Urban legends get around, but we don’t really understand why. We conducted a study to explain how misinformation spreads surprisingly fast and why people feel compelled to share it. There are many urban…
The rise of social media tools and accessories has allowed us to be “always on” and “always connected”. The impact of this technological change is primarily social, and so far our communities have not…
Adam Kucharski, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
Some numbers are both memorable and incorrect. Take the idea that we only use 10% of our brains. Despite there being no medical evidence for the remarkably low percentage, many still believe it. Part of…
Nothing defines our use of the internet as clearly as the concept of the meme (pronounced “meem”). Every day, millions of people laugh at LOLcats, dog shaming, and music videos without music, while others…
In the world of internet memes, 2013 was without doubt the Year of the Doge. Participants on Twitter, Tumblr and reddit created and circulated their own narrations of this Shiba’s fragmented internal monologue…
Danny Boyle and his army of volunteers are to be commended on a stunning television production for the London 2012 Olympic Games opening ceremony. But if you only watched one screen, you missed a significant…
London 2012 is already seeing fierce competition for meme supremacy. Memes, especially in the form of captioned images - or image macros - are an increasingly mainstream form by which people comment on…
Alongside serious reportage of bad news, you’ve probably come across at least one crisis meme that treats that bad news with a dose of ghoulish humour. Just hours after the Daily Mail printed the image…