A QUANTITATIVE STUDY: THE ATTITUDES OF GRADE 12 STEAM STUDENTS ON MEMES WITH SENSITIVE CONTENT PDF

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Jomari L. Lambojon STEAM-J Silliman University, Dumaguete City, Philippines [email protected] Jimmy Laranjo Jr. STEAM-J Silliman University, Dumaguete City, Philippines [email protected] Clive Ortega STEAM-J Silliman University, Dumaguete City, Philippines [email protected] Ofer ...

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A QUANTITATIVE STUDY: THE ATTITUDES OF GRADE 12 STEAM STUDENTS ON MEMES WITH SENSITIVE CONTENT jimmy laranjo

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Jomari L. Lambojon STEAM-J Silliman University, Dumaguete City, Philippines [email protected] Jimmy Laranjo Jr. STEAM-J Silliman University, Dumaguete City, Philippines [email protected] Clive Ortega STEAM-J Silliman University, Dumaguete City, Philippines [email protected] Ofer Ravid STEAM-J Silliman University, Dumaguete City, Philippines [email protected] Carlos Bautista STEAM-J Silliman University, Dumaguete City, Philippines [email protected]

A QUANTITATIVE STUDY: THE ATTITUDES OF GRADE 12 STEAM STUDENTS ON MEMES WITH SENSITIVE CONTENT

Abstract There is a lot of people that viewed memes and found them funny and entertaining, but not all people find it funny, the view it as negative, inappropriate, offensive, insulting, annoying, etc. The focus of this study is to gain new knowledge whether the attitudes of students on memes that contain sensitive content is disturbing for them or not because there has been issues about the memes posted on social media that may contain sensitive content for others. In other words, the goal of this study is to know the attitude or behavior and the reactions of the senior high school students towards memes and how they view it. Three questions are set to guide the researchers and ought to answer later on. First, what is the level of awareness of Silliman University Grade 12 STEAM Senior High School students on memes with sensitive content. Second, what would be the possible effects on a person after viewing memes with sensitive content. Lastly, if there is a significant difference of awareness of students towards memes in terms of sex. The data was gathered through an online survey. Based on the data gathered, the researches have safely assumed that the students had an average knowledge of awareness from the harmful content that memes contained. There was no significant difference of awareness in based on sex of an individual. Students have considered memes as somewhat positive and negative at the same time. Nevertheless, citizens of the net should be responsible in utilizing social media.

Keywords: Memes; Sensitive Content; Attitudes

1. INTRODUCTION Background of the study “A meme is a virally-transmitted photograph that is embellished with text that pokes fun at a cultural symbol or social idea” [1]. The majority of modern memes are captioned photos that are intended to be funny, often as a way to publicly ridicule human behaviour. Other memes can be videos and verbal expressions. Some memes have heavier and more philosophical content. “Since 1976, the term meme has evolved, changed not only by different authors and theorists that follow or criticize Dawkins' theory, but also by its creator” [2]. “The world of memes is noteworthy for two reasons: it is a worldwide social phenomenon, and memes behave like a mass of infectious flu and cold viruses, traveling from person to person quickly through social media” [2]. The meme concept is an academic concept coined in 1976 by the biologist Richard Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene. He proposed the term meme as a Darwinian, gene-centered approach to cultural evolution, defining it as "the unit of cultural transmission" [2]. Nowadays it is possible to find the concept of meme almost everywhere on the internet, not making allusion to the concept created by Dawkins, but relating to certain kinds of images, jokes or trends popular within the internet. Since 1976, the term meme has evolved, changed not only by different authors and theorists that follow or criticize Dawkins' theory, but also by its creator [2]. Conceptual Framework

Social Media Platforms

Memes with Sensitive Contents

Students

Perceptions

Statement of the Problem The internet memes has been very popular around the world nowadays, and it continues to spread around the world of internet. There have been lots of people that always keep in touch on viewing the internet memes. The people has lots of reaction towards memes, there have been many people that find memes funny, entertaining, enjoyable, etc., but there also have been many people that find memes as offensive, annoying, insulting, etc..The main objective of the researchers on conducting this study is to assess the attitude/reactions of the senior high school students of Silliman University towards memes. 1. What is the level of awareness of Silliman University Grade 12 STEAM Senior High School students on memes with sensitive content? 2. What are the possible effects on a person after viewing memes with sensitive content? 3. Is there a significant difference of awareness of students towards memes in terms of sex?

Scope and Limitations of the Study The main focus of this study is to gain new knowledge whether the attitudes of students on memes that contain sensitive content is disturbing for them or not because there has been issues about the memes posted on social media that may contain sensitive content for others. The study only limits to the students in Grade 12 of STEAM J in Silliman University. The study only chooses Grade 12 – STEAM J students because of the lack of time and due to the accessibility problems that hinder us from including other Silliman University student respondents. In this study the researchers will use instruments like online surveys or questionnaires. With the use of this instrument in gathering data, the researchers could easily compile and gain opinions on the responders. This study can be used as information to whether memes that contain sensitive content have affected them or not to students of Grade 12 –STEAM J of Silliman University. Significant of the study Future Researchers. This study can help them gather more information for further elaborations and improvements. Parents. They can monitor the content that their child is viewing materials that could be harmful to others and to their child. Silliman University. It allows the institution to promote awareness upon the students’ responsibility in sharing materials with sensitive content. Social Media Users. They will be aware of the risks that might affect them or others and be responsible of sharing posts that contain sensitive content. Students. To be able to know what type of contents that should be shared and can be catered to everyone’s interest without being offended. Definition of Terms The following terms are operationally defined in this study: Attitudes- the behaviors of Grade 12 towards humorous materials that contain sensitive content. Memes- humorous materials that spreads virally on the internet and may contain sensitive implications. Sensitive Content- materials that contain disturbing, provoking or offensive subject matter to a person’s feelings.

2. REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE This section of the study will provide background information based on related literature that revolves around and explains concepts used in this research, such as memes, sensitive content, and their origin. According to the literature, “Memes are hard to miss in today’s society because they have taken over the internet [4]. Memes are all over Instagram, Facebook and Twitter and it is nearly impossible to log onto these accounts without memes being everywhere. Every single time we log onto these social media platforms, our feed is covered with them”. In the literature, it states that people casually use internet everyday and most reasons that they use internet is because of memes. People find memes so intriguing because they are relatable and the audience thrives for things that they can relate to [4]. According to the liturature “Memes are a pain. Or so at least a glance into the world of academic literature would suggest. Ever since Richard Dawkins coined the term in 1976 to describe gene‐like infectious units of culture that spread from person to person, memes have been the subject of constant academic debate, derision, and even outright dismissal” [3]. In the literature, it is about memes as a form of a communication-oriented term. Memes are sometimes referred to as ‘cultural viruses,’ in reference to their putatively maladaptive (or at least non-adaptive) nature. In this case, humans are referred to as hosts to parasitic memes. Host behavior (and in some cases, host phenotype in general) is not always under the control of the genotypes which built the host. In some cases, the host may be considered an extended phenotype, which acts in the interest of parasite genes [3]. According to the literature, many parents worry about how exposure to technology might affect toddlers developmentally [6]. We know our preschoolers are picking up new social and cognitive skills at a stunning pace, and we don’t want hours spent glued to an iPad to impede that. The access to social media these days is so simple even preschoolers are glued to an ipad to keep them busy. The main concern of this exposure to social media is the effects of it which are low self-esteem development, believing that you have a bad body image, anxiety and even depression one of the world biggest issue. It is important for the parents to limit their child's daily usage of gadgets to avoid ending with those results [6]. According to “The internet meme is ubiquitous these days. The photos paired with funny captions have come to permeate the online communication of the younger generation, and it is nearly impossible to predict which ones will go viral” [7]. In this literature, it shows that a meme can be offensive to others. Just like the kid named as Kyra Pringle that got bullied because of a meme that the other people created. The meme was funny to others but for Kyra, she was having a hard time forgetting about the meme because she was hurt so much [7]. According to a study, “The Affect and Effect of Internet Memes:Assessing Perceptions and Influence of Online User-generated Political Discourse as a Media” focuses on memes’ influence on affect, as well as perceptions of internet memes’ persuasiveness to look for evidence of motivated reasoning in consuming political memes [8]. The study presents one method for conducting quantitative research with internet memes, including generating a sample from existing internet memes, and for considering political memes’ effects as media. The results of this study

suggest that political internet memes are a distinct internet meme genre, with characteristics operating in line with other humorous political media, and should be studied for effects separately or as distinguished from non-political memes. Results indicate that political internet memes produce different effects on viewers than non-political internet memes, and that political memes are subject to motivated reasoning in viewers’ perceptions of memes’ persuasiveness. “Specifically, viewing political internet memes resulted in more feelings of aversion than did viewing non-political memes, and political internet memes were rated as less effective as messages and their arguments were scrutinized more than were non-political memes” [8]. The purpose of this study is to investigate the consistency on the spread of memes. According to the study, “From the use of quantitative method and content analysis, the authors found the relationship between humour styles, the number of likes and comments and the virality of the memes or the number of shares.” [9]. The authors try to understand what’s the difference of humour and virailty, or the spread of the message through this study. They found out that memes with “selfdefeating” style of humor can lead to a high number of shares while what they called “selfenhancing” humorous memes form tend to be more viral [9]. As internet memes rapidly grow on the internet. The spread of memes greatly increased throughout the years. According to the study the internet memes appeared more than 5 years ago. As the author said “It is commonly assumed that Internet memes spread virally but scientific evidence as to this assumption is scarce” [12]. Coming up with this study relies too many different kinds of memes in the Internet and on sites that contains these. Internet memes have become increased due to public interest and the growing number of sites and communities. They found out that elaborate traditional compartment models with constant parameters. Log-normal distributions implicitly account for time-dependent growth and decline rates [12]. According to a study, “Based on prior research showing that information consistent with the group is remembered better and that ideas that threaten the group’s identity are rejected, we predicted that memes that are consistent with the group theme would spread faster than inconsistent memes” [10]. Memes rapidly gets more famous that were introduced by low-status individuals than memes started by high-standard people. Also reply post got more response than the original ones. Group norms are the more important in the maintenance of a group [10].

3. RESEARCH METHODS Research Design This study was a quantitative research, it aimed to gather numerical data. The study was all about finding the attitudes of students towards memes with sensitive content in Silliman University, specifically the grade 12 STEAM J students. Furthermore, the investigation aimed to prove and generate a strong conclusion with the topic. The researchers were able to obtain proof and evidence on how to respond to the research questions. Research Environment The place where the research was conducted was at Silliman University in the city of Dumaguete. Silliman University is a popular university through its good quality services, rich history and its marvelous environment. There are many different kinds of students in Silliman University however the researchers only tackled a specific population of students which is the grade 12 STEAM J students. Respondent and Sampling Procedure The respondents of the research were Grade 12 Senior High School students of STEAM J who are currently taking the field of Computer in their immersion. The sampling method that was used to the respondents was a type of purposive sampling method which was the total enumeration sampling method; it is a non-probability sampling method in which the researchers will examine the entire population of the class with particular knowledge of a certain cultural domain. Research Instrument The instruments used in the gathering of data was an online survey or questionnaire. It provided information from the respondents. Online surveys can provide the information that the researchers want to know, with the questionnaire that comprised relevant set of questions that corresponded to the research questions. A letter of consent was included when gathering data, it is important to ask for permission to the superior formally, so that the respondents was aware of what is going on. Data Collection Procedure In order to collect necessary data for the study, the researchers followed specific steps. The first step was that the researchers searched for the schedules of Grade 12 STEAM J students for them to know which time they would distribute their surveys. The sampling method used was through the application of total enumeration sampling method. After the researchers got the schedule for the classes of the senior high students, the researchers sent the online surveys or questionnaires the students within a specific time when the students were not having classes. With the sample size of the entire class of grade 12 STEAM-J students, the researchers gathered all the data and proceed to analyze. Data Analysis Procedure Once the data was collected from all the respondents from the senior high school students of Grade 12 STEAM J, the researchers then compiled and analyzed the data. The primary statistical procedures utilized was the percentage. The researchers calculated the percentage of the data collected for specific questions.

Ethical Considerations All personal information such as name, section, gender and nationality were optional. The selected respondents were informed of their rights to withdraw from participating. The researchers provided the respondents with consent forms that contained the necessary and sufficient information that seeks their approval or permission as to what and how the research will be conducted. The confidentiality of the data was taken of absolute seriousness and it observed a proper disposal after the research was conducted. The disposal of the data was on February 17, 2020 after the analysis of data was computed and finalized. All personal info such as name, section, age, nationality and answers remained confidential.

4. THE RESULTS AND DISCUSSION This chapter presents the gathered data of the respondents and results of the study. These data are presented in tables following the sequence of the specific research problem regarding the Attitudes of Grade 12 STEAM Students towards Memes with Sensitive Content. This chapter presents the gathered data of the respondents and results of the study. These data are presented in tables following the sequence of the specific research problem regarding the Attitudes of Grade 12 STEAM Students towards Memes with Sensitive Content. A. Level of Awareness Statements Level of Awareness Memes should be appropriate and High shared Awareness responsibly (4) because it may offend netizens Memes contain sensitive content Average and it may be Awareness harmful to one’s (3) feelings Memes are acceptable, if it Low suits the Awareness (2) conditions and welfare of others Memes cannot be harmful and it is No Awareness only for (1) entertainment Mean of Means

Total

Mean

4

3 (Average Awareness)

9

3 (Average Awareness)

6

3 (Average Awareness)

4

3 (Average Awareness) 3 (Average Awareness)

Analysis There are 19 male and 4 female participants, 23 in total. The results on the tables shows us that there are 3 males and 1 female that has high awareness. 8 males and 1 female that has average awareness. 5 males and 1 female that has low awareness. 3 males and 1 female that has no awareness on memes with sensitive content. The entire result show that the computed mean corresponds to average awareness.

B. Possible Effects Effects Sad Happy Angry Disgusted None of the above Prefer not to say

f 3 9 1 2 7 1

Percent % 13.04 39.13 4.35 8.70 30.43 4.35

There are 2 females and 1 male that feels sad on viewing the example memes on the questionnaire. 8 males and 1 female that feels happy, 1 female that fees angry, 2 male that feels disgusted, 7 males that didn’t feel anything about it, 1 male that prefers not to say. The possible effects upon viewing memes with sensitive content are happy, sad, angry, disgusted, some felt none of the following and also while some choose not to say how he/she feels. C. Significant Difference in terms of sex Statements Male Memes should be appropriate and shared responsibly High Awareness because it may offend netizens Memes contain sensitive content Average and it may be Awareness harmful to one’s feelings Memes are acceptable, if it suits the Low Awareness conditions and welfare of others Memes cannot be harmful and it is No Awareness only for entertainment

Female

3

High Awareness

1

8

Average Awareness

1

5

Low Awareness

1

3

No Awareness

1

Analysis Based on the computed mean and percentage, it shows that there is no significant difference in terms of sex. Both have accumulated a mean of 3 that corresponds to average awareness.

Discussion In this chapter, the results shows us that there are Grade 12 STEAM – J students that have high, average, low,...