Cats are undoubtedly one of the most popular animals online. According to a CNN 2019 review, we now have access to over 6.5 billion pieces of cat media content. The interest in cats is not new to us. We may think of Ancient Egypt’s deep respect and veneration for the animal or even the Victorian … Continued
During the 2022-2023 academic year, the VIRAL seminar will continue to focus on the many ways we may think about online virality and analyse the circulation of born-digital content. The seminar will offer an interdisciplinary overview of virality, digital cultures, circulations and traces. It includes three main presentation types: analysis of corpora, methodological considerations, and … Continued
Jessica Myrick, “Emotion regulation, procrastination, and watching cat videos online: Who watches Internet cats, why, and to what effect?”, Computers in Human Behavior, 2015, vol. 52, pp.168-176. Abstract: Anecdotes abound about the frequent use of the Internet to view cat-related media. Yet, research has yet to seriously address this popular culture phenomenon rooted largely in social … Continued
“How cats became the undisputed mascot of the internet. The advertising slogan of the social news site Reddit is “Come for the cats. Stay for the empathy.” Journalists and their readers seem to need no explanation for the line, “The internet is made of cats.” Everyone understands the joke, but few know how it started. A … Continued