Facebook Memes, Or The Telephone Game?
In the old children’s game commonly referred to as telephone, the first player whispered a message to the second player, and the message was passed through the chain of participants until it reached the final player, and that player’s version of the message was then compared with the original, as the message was usually changed during the process. Lada Adamic, Thomas Lento, Eytan Adar, and Pauline Ng of the Facebook Data Science Team found in a study that the same principle applies to memes on the social network.
In the old children’s game commonly referred to as telephone, the first player whispered a message to the second player, and the message was passed through the chain of participants until it reached the final player, and that player’s version of the message was then compared with the original, as the message was usually changed during the process. Lada Adamic, Thomas Lento, Eytan Adar, and Pauline Ng of the Facebook Data Science Team found in a study that the same principle applies to memes on the social network.
The researchers examined a meme that took root in September 2009, when more than 470,000 Facebook users posted the following statement in their status updates:
No one should die because they cannot afford health care, and no one should go broke because they get sick.
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