  The propagation of online memes is initially influenced by meme creators and
secondarily by meme consumers, whose individual sharing decisions accumulate to
determine total meme propagation. We characterize this as a sender/receiver
sequence in which the first sender is also the creator. This sequence consists
of two distinct processes, the creation process and the sharing process. We
investigated these processes separately to determine their individual influence
on sharing outcomes. Our study observed participants creating memes in the lab.
We then tracked the sharing of those memes, derived a model of sharing
behavior, and implemented our sharing model in a contagion simulation.
  Although we assume meme consumers typically have little or no information
about a meme's creator when making a decision about whether to share a meme
(and vice versa), we nevertheless ask whether consumer re-sharing behavior can
be predicted based on features of the creator. Using human participants, web
log monitoring, and statistical model fitting, the resulting Creator Model of
Re-sharing Behavior predicts 11.5% of the variance in the behavior of
consumers. Even when we know nothing about re-sharers of a meme, we can predict
something about their behavior by observing the creation process.
  To investigate the individual re-sharing decisions that, together, constitute
a meme's total consumer response, we built a statistical model from human
observation. Receivers make their decision to share as a function of the meme's
content and their reaction to it, which we model as a consumer's decision to
share. The resulting Consumer Model of Sharing Decisions describes 37.5% of the
variance in this decision making process.

Social and Information Networks;Computers and Society