If you still have not heard of the Harlem Shake you
must be living in a cave. Much has been written about the rapid and global
spread of this catchy internet meme, yet little is understood about how it
spread. A series of remixed videos along with a number of key communities around the world triggered a rapid escalation, giving the meme widespread global visibility. Who were the initial communities behind this mega-trend? SocialFlow
took a look at 1.9 million tweets during a two-week period that included the
words ’harlem shake’, or some versions of it.
The Harlem Shake itself is a dance style born in New
York City more than 30 years ago. During halftime at street ball games held in
Rucker Park, a skinny man known in the neighborhood as Al. B. would entertain
the crowd with his own brand of moves, a dance that around Harlem became known
as 'The Al. B. Though it started in 1981, the Harlem Shake became mainstream in
2001 when G. Dep featured the dance in his music video "Let's GetIt". While mining Twitter data, references to Harlem Shake (the original
dance) were seen quite often prior to it becoming a popular meme. When someone
tweets, "I just passed my final exams! *harlem shakes*," it's the
equivalent of saying "I just passed my final exams! Look at me
dancing!" While Bauuer's now infamous track was released on Diplo's Mad
Decent label back in August 2012 (posted to YouTube on August 23 2012), it only
accrued minor visibility for the first few months. Then February hit, and
something changed.
On February 2, The Sunny Coast Skate (TSCS) group
establish the form of the meme in a YouTube video they upload. On the 5,
PHL_On_NAN posts a remix (v2), gaining 300,000 views within 24 hours, and
prompting further parodies shortly after. On Feb. 7, YouTuber hiimrawn uploaded
a version titled "Harlem Shake v3 (office edition)" featuring the
staff of online video production company Maker Studios. The video becomes is a
hit, amassing more than 7.4 million views over the following week, and
inspiring a number of contributions from well-known Internet companies,
including BuzzFeed, CollegeHumor, Vimeo and Facebook.
Social Flow looked at the social connections amongst
users who were posting to the meme. This gave them the ability to identify the
underlying communities engaging with the meme at a very early stage. In the
graph above each node represents a user that was actively posting and
referencing the Harlem Shake meme on Feb 7 or 8 to Twitter. Connections between
users reflect follow/friendship relationships. The graph is organized using a
force directed algorithm, and colored based on modularity, highlighting
dominant clusters - regions in the graph which are much more interconnected.
These clusters represent groups of users who tend to have some attribute in
common. The purple region in the graph (left side) represents African American
Twitter users who are referencing Harlem Shake in its original context. There's
very little density there as it is not really a tight-knit community, but
rather a segment of users who are culturally aligned, and are clearly much more
interconnected amongst themselves than with other groups.
After a similar analysis on the following two days
(Feb 9 and 10) different communities can be seen emerging, resulting in a much
more tightly knit graph structure. While the same dense cluster of musicians
and DJs (in turquoise) still exists, there are substantially more
self-identified YouTubers both across the US and the UK. At the same time
there's a significant gamer / machinima cluster that's also participating, as
well as a growing Jamaican contingent, and quite a few dutch profiles (purple
-- left). Additionally, we see various celebrity and media accounts who caught
on to the meme -- @jimmyfallon, @mashable and @huffingtonpost. By capturing the
two snapshots, we can also make sense of the evolution of the meme as it
becomes more and more visible. At first, loosely connected communities separately
humored by the videos. Within days, we see major media outlets jump on board,
and a much more intertwined landscape. We see different regions in the world
light up, and identify communities of important YouTube enthusiasts who
effectively get this content to spread.
Memes have become a sort of distributed mass spectacle, a mechanism that both capture people's attention, and define what is "cool" or "trendy." We see more and more companies and brands try to associate themselves with certain memes, as a way to maintain a connection with their audience, gain the cool factor. Pepsi did this with the Harlem Shake and saw an incredibly positive response.
As we get better at identifying these trends and trend-setting communities early on, the pressure to participate will rise. As social networks become globally-intertwined, we're witnessing a growing number of memes conquer the world at large. These moments are critical points in time, where there are significant levels of attention given towards a specific entity - be it a joke, funny video or a political topic. Piecing together data from social networks can help us identify critical points in time, as well as the underlying communities and trendsetters for the humor-based memes, or the agenda setters for politically-slanted ones. The only question is: what will be the next one, cashing in on it 15 minutes?
Memes have become a sort of distributed mass spectacle, a mechanism that both capture people's attention, and define what is "cool" or "trendy." We see more and more companies and brands try to associate themselves with certain memes, as a way to maintain a connection with their audience, gain the cool factor. Pepsi did this with the Harlem Shake and saw an incredibly positive response.
As we get better at identifying these trends and trend-setting communities early on, the pressure to participate will rise. As social networks become globally-intertwined, we're witnessing a growing number of memes conquer the world at large. These moments are critical points in time, where there are significant levels of attention given towards a specific entity - be it a joke, funny video or a political topic. Piecing together data from social networks can help us identify critical points in time, as well as the underlying communities and trendsetters for the humor-based memes, or the agenda setters for politically-slanted ones. The only question is: what will be the next one, cashing in on it 15 minutes?
Hungry for more? Read the full article on HuffPost.
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