Modeling the neurchisphère

Investigating the emergence and impact of "neurchis", a French-language meme ecosystem on Facebook, on political communication and cultural exchanges.

Challenges

• Analyzing the French-language meme ecosystem as a whole using automated analysis methods

• Understanding and tracing the development of a community culture through memes and their metadata

• Developing new observation instruments to study and catalog derived and divergent versions of memes

Solutions

• Collecting memes from emblematic groups within the "neurchisphere" (Neurchi de memes extra-muros, Neurchi de memes d'actualité, Neurchibald...), including associated metadata

• Employing hybrid analysis methodology based on computational humanities, cultural analytics, and information and communication sciences to study the meme corpus

• Development of a visual virality detection tool in order to identify successive versions of a meme

Results

• A comprehensive analysis of the French-language meme ecosystem and its role in political communication and cultural ecosystem

• Automated detection of the most popular memes and their derived versions, enabling a better understanding of community culture

• Creation of a meme catalog and its derived versions to facilitate the study and preservation of this new form of communication