Have you ever checked your Twitter timeline and wondered what on Earth everyone was talking about? You step away for a few hours and suddenly your timeline is filled with people swapping memes about an event you’ve completely missed. We studied these “memetic moments” to understand how memes emerge quickly and spontaneously in response to key social events. We found they move even faster than we had thought, sometimes emerging, spreading wildly, and beginning to dissolve in less than a day. While Twitter and other social media are notorious as sites of abuse, racism, trolling, and other toxic content, we…
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