Mememotion Regulation: A Quantitative Coding Analysis of Emotional Content in Popular Internet Memes

Memes are a popular form of communication messages in online environments that represent and form social mindsets (Shifman, 2014). The term meme refers quite broadly to an idea or concept that spreads rapidly (Dawkins, 1974). Within the context of the internet, the term meme is used to represent concepts or ideas that are spread virally on the internet. These memes often couple still or video images with text which in turn convey an idea or commentary on an issue (e.g., Diaz, 2013; Shifman, 2014). Because of their popularity and implications, examining the content of memes is a worthwhile endeavor.Memes convey emotional components (e.g., Guadagno et al., 2013; Harvey et al., 2019). Recent research indicates that digital content, such as memes, have profound effects on emotion regulation processes (e.g., Wadley et al., 2020) and further indicates that internet memes have the ability to regulate emotion in clinically depressed populations (Akram et al., 2020). While the current body of research indicates that memes contain emotional elements and that memes may regulate emotion, there has yet to be an empirical examination of emotion regulation themes present in memes. The present project seeks to understand if memes contain emotion regulation themes similar to those laid out by Gross (1998) in their process model of emotion regulation.This paper presentation will present the preliminary results of a quantitative content analysis in which a random sample of memes originating from the year 2020 were coded for their emotion type and emotion regulation strategy present. It is hoped that results from this study will be used to shed light on the emotional components of memes, which in turn will help to explicate the emotion regulation processes related to meme viewing.