multi-directional flows as well as the structures
they encounter and create” (Ritzer, 2011, p. 2). At the same time, however, globalization
is marked by inequality and favors the dominant and powerful West. In the cultural sphere,
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the notion of globalization has been challenged by concepts such as “glocalization,” which
argues that the global does not replace the local but rather interacts and intertwines with
it. These cross-national flows and ensuing interconnections have been enhanced in the
digital era, which facilitates new forms of user generated globalization and localization
(BoxmanShabtai & Shifman, 2016). Thus far, studies on memes’ global attributes and
dynamics have been limited to specific locations and have not taken on the fully
comparative view needed to investigate their dynamic at a global level. The nearest
parallels are cross-cultural studies about jokes (Shifman, Levy, & Thelwall, 2014), but
these refer only to verbal content and exclude the multimodality prevalent in current digital
spheres. The implementation of such an analysis requires specific traceable components
that align with those typifying memetic spread: form, content, and stance (Shifman, 2013).
While form is fairly simple to assess, content and stance are broader and thus required a
more concrete formulation. As detailed below, we used two categories as our analytical
focuses: social identities and emotional expression.
Memes and the expression of emotion
Emotions are central to the operation of memes. As Milner (2016) noted, part of what
makes a meme propagate is its ability to resonate with individuals on both the personal
and societal levels. Similarly, Miltner (2014) claimed that participants perform emotion
through memetic formats and use them to add context to their messages, especially when
the content is negative or difficult. In addition to memes being emotional conduits for
individuals, their communal expression impacts collectives. Civic participation in digital

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culture often revolves around “affective publics” (Papacharissi, 2015) who engage in
societal affairs through emotional involvement. Emotional properties of memes are,
therefore, meaningful for both individuals and for collectives, as they facilitate communal
arenas of affectbased discourse. Our study takes a middle ground approach toward this
body of work: on the one hand, comparative studies about culture-based values aided us
in our case selection; on the other hand, taking the aforementioned criticisms into account,
we used these studies as a general starting point for our detailed (and open-minded)
exploration of texts. Another axis underlying the analysis of emotions in memes relates to
the differentiation between mainstream and subcultural digital spheres, which can be
associated with positive and negative emotions respectively. Since memes are propagated
on various forms of social media, they have become integral parts of the “culture of
connectivity” (van Dijck, 2013). The mainstream trend of posting to platforms like
Facebook and Instagram has an underlying bias (nurtured by business models) toward
making and maintaining connections and thus usually reflects positivity and success or
calls for warmth and empathy (Leung, 2009; van Dijck & Poell, 2013). Of course, this
does not mean that all user-generated content is emotionally positive; the mainstream and
common norms may have a positive bias, but many examples of negativity are available.
Internet memes and the communities that devised much of the logic governing current
meme use are themselves such an example. As Milner (2016) discovered, memes often
deal with social success and failure. In this, they follow the “logic of lulz,” which
exonerates any form of negativity as long as it is entertaining (Milner, 2013). Phillips
(2015) associated meme creation with subcultures devoted to trolling and harassment, in
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which causing grief is a goal, while we have previously demonstrated that memes are often
a source of contention and argument within such subcultures (Nissenbaum & Shifman,
2017). It should be noted, however, that these subcultural roots of memetic culture,
although fundamental in the inception of memes and still influential, are not necessarily
the face of meme use as a whole. As memes gain wider audiences, they are transformed in
an attempt to appeal to the general population and may shed some, or all, of their original
context (Literat & van den Berg, 2017; Milner, 2016). These notions about emotions and
affect inform our examination of cross-cultural memes in two ways, corresponding with
the dualities that guide our analysis. First, with regards to the content/stance duality, we
look into both the representation of emotions and the stances taken towards them, in light
of the literature on mainstream and subcultural digital spheres. Second, we examine the
intersection between individualism and collectivism in emotional expression, particularly
how emotions in memes relate to private/public spheres. By combining the aforementioned
bodies of literature, we sought to address three questions: (a) what are the main forms
incorporated in mainstreamed meme templates and to what extent do they vary culturally?,
(b) which types of gender and ethnic identities are represented in mainstreamed meme
templates around the world and which stances are meme creators invited to take toward
them?, and (c) which emotions are represented in mainstreamed meme templates around
the world and which stances are meme creators invited to take toward them?
THE AFFECT AND EFFECT OF INTERNET MEMES: ASSESSING
PERCEPTIONS AND INFLUENCE OF ONLINE USER-GENERATED
POLITICAL DISCOURSE AS MEDIA

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Memes in participatory media
A growing field of research positions memes as a social phenomenon of a modern
participatory media culture, which values creative contributions as participation (Bennett,
Freelon & Wells, 2010). Bennett, Freelon and Wells (2010) note that the internet andother
networked communication technologies “allow for multidirectional pathways of user-
driven production, consumption, appropriation, and pastiche” (p. 393), and therefore have
important implications for civic engagement. The authors list characteristics of
participatory media cultures, including: relatively low barriers to artistic expression and
civic engagement, support for creating and sharing those creations, a belief that individual
contributions matter, and a degree of social connection with other members in the culture.
Additionally, such cultures tend to form in opposition or contrast to traditional one-way
mass media formats (pp. 401-402).
In a participatory media culture, “spreadable” media content is the measure of cultural
value (Burgess, 2008, p. 192). It is through a cycle of “imitation, adaptation, and
innovation” (p. 106) that user-generated content finds meaning and longevity in a
participatory media culture. These traits of participatory media cultures are appropriate to
consider in contemporary studies of internet-based civic engagement and political
discourse, as a participatory media culture brings with it new questions about “the interplay
between the mass popular culture and local audience members” (Williams & Zenger, 2012,
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pp. 2). Some have claimed that the rise of new social media and the attendant participatory
media culture has new implications for civic identity and discourse. Some (Hands, 2011)
have argued that the opportunities for networking enabled by the digital age are
particularly suited for communicative action.
In many ways, work on participatory media cultures resembles the work on the public
sphere. Both areas of scholarship are concerned with how technology fosters citizens’
involvement in the world around them through the creation of conceptual spaces for citizen
engagement. Whereas the public sphere has tended to emphasize talk or discourse among
citizens, participatory media culture scholarship emphasizes participation through online
practices. As internet meme scholarship demonstrates, these practices can be a type of
discursive participation, but only the scholarship draws imperfectly from democratic
theory to frame that discussion. For example, in Milner’s dissertation on internet memes
as discourse, he claims that memes are evidence that “participatory media provide
enrichment to the public sphere” (2012, p. 60). It is less clear how participatory media
culture and the public sphere are interrelated. It could be that participatory media cultures
create new public spheres; it could also be that participatory media cultures change
expectations for a public sphere and what qualifies as discourse, as suggestion of civic
cultures as the public sphere. More work is needed to explicate this relationship.
content confers a certain degree of prestige or insider status on the blogger.
Memes as discourse and participation in the digital public sphere

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The perceived divide between talking and doing that undergirds critiques of so-called
slacktivism or hashtag activism is also at the center of debates regarding deliberative and
participatory democracy. Internet memes challenge these distinctions between talking and
doing in democratic theory. In some ways, meme creation can be akin to creating a
homemade poster and joining a picket line. In the case of the Occupy Wall Street
movement, certain memes functioned as grassroots activity, both to rally for and substitute
for physical presence in those protests (e.g. Shifman, 2014; Milner, 2013). Meme creation
involves the physical use of tools, such as a computer with photomanipulation software,
on the part of individuals to create a tangible, if digital, product. Meme participants must
then actively share their version of a meme with others—through sites such as 4Chan or
Reddit, the meme aggregator KnowYourMeme, Twitter or Facebook—to get social credit
and become part of the larger conversation (Knobel & Lankshear, 2007).
On the other hand, memes may also be a type of discursive participation, though they
appear to lack a sense of reasoned deliberation. However, like everyday talk, memes can
both be reflective of and contribute to larger public discussion about issues at hand. It is
important to note that most scholarly works that have looked beyond memes’ qualities to
their societal functions have framed memes as public discourse (e.g. Milner 2012; Milner,
2013; Shifman, 2014). The physical act of meme-making results in artifacts or texts than
can be analyzed as discourse having specific arguments and discursive functions. In
examining memes against Kim and Kim’s (2008) definition of everyday talk, memes are
informal, casual, and spontaneous in the sense that they are typically grassroots, coming
from the bottom up, rather than being dictated by some powerful organizing force.
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However, they are not strictly nonpurposive, or even free from procedural rules. Arguably,
those who create memes have some purpose, even if that purpose is simply personal
gratification.
This expands and applies Shifman’s (2013) communication oriented typology for
memes and uses conceptual blending theory to show that the “Keep Calm and Carry On”
internet meme is altered in predictable patterns. Based on this analysis, we conducted a
survey study seeking to answer: 1. How do the dimensions of the taxonomy work together
in order to create humor and understanding? 2. What is the minimal number of changes
that can be made to a parody while still allowing it to make sense? 3. Does how well a
person “gets” an internet meme predict humor ratings? The results indicate that people’s
ratings of funniness are highly dependent on whether or not the person feels they have
understood or “gotten” the meme. Beyond this, the results varied widely between the
memes studied and tended to fall into six distinct categories based on whether or not
participants “got” the meme.
Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC), colloquially known as internet
linguistics, offers a unique sandbox in which to examine language. The study of linguistics
on the internet is still in its infancy, but the potential for the field is endless. The speed of
online communication allows language to evolve at an astonishing rate; changes that
normally take decades or centuries are compressed into a timespan of weeks or months.
Most CMC is accomplished through exchanges of writing, meaning that people who
communicate through technology must cope with the many difficulties inherent in textual
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conversations. Writing lacks tone, intonation, and gesture, and furthermore is rife with
ambiguity. There are endless opportunities for misunderstandings, and yet such
communication is still incredibly successful and popular on the internet. CMC is also a
playground for language. One of the most notable examples is the way users collaborate
and play off of each other in the creation of multimodal internet memes.
Internet memes come in all shapes and sizes; anything from a person’s face to a song
can become an internet meme. That original face or song will always be cited with some
level of variation in the resulting parodies. The parodic copies of the original thing
proliferate in a very short period of time before dying out. Creators of these parodies walk
a fine line between innovation and maintaining citational echoes of the original.
Despite the amount of linguistic innovation consistently shown in internet memes, there
has been very little work the linguistics of memes or how exactly derivatives of the original
example are made.
The study explores the minimal number of changes that can be made to a parody while
still allowing it to make sense. The results indicate that people’s ratings of funniness are
highly dependent on whether or not the person feels they have understood or “gotten” the
meme. Beyond this main result, the memes studied tended to follow five different patterns
that are described in detail in the chapter.
On a small scale, this research has many applications to understanding how all memes,
not just Keep Calm and Carry On parodies are formed and understood. This sheds light on
the relationship between language and humor and may allow us to design better memes or
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at least scientifically distinguish between good and bad ones. On a larger scale, this study
is vital to understanding rhetorically effective communication, especially in the digital age
where the ability to curate the limited attention of the world is a highly valued skill. It also
allows us insight into how language can combine with non-linguistics symbols to create
meaning that would not be possible with language alone.
Further, this work explores of the line between what makes something funny or not.
Humor is vital to human cognition and experience, and yet it is one of the most difficult
areas to study. This paper offers insight into what humans do and do not need in order to
run a blend to achieve both humor and understanding. The answers suggested herein are
ultimately more complicated than we would hope, but are valuable in illustrating the
complexity of the human mind.
The contemporary outpour of “Memes” which was defined as “ the scientific term for
a unit of information that virally spreads cultural ideas within a group of people” has been
roaring in waves since the advnet of the new media. It has been in the day to day
information consumption of the people of the new times. In consonance of this research,
there has been a significant products and reverberations caused by this phenomenon.
In the context of a school environment, students have been quite familiar to the
concept of memes and are constantly being driven by this micro information prolifirated
in the ever influencial social media platforms. As stated in a study in Syracuse University
(2018) “An important aspect of memes lies in their ability to evolve. This is how memes
have been able to easily integrate and adapt to the campus environment. Many Internet
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memes consist simply of an image with some superimposed text, used to convey a (usually
humorous) concept. These images are then reused and re-captioned by others, propagating
the original idea of the meme but remixing it with a new flavor.”
It is pretty agreeable that memes has been generating attentions and academic
research time to be further understood. But would could this imply to students’ vocablary
and conversational skills? Has this improved or degenerated their choice of words and
basic speaking conventions? As being utilized in a US Government campaigns it was
brought to be influencial. “While individual internet users have been using memes online
for years, more recently there have been suggestions that memes might also have utility
for the U.S. government (USG) as part of its information and influence campaigns to
counter state actors such as Russia and non-state actors such as the Islamic State. However,
the state of research on both memes and this type of activity—which we are referring to as
memetic engagement—remains nascent. To help address this, CNA initiated an
exploratory study of the applicability, utility, and role of memes and memetic engagement
within USG influence campaigns. The purpose of this study is to further the conversation
on memetic engagement within the iv USG influence community, as it considers novel
approaches to countering state and non-state actors in the online information environment.
To do this, CNA reviewed the literature on the history of memes, memetic engagement,
and so-called “memetic warfare,” along with psychology and marketing literature that
explores the role of virality and persuasion in changing people’s attitudes and behaviors.
Upon completion of the literature review, we conducted semi-structured conversations
with multiple subject matter experts (SMEs) to better understand memes and memetic
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engagement. We used these insights, along with a selection of specific past examples, to
develop an epidemiological framework to explore memetic engagement. Drawing on this
literature, semi-structured conversations, and analysis of the meme examples, we
developed a set of preliminary observations and concluding thoughts on the applicability
of memes to influence campaigns and areas for further research.”
MAKES A MEME INSTEAD: A CONCISE HISTORY OF INTERNET MEMES
The story of memes is crucial to the understanding of digital culture, and not only as
characteristics of an internet subculture, but as a cultural artifact that is gaining new
meaning and new function as it is breaking more and more into the mainstream. Borszei
(2013) states that the technological, sociological and cultural was so prevalent today. His
research focused on remixed internet memes that is collaborative, absurdist humor in
multimedia forms.
The term meme with the emergence of the internet was also applied to content that
spread from user to user online. Shortly, memes was consisting of inside funny jokes. In
fact memes were generated to show the cultural counter part of genes. Its primary meaning
was supposed to signify a unit of cultural transmission or a unit imitation (Dawkins, 1976).
Internet meme is a piece of culture, typically a joke, which gains influence through online
transmission, considered as the first definition of internet meme was proposed by Patrick
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Davidson (2009). According to Brodie (1996), he claims that memetics has uncovered the
existence of viruses of the mind, whihc are infectious piece of our culture that spread
rapidly to other communities and it soon became a meme.
8 REASONS WHY MEMES ARE USEFUL TO GROW YOUR VOCABULARY
Language is not some precious gem hidden away in a treasury of books with some
wise scholars guarding it. It's a living and breathing “organism” that is constantly evolving.
Technology has displaced our lives into a “fast forward” mode, and this is reflected in the
rapid changes of language as well.
While textbooks take time to get published, with the Internet you have the latest trends
in language whereby you can easily adopt to ‘speak the lingo’. Be warned though, speaking
the lingo doesn’t exactly mean it is the “proper” way of speech. Internet language has it’s
own quirks, but at least you will be knee-deep in how the language is utilized in trendy
terminologies.
Memes are ideal communicators of the most current vocabulary in use. As a learner
of German, I came across some words I couldn't have found in textbooks, for example
‘geliked’ and ‘entliked’ (past tense from ‘like’ and ‘entlike’); i.e., ‘to like’ and ‘to unlike’
in social media context. I believe that most German native speakers already know these
words even if they were not yet published in dictionaries.

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A meme is not an extract where you wouldn’t be able to understand it without reading
the entire text. A meme is a well rounded piece of text so that words and phrases included
into it are used in context. Context is king especially when you are learning new words
and phrases, because only in their correct contexts can you fully understand the word’s
meaning and see how they are used.
THE INFLUENCE OF TEXT-IMAGE RELATIONS IN INTERNET MEMES
Recently, Internet memes have become an integral component of digital culture,
drawing both public and academic attention (Nissenbaum & Shifman, 2017). Therefore,
understanding Internet memes is important to gain insight into digital culture (Börzsei,
2013). An increasing number of individuals enjoy viewing and using Internet memes
through several online platforms, (i.e. 9GAG) or sharing them with friends during an
online conversation. Miltner (2014) proposed that Internet memes provide new
inspirations for many fields, including advertising, political campaigns and TV shows.
Another study by (Chen, 2012) claimed that Internet memes might even break into the
mainstream culture, and have value in the political ethos. However, though studies have
looked at the impact of Internet memes on diverse aspects of the society, their inherent
properties can also be explored. A typical Internet meme intrinsically combines text and
image.
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Moreover, Börzsei (2013) expanded this definition to “a form of visual entertainment,
which can manifest in many different formats, such as a still image, an animated GIF, or
even a video”. Based on the definitions above, the current study considers an Internet
meme as a static form of visual entertainment which gains influence through online
transmission (i.e. social media or messaging apps), and can be quickly replicated via
evolution, adaption or transformations of the original meme vehicle. Taking Figure 1 as
an example, the beauty and beast is a classical romantic Disney story, the original moral
of the story is inner beauty is greater than physical beauty. However, with the change in
the way of thinking, nowadays, people endue this story with a new networked meaning,
which is “the unfortunate truth”. That is, the reason that a beautiful girl married with an
ugly beast is not because of love rather than money. Hence, in this Internet meme, the
background image intends to express the major meaning “unfortunate truth”, and the text
expresses similar meaning to “unfortunate truth”. Also, people are able to replace the text
on a meme with many new creative pieces of text that convey the similar meaning, and as
a result of fast spreading by more and more people, a new Internet meme is formed.
While before the emergence of Internet memes, emoticons serve as the previous form
of Internet memes were widely used by individuals. Emoticons can enrich the text-based
communication through e-mails or computer mediated communication during the early
period of the Internet era (Park, Kim & Lee, 2014) and provide individuals’ opportunities
to express the emotion that they intend to convey. Due to the memetic behavior of
emoticons, namely using and viewing, the meaning of the emoticons has been extended
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after repeated modifications and use. Internet memes, to some extent, can be seen as
emoticons with text. Therefore, they also possess the same nature as the emoticons.
Previous studies regarding Internet memes have investigated several aspects of their
use. Börzsei (2013) proposed that the invention of the Internet accelerates the Internet
memes’ propagation. Internet memes have already become one of the most widespread
modes of online communication in 2012, and their evolution has led to several new
perspectives on society, culture, and technology. Internet memes provide new inspirations
and create new ideas in several fields (Miltner, 2014). For instance, novel advertisements
often emulate Internet memes, political campaigns involve Internet memes against
competitors, and even the traditional media and the popular TV shows adopt Internet
memes to capture the zeitgeist. Internet memes also function significantly in the society as
cultural capital, as well as a kind of inherently unstable cultural forms (Nissenbaum &
Shifman, 2017). They also function in several unique ways concerning society, culture and
language.
Structure of Internet memes All online and offline memes are existing in layers. For
example, language is a meme which does not only belong to the larger language meme but
also include submemes, such as dialects and jargon (Davison, 2012). Similarly, an Internet
meme is an “image macro,” which contains a set of rules for adding the same text to
different images or applying different text to the same image (Davison, 2012). In this
situation, Internet memes intrinsically contain the interaction of text and image, where the
image in the Internet memes shows the main characters of the inside joke, and the text
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emphasizes the content that it intends to express. However, the multimodal interaction of
the text and image in Internet memes has not been explored and it is therefore of interest
and potentially relevant to investigating multimodality in general.
Chapter 2
METHODS
This chapter presents the research design, population and sampling, sources of
data, data gathering procedure data analysis and Statistical Instrument of the study.
RESEARCH DESIGN
This study on Memes in Social Media platforms and its effect on the conversational
and vocabulary skills of the selected Grade 12 Humanities and Social Sciences students at
New Era University, made used of a descriptive-survey method. Descriptive –survey
method was employed since it utilized survey questionnaire. The descriptive method
describes and explains the interpretations of what is being described. Calderon and
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Gonzales (in Menorca, 2013) pointed out that “the descriptive method of research is a
fact-finding study with adequate and accurate interpretations of the findings”. According
to De Leon (2002), descriptive-survey method of research means; “Descriptive research
is an organized attempt to analyze, interpret, and report the present status of a social
institution. It deals with cross section of the present time. Its purpose is to get groups of
classified, generalized, and interpret data for the guidance of application in immediate
future.” Descriptive method was used to describe the difference of being a voucher grantee
student from those who are not.
The researchers utilized the descriptive qualitative method because this study is
concerned with the collection, sorting and presentation of data gathered.
POPULATION AND SAMPLING
Population in this research consists of Grade 12 Humanities and Social
Sciences students during the school year 2019-2020 at New Era University. The target
sample (n= 50) by the use of purposive sampling method, sample size was calculated using
purposive random sampling procedures. The goal is to perform both on the same
population instead of attempting to collect two separate samples (Teddlie & Yu, 2007).
Through the use of a probability sampling technique in the form of a stratified sampling
strategy to pinpoint participants. Then apply a purposive sampling technique by the use
criterion sampling to identify individuals (Creswell, 2013).
DATA GATHERING PROCEDURE

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A survey questionnaire was constructed. The final form of the questionnaire contains
6 questions that took only about two to five minutes to complete. The instrument develop
underwent a reliability testing in order to ensure accuracy of the data that were collected.
If the population will not understand any of the questions, the instrument will be adjusted
and revise. The sampling method used is purposive sampling, then the target population is
divided according to their predefined characteristics.
SOURCE OF DATA
The researchers primary source of data was the fifty respondents of the study, the
fifty respondents was interviewed by the researchers to answer certain questions regarding
the concerns of the study. The other informations needed in the study was derived from
other related literatures and studies that can be found inside the library of New Era
University. In addition the researchers also gathered some informations on news papers,
magazines, and internet websites, all of these materials serves as a secondary source of
data that help the researchers in widening their knowledge and understanding regarding
the study.
DATA ANALYSIS
Analysis for the quantitative was conducted through the use of statistical software.
Excel and IBM SPSS v. 20 was utilized to compute for the hypothesis and reliability of
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the study. There are altogether eleven variables in the questionnaire. It is of great
importance to categorize all the variables to different categories and clarify the
relationships between them to test their reliability and validity. The questionnaire was
divided into two parts: the profile of the respondents and the questions related to the study.
The questionnaire was also subjected to cronbach reliability test, with obtained a score of
0.792 an indication that it is reliable.
STATISTICAL TREATMENT OF DATA
All data gathered were treated accordingly to ensure the objectivity of the study. The
data were represented by the use of tables showing their corresponding percentages and
ranks, and some tables are for the computation of average scores and for the computation
necessary for the testing of hypothesis using the z-test.
Multiple regression is an extension of simple linear regression. It is used when we
want to predict the value of a variable based on the value of two or more other variables.
The variable we want to predict is called the dependent variable (or sometimes, the
outcome, target or criterion variable).
A multiple regression tries to find the best fit line for the dependent variable with the
help of multiple independent variables. The equation for the multiple regression analysis
is the same as the equation for a line which is

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y = mx1 + mx2+ mx3+ b
Where,
Y= the dependent variable of the regression equation
M= slope of the regression equation
X1=first independent variable of the regression equation
The x2=second independent variable of the regression equation
The x3=third independent variable of the regression equation
B= constant of the equation
In this study, the hypothesis below was tested using the multiple regression.
Ho: The Memes in Social Media platforms has no significant relationship on the
vocabulary and conversational skills of the selected Grade 12 Humanities and Social

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SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRE
I. PROFILE
NAME OF THE RESPONDENT (Optional): _____________________________
Select your answer and put a check on the box that corresponds it.
GENDER: FEMALE MALE
SECTION: __________
II. QUESTIONS
1. What are the factors that affect your conversational and vocabulary skills?
Very Affective Moderately Less

FACTORS Affective (4) Affective Affective Not Affective
(5) (3) (2) (1)
Using social media
platforms
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Reading books,
newspapers or
magazines
Listening to music or
radio
Socializing with other
people
Watching television
Others Please Specify:
___________________
2. What are the effects of memes in social media on your conversational and vocabulary
skills?
FACTORS Very Effective Moderately Less Not

effective (4) effective effective effective
(5) (3) (2) (1)
Add humor in conversational skills.
Give knowledge about the content of memes.
Improve communication skills.
Give awareness about the trends in social media.
Improve vocabulary in analyzing memes

____________________________________________________
3. In a scale of 1-5, rate your comprehension about the memes you saw on different social
media platforms.
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5 4 3 2 1
(I always (I often (I seldom (I barely (I never
understand every understand every understand every understand every understand every
memes I saw in memes I saw in memes I saw in memes I saw in memes I saw in
social media) social media) social media) social media) social media)
4. Changes in your daily life interactions upon viewing and understanding related memes
in social media.
DAILY INTERACTIONS Always Often Sometimes Seldom

(5) (4) (3) (2)
Do memes help you easily interact with your colleagues, family, etc.?
Do memes make you updated on your different social media accounts?

Do memes give you knowledge about certain social issues?
Do memes uplift your mood every time you browse it in the internet?

_____________________________________________________________________
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Chapter 3
RESULTS
This chapter presents the findings and analysis obtained through a descriptive
survey using a questionnaire. Observations and interviews pertaining to the specific
questions here are based from the research objectives presented in chapter one.
Table 1
Gender of the Respondents
(n=50)
Table1.1- Respondents According to their Gender
Gender F % Rank
Male 12 24% 2
Female 38 76% 1
Total 50 100
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The table shows that on rank 1, 76 percent of the respondents are females. Whereas
on rank 2 male respondents with 24 percent or 12 individuals out of 50 respondents.
Table 2
Questions Rendered to the Respondents
(n=50)
Factors that
affects the Very
students’ effective Affective Verbal Rank
conversational (5) Moderately Less Not WX
and vocabulary (4) Affective Affective Affective Interpretation
skills (3) (2) (1)
Using social
15 22 13 0 0 4.04
media platforms. Affective 3
Reading books,
newspapers, or 20 22 7 1 0 4.22 Affective 1
magazines.
Listening to
21 12 15 2 0 4.04
music or radio. Affective 3
Socializing with 21 16 12 1 0 4.14

other people. Affective 2
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Watching
17 18 13 2 0 4
television. Affective 4
In Table 2, “Reading books, newspapers or magazines” with a weighted mean of
4.22 and a verbal interpretation of Affective appeared to be as the number one factor that
affects the students’ conversational and vocabulary skills. Whereas "Socializing with other
people" ranked second with a weighted mean of 4.14 and also has a verbal interpretation
of Affective. The factors “Using social media platforms” and “Listening to music or radio”
were tied in their placement in factors that will most likely affect the students’
conversational and vocabulary skills, with a verbal interpretation of Affective.

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Table 3
(n=50)
Effects of
memes in
social media on
students’ Very Effective Moderately Less Not __ Verbal
conversational effective (4) effective effective effective WX Rank
and vocabulary (5) (3) (2) (1) Interpretation
skills
Add humor in
conversational 18 19 11 1 0 4.02 Effective 2
skills.
Give
knowledge 4
about the 16 14 19 1 0 3.9 Effective
content of
memes.
Improve
communication 13 15 15 6 1 3.66 Effective 5
skills.
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Give awareness 18 24 5 3 0 4.14 Effective 1

about the trends
in social media.
Improve
vocabulary
ianalyzing 17 17 12 4 0 3.94 Effective 3
memes.
In Table 2, “Give awareness about the trends in social media” ranked number one
with at a verbal interpretation of Effective with the weighted mean of 4.14. Students
showed that memes are effectively giving them awareness about the trends in social media.
Ranked second, "Add humor in conversational skills" with also a verbal interpretation of
effective with a 4.02 weighted mean; Students showed that memes in social media adds
humor effectively in their conversational skills as well.
Meme theory as discussed by Dawkins portrays memes as items being imitated and
spread without change as a requirement. This behavior, which Dawkins describes as being
“memetic,” is much like the behavior of a photo or video going “viral” on the Internet.
However, Shifman (2014) tackles the potential contradiction and suggests we “turn
Dawkins’s definition on its head by looking at memes not as single ideas or formulas that
propagate well, but as groups of content items”. Using this approach, Shifman offers an
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exact definition of Internet memes: “(a) a group of digital items sharing common
characteristics of content, form, and/or stance, which (b) were created with awareness of
each other, and (c) were circulated, imitated, and/or transformed via the Internet by many
users”.
Table 4
(n=50)
Rate of students’
comprehension of
memes in different __ Verbal
Always Often Sometimes Seldom Never WX
social media
platforms Interpretation
(5) (4) (3) (2) (1)
How often do you

comprehend 16 28 4 2 0 4.16 Often
memes?
In Table 4, we can see here the rating scale of students' comprehension of memes
in different social media platforms. With a weighted mean of 4.16, the table shows that
majority of the students often comprehend memes in social media platforms, followed by
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the rating scale of 16 respondents that always comprehend memes, then 4 respondents with
sometimes and 2 respondent that seldom comprehend memes in different social media
platforms.
Börzsei (2013) proposed that the invention of the Internet accelerates the Internet
memes’ propagation. Internet memes have already become one of the most widespread
modes of online communication in 2012, and their evolution has led to several new
perspectives on society, culture, and technology. Internet memes provide new inspirations
and create new ideas in several fields.
Table 5
Changes in
students’ daily
interactions
upon viewing Verbal
Always Often Sometimes Seldom Never __ Rank
and
understanding WX Interpretation
(5) (4) (3) (2) (1)
related memes
in social media
Do memes help
you easily
interact with 6 13 24 4 3 3.3 Sometimes 4
your colleagues,
family, etc.?
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Do memes make
you updated on
your different 10 19 18 0 3 3.66 Often 3
social media
accounts?
Do memes give
you knowledge 12 19 15 2 1 3.72 Often 2
about certain
social issues?
Do memes uplift
your mood
every time you 22 13 14 0 1 4.1 Often 1
browse it in the
internet?
(n=50)
In Table 5, ranked number one “Do memes uplift your mood every time you browse it
in the internet?” shows that memes can really uplift the students' mood when browsing
the internet. Followed by it is, “Do memes give you knowledge about certain issues?”,
that indicates students can also gain knowledge about certain social issues and lastly, "Do
memes make you updated on your different social media accounts?" which ranked third
that shows students' social media accounts are always up-to-date because of memes. All
the Changes in students' daily interactions were affected by Memes in social media, with
a verbal interpretation of Often meaning in a regular basis, Memes in social media results
in a lot of changes that affects the daily interactions of students.

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Internet memes are becoming ubiquitous in networked environments, and
increasing number of people are keen to use this newest type of online inside joke (Miltner,
2014). Recently, Internet memes have become an integral component of digital culture,
drawing both public and academic attention (Nissenbaum & Shifman, 2017). Therefore,
understanding Internet memes is important to gain insight into digital culture (Börzsei,
2013). An increasing number of individuals enjoy viewing and using Internet memes
through several online platforms or sharing them with friends during an online
conversation.
Table 6
Presentation and Computation for the test of Null Hypothesis
(n=50)
Variables df Margin of r-value Decision Verbal

Error Interpretation
Memes in social
There is no
media and its effect on
Accept significant
the conversational and 48 .05 0.265
Ho:
vocabulary skills relationship
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It is deduced from this computation of Table 6 that at .05 level of significance with
a 48 degrees of freedom, the computed R-value is 0.265 which is lesser than the margin
of error .05, it is therefore concluded that there is sufficient evidence to accept the null
hypothesis. This simply means that we accept that there is no significant relationship
between Memes in Social Media and its effects on the conversational and vocabulary skills
of the selected Grade 12 Humanities and Social Sciences students at New Era University.
Chapter 4
DISCUSSION
This chapter offers the summary of findings, conclusions and
recommendations to address the different objectives presented in this study.
SUMMARY OF FINDINGS
The following findings of the study are sequenced according to the research
objectives posted in chapter 1 and also from the results of the analysis and interpretation
of the data presented in Chapter 3.
After careful interpretation and analysis, the researchers have arrived at the
following summary of findings:

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As to the Demographic profile of the respondents
 24 percent of the respondents are male.
 76 percent of the respondents are female.
As to the Factors that affects the students’ conversational and vocabulary skills
 “Using social media platforms”, “Reading books, newspapers, or magazines”,
“Listening to music or radio”, “Socializing with other people”, and “Watching
television” all have a verbal interpretation of Affective which shows that the
respondents agreed that the these factors have an impact to their conversational and
vocabulary skills.
 “Listening to music or radio” and “Using social media platforms” were tied in their
placement in factors that affects students’ conversational and vocabulary skills
with a weighted mean of 4.04. This indicates that these two factors have a great
impact on the conversational and vocabulary skills of the students.

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As to the Effects of memes in social media on students’ conversational and vocabulary
skills
 With a weighted mean of 4.14, 48 percent of the respondents answered that memes
“Give awareness about the trends in social media”, 4.02 weighted mean for the
38 percent of the respondents see memes as effectively “Add humor in
conversational skills”, 3.94 weighted mean for the 34 percent of the respondents
that answered memes “Improve vocabulary skills effectively by analyzing memes”,
while 3.9 weighted mean for the 38 percent of the respondents that answered
memes “Give knowledge about the content of the memes”, and lastly, a weighted
mean of 3.66 for the 30 percent of the respondents that answered memes“Improve
communication skills” when they read memes in social media platforms. All with
a verbal interpretation of Effective which indicates that memes in social media can
greatly affect the conversation and vocabulary skills of the students.
As to the Rate of students’ comprehension of memes in different social media
platforms
 Majority of the students often comprehend memes in different social media
platforms while 32 percent of the respondents can always comprehend memes, 8
percent of the respondents for sometimes and 4 percent for seldom, with a weighted
mean of 4.16 which have a verbal interpretation of Often which indicates that
majority of the students can often comprehend memes than those who seldom does.
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As to the Changes in students’ daily interactions upon viewing and understanding
memes in social media
 The first three in rankings which are “Do memes uplift your mood every time you
browse it in the internet?”, “Do memes give you knowledge about certain social
issues?” and “Do memes make you updated on your different social media
accounts?” have a verbal interpretation of Often, it shows that memes in social
media has a great influence in the changes of students’ daily interactions while,
“Do memes help you easily interact with your colleagues, family, etc?” in the last
rank have a verbal interpretation of Sometimes. Due to this, these changes really
affect their conversational and vocabulary skills upon viewing and understanding
memes in social media.
As to the test of Null Hypothesis
 At .05 level of significance, with 99 degrees of freedom, the computed r value is
0.265 It is far less than the critical value of .05, it is therefore concluded that we reject
the null hypothesis. This simply means that there is significant relationship between
Memes in Social Media and its effects on the conversational and vocabulary skills of
the selected Grade-12 Humanities and Social Sciences students in New Era University.
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CONCLUSIONS
Based on the findings of the study, the following conclusions are drawn:
1. Majority of the respondents are female, least are male.
2. All of the respondents are from grade 12 Humanities and Social Sciences
students.
3. The total number of respondents are 50.
4. Majority of the respondents answered that reading books, magazines and
newspapers are affective in their conversational and vocabulary skills.
5. Majority of the respondents are aware about the trends in the social media
through memes.
6. Majority of the respondents often comprehend memes in different social media
platforms.
7. There is no significant relationship between Memes and the Conversational
and Vocabulary skills of the students.

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RECOMMENDATIONS
Based on the findings and conclusions of the study, the following
recommendations are formulated:
The Readers to:
1. Have awareness on the effects of memes in social media platforms on students
and how they integrate it on their daily interactions.
2. Have prior knowledge about the influence of memes in their vocabulary and
conversational skills.
The Students to:
1. Be aware that memes are becoming a medium of communication while they
are having a discourse with other people.
The Parents to:
1. Understand what their children are pertaining to when they speak to other
people of the same age as them.
2. Avoid confusion and vague interpretation about memes.

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The Professors to:
1. Understand and evaluate the students’ level of conversational and vocabulary
skills.
The Social Media Users to:
1. Be able to learn the adaptation and integration of memes on the way they
communicate.
2. Learn how memes are used as a means of communication and how it affects their
daily interactions.
The Language Communicators to:
1. Expand the medium and ways of interaction through social media.
The Future Researchers to:
1. Replicate the study to see if the results arevalidated.
2. Undergo a study on the other aspects that are not tackled or considered
limitations by the researchers about the topic.
3. Have the opportunity to apply this knowledge and expertise what they have
learned from this study.
4. Use the study as the basis of their research.

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New Era University

No.9 Central Avenue, New Era

Social Sciences Students’ Conversational and Vocabulary Skills at New Era

Ayson, Ires Weyne B.

Ramirez, Ashley Branzel C.

Rosellosa, Khim Jade S.

Nowadays, memes are influential form of media as it continue to become popular in

applying memes into daily conversations.

Sciences students at New Era University.

students’ awareness regarding the integration of Memes on their daily conversations.

The Memes in Social Media platforms has no significant relationship on the

Sciences students at New Era University.

SCOPE AND LIMITATION

conversational and vocabulary skills of students. It is intended to determine how a student

he interacts with other people whether in verbal or written communication.

Moreover, the study is also conducted to distinguish the relevance of memes in

and functions of memes as well as its application on the academic field.

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

provide a deeper understanding of the integration and adaptaion of memes on

conversational and vocabulary skills can thereby benefit the following:

their daily interactions.

Students will be aware that memes are becoming a medium of communication

while they are having a discourse with other people.

Professors can catch up and evaluate the students’ level of conversational

and vocabulary skills.

memes on the way they communicate.

expertise that they have learned from this study.

Language Communicators can expand the medium and ways of

interaction through media.

Therefore, we expect from this study to enhance the understanding of students on

when they interact with other people.

terms based on the usage of the words in this study.

World Wide Web to communicate jokes, behavior, ideas, or feelings.

Social Media are forms of electronic communication mechanisms such as social

information, ideas, personal messages, images and videos.

Netizens or citizen of the internet is an active participant in online communities

or the internet in general.

Generation Z is the demographic cohort succeeding the Millennials.

applications, processes or technologies, are developed.

Conversational skills are effectively communicating ideas to others, which are

essential in order to deliver and understand information quickly and accurately.

Vocabulary is the range of language either used or understood by a person or

Socialization is the act of adapting behavior to the norms of a culture or society.

in a manner that that is accepted in a society.

Integration is the act of combining or adding parts to make a unified whole.

Social Media Platforms

Figure 1: Illustrates the Researchers’ Conceptual Framework

Jakub Nowak's theory of multiparticipant popular content (2016), explores the

(2016), proposed a theoretical model of internet meme perceived as multiparticipant online

participation-oriented media tools.

will help students develop their critical thinking abilities.

As students adapt memes in their conversational and vocabulary skills, it serves as

them in a better and lighter mood.

REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

IMPACT OF STATUS AND MEME CONTENT ON THE SPREAD OF MEMES

the cycle again in another individual’s brain.

THE ROLE OF INTERNET MEMES IN SHAPING YOUNG PEOPLE'S

HEALTH-RELATED SOCIAL MEDIA INTERACTIONS

presence, youth continuously conform as they correspond to it.

high intelligence quotient but a different interpretation of youths and adults.

To understand how to better support young people’s engagement with health-related

(Patton et al. 2016).

"ONE DOES NOT SIMPLY SEND MEMES" - PERFORMATIVITY OF