Cats share not only people's real lives just also their virtual earth. The Meow Factor is a research project that takes an interdisciplinary approach to draw true cat content. Cat content generally deals with cats in popular civilization, with news articles virtually cats, cat memes, and cat videos in the public sphere, such as online newspapers and magazines, social media, print media, Telly, movies, books, paintings, and merchandise. When taking a closer wait at the cats' presence in their human relationship with humans, it becomes obvious that cats play a large role in the public sphere. Afterwards an observation of traditional and social media in the English language-, Russian-, and German-speaking world during a two-year menstruum, categories for news stories and for user generated content accept been developed. The results prove that cat content maintains a strong presence in art and popular culture, in advertising, in the media, and on the internet.

Coding Frequency of Story Types
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27 April 2016, Arts & Humanities Conference, Venice ISBN 978-80-87927-24-3, IISES

DOI: x.20472/AHC.2016.001.013

EDITH PODHOVNIK

Academy of Applied Sciences FH joanneum, Republic of austria

THE MEOW Factor - AN INVESTIGATION OF True cat CONTENT IN

TODAY'S MEDIA

Abstract:

Cats share not only people's existent lives but also their virtual earth. The Meow Factor is a research

project that takes an interdisciplinary arroyo to depict cat content. Cat content generally deals

with cats in pop culture, with news manufactures about cats, cat memes, and true cat videos in the public

sphere, such as online newspapers and magazines, social media, impress media, TV, movies, books,

paintings, and trade. When taking a closer wait at the cats' presence in their human relationship with

humans, it becomes obvious that cats play a large office in the public sphere. After an ascertainment of

traditional and social media in the English-, Russian-, and High german-speaking world during a 2-twelvemonth

period, categories for news stories and for user generated content have been developed. The results

prove that cat content maintains a strong presence in art and popular civilization, in advertising, in the

media, and on the net.

Keywords:

cat content; cyberspace cats; user generated content; social media; popular culture; news; news

values; news categories

JEL Classification: L82

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1 Introduction

Cats have been living alongside people for thousands of years and are now sharing

not just people‟s real lives but likewise their virtual world: Cats have been taking over the

internet (Eppink, 2015), appear in ad (Edwards, 2011; Allen, 2013; Kelley,

2013), and very often feature in news stories all around the globe (Podhovnik, 2016).

The miracle of cats on the internet and their use in the media is often referred to

as true cat content or Katzencontent in the German language. Though the term is

understandable, cat content is non common in the English language. In the English

language, the phenomenon is unremarkably called cats on the internet or LOLcats. This

paper deliberately uses true cat content because the term describes cats in the public

sphere in general, not but cats on the internet.

Every bit the aim of the paper is to define the scope for research on cat content, it takes an

interdisciplinary approach and deals briefly with various aspects of the relationship of

people and cats. Department 2 of the paper looks at existing research on cats in art and

literature, ethology, advertising, and med ia to highlight the cats‟ entreatment to people, and

Section 3 describes the impact of cat content on the news, popular culture, the

net, and language.

two Cat Research

Cats have featured in people‟s lives for a long time every bit fellow creatures, companions,

symbols, metaphors, and allegories. These roles are withal relevant today every bit cats still

fulfil those functions. Every bit is shown below, the image of the true cat has non always been as

positive as it is today.

Various sciences accept developed an interest in cats: apart from the interest of biological science

and ethology in cats every bit a domestic animal, cats have been analysed in art and literary

history, ad, and media and communications.

2.1 Historical Pawtraits (Portraits)

Historical accounts of cats are connected to the modern portrayals of cats. Not the

bailiwick of the portrayals has changed but the methods and technical possibilities.

Cats plant their place in human fine art a long time agone, for example in statues, paintings,

and literature. Several publications describe the cats‟ role throughout history: Bobis

(2001) discusses the history and legends of the cat, and Nikolajeva (2009) talks about

cats in literature from antiquity to modernern times. Cat paintings are shown by Foucart-

Walter and Rosenberg (1988) and Sacquin (2010).

Bobis (2001) looks at many resources from antiquity onwards and gives examples of

cats from sociology, mythology, religion, law, and literature. The many roles of cats as

devils, demons, familiars, and friends are also described by Nikolajeva (2009), who

traces the history of cats in literature in different cultures. The oldest written testimony

of cats is Herodot‟s business relationship from the 5th century BC (Bobis, 2001, p.19), the offset

European cat story appeared in the tardily 14th century (Nikolajeva, 2009, p.250).

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Throughout history, the cat played various roles for humans, both positive and

negative. Being a divine creature representing the Egyptian Getddess Bast, the true cat

was a god-like being not just in Ancient Arab republic of egypt but likewise in other cultures, such as in

Norse mythology. The true cat westwardequally also regarded as a guardian of the habitation and as a

healer up to and including the Middle Ages. In Oriental and European folklores, the

positive image of the cat then became blurred, westith the cat becoming one of the

antagonists. There are practiced and evil black cats, and the mystical and magical powers

of cats are good and bad in Chinese culture (Nikolajeva, 2009, p.249).

In the Middle Ages under the influence of Christian religion, the cat was vilified as an

example for bad moral behaviour (Bobis, 2001, p.99) and eventually became a

representation of the devil (Bobis, 2001, p.177). The cat westwardevery bit linked to Satan and

Judas and was associated with witches. Cat thousandonsters, turning into witches and back

into catshape, appeared in Rex Arthur stories and Slavic folklore (Nikolajeva, 2009,

p.250f.).

In the nineteenth and 20th centuries, cats came to be regarded equally positive again, as beingness

wise and creative. Cats started to appear as heroes - or bottom characters - in plant nursery

rhymes and in literature. Fairy tale protagonist Puss in Boots and Eastward.T.A. Hoffmann‟south

Tomcat Murr are examples of cat heroes. Nikolajeva (2009) also mentions famous

authors, such every bit Lewis Caroll, T. Due south. Eliot, Edgar Allan Poe, Doris Lessing, Charles

Boudelaire, Mikhail Bulgakov, and James Joyce (Nikolajeva, 2009, p.253).

Generally, cats are cultural symbols with diverse images ranging from supernatural

figures in diverse disguises to magical helpers. She-cats are unremarkably associated with

feminine witchcraft, shape-shifting, mystery, and sexuality, while male cats tend to be

tricksters or carnival figures (Nikolajeva, 2009, p.253).

In arts, besides, the cat has fulfilled diverse functions (Foucart-Walter & Rosenberg, 1988,

pp.7– 31; Sacquin, 2010). In religious paintings, in that location are biblical, evangelical, saintly

cats and warrior cats in the holy war. In secular paintings, cats, both positive and

negative, are used for proverbs, emblems, and popular wisdom, for jests and sorcery,

and as cats in arms and at state of war. Especially from 1850 onwards, cat paintings and cat

portraits have become popular. (Foucart-Walter & Rosenberg, 1988, p.33)

two.two Cats in Ethology

The ethologist Dennis C. Turner (1995, 2000) has looked at human-true cat interaction to

explain why people like cats. Cats are popular because of the cats‟ enjoyment of

physical contact with their owners, the cats‟ predictability, the cats‟ full general

cleanliness, and, anthropomorphically speaking, the true catsouthward‟ likeness to humans (Turner,

2000, p.199).

Turner‟s studies (2000, p.200) also show the mechanisms at work forming the homo-

cat bond. Generally, there is a universally human tendency to care for immature, sick,

and wild animals, which is probably related to the Kindchenschema. The attachment

theory and social support theory discuss the details of the Kindchenschema (Turner,

2000, p.200).

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While cats cannot replace humans in the social network, they provide an additional

source of emotional back up for their owners. Cats can exist "the significant others" for

their owners and can lift negative moods particularly when in that location is a strong bond

between cat and owner. Yet, cats practice non necessarily improve an already good mood,

equally Turner‟s studies (2000, p.201) show.

2.3 Catvertising

Cats are an effective and genuine tool for fundraising, marketing, commerce and

audition engagement. (Betimes, 2015) To Kelley (2013) cats are perfect for advertizing.

Yet, cats in ads have non been specifically analysed, though animals in ads mostly

have a positive effect on consumers (Lancendorfer et al., 2008, p.390).

In advertising peculiarly those animals portrayed as companions influence the

consumers in a positive mode in both print and Telly adverts (Lancendorfer et al., 2008,

p.384).

Though the OED (Oxford University Press, twenty15) does not list the term catvertising ,

the term is used on the internet. In the Urban Lexicon, catvertising appeared in 2014

equally cat-vertising: "using felines in ad campaigns to market products" (Urban

Lexicon LLC, 2014).

Catvertising on google.com (2016) comes upwardly with most 40,000 results (equally of 08

March 2016). The search results include a newspaper article from 1999 in which the

give-and-take appeared in the headline "Catvertising; But our moggy tester gives 'first advert

for pets' the paws-downwardly" (Oliver, 1999) and with articles on Adweek: "John St. in

Toronto Shifts Entire Focus to Catvertising 'Nobody wants to see ads anymore. They

want cat videos'" (Nudd, 2011), "Due northine Crawly Cat Commercials That Drive The

Internet Wild. These ads have way more than ix lives." (Nudd, 2015).

Non-scientifically, catvertising has been taken up by the media. Co-ordinate to Benton

(2013), catvertising increases brand awareness and gives the example of the dairy

visitor Cravendale, whose brand awareness went up by 10 per cent and southales

increased by eight per cent after an ad aired featuring cats. Amidst other companies

using cats in advertising are Ikea (Sweney, 2015), Skittles (Cox, 2014), Walmart,

Samsung, Kia (Edwards, 2011), O², Bouygues Telecom, Sainsbury‟s, and Novartis

(Podhovnik, 2016). These eastxamples do non include cat food and cat litter

advertisements because the utilize of cats in those advertisements is an obvious choice.

2.4 Cats in Media and Communications

Animals, not just cats, often feature in newspaper stories. One study (Herzog &

Galvin, 1992, p.79) claims that there are 9.6 animal items on average per issue in the

tabloid press. About 800 articles and pictures from four tabloids from a five twelvemonth

flow were examined qualitatively to find out almost the roles animals play in the

psychology of xxth century Americans. (Herzog & Galvin, 1992, p.78) Nine categories

of animate being portrayal were identified. Animals are objectsouthward of affection, saviours, threats,

victims, things to be used, sex activity objects, imaginary and mythological beings, surrogate

humans, and objects of wonder.

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Inside the category of animals adue south objects of affection, the study identified the sub-

categories of weird pets, extreme devotion, and cute animal pictures. The cute animal

pictures usually show a newborn or juvenile animate being, who have the Kindchenschema

with large optics, large heads, and short chubby legs. Anthromorphic portrayal is often

obvious (Herzog & Galvin, 1992, p.80f).

Another written report dealing with the connection of animals and media is the study by

Gerber et al. (2011), which analyses the media representation of animals as a risk to

people, such every bit reports on BSE and bird flu (Gerber et al., 2011, p.17). Almost 4

and a half thousand articles from 1978 to 2007 in the Swiss media were examined

with regard to animal as the "dangerous „Other‟ (Gerber et al., 2011, p.xix).

Animals in the article autumn into five types of beast figures: undesirable, victim,

companion, commonsensical, and shown brute. Shown animals refer to animals exhibited in

shows, personified animals, studied or researched animals, animals in sports, and as

oddities or art objects. (Gerber et al., 2011, p.23) In Gerber et al.‟southward report (2011, p.23),

more than one 3rd of all the articles featured the animal every bit an undesirable figure.

Ane finding is of special interest for this newspaper: Herzog and Galvin‟s study (Herzog &

Galvin, 1992) show that dogs announced more often in newspaper articles than cats. The

fact that dogs feature in the media more often than cats has besides been noted by Jason

Eppink (personal communication, February 2016), yet cats are more likely to go viral.

It seems, thus, that cats are qualitatively more than effective and take more than bear on than

dogs.

2.v Cats ii.0

Cats are very pop on the internet. Cats announced online in cyberspace videos, equally

LOLcats and as animated gifs, and cats on the internet generally represent feline

sociability with humans, independence, intelligence, and the cats‟ apparent secrecy

and their association with the home (O‟Meara, 2014).

The cats‟ popularity on the internet is a fact taken up by Eppink (2015) in the exhibition

"How Cats Took Over the Net" at the Museum of the Moving Paradigm in New York.

For Eppink (2015) the popularity of cats is due to several reasons: the ascension of user-

generated content, pluralistic ignorance, the existence of a virtual cat park, the bored

at work network, theast global entreatment of pictures with no need for linguistic communication, path

dependence, and the happiness factor. In other words, the possibilities of the internet

and new technology support developments enabling people all over the globe to post

and swallow cat pictures and videos with enjoyment and without shame in a

customs (Eppink, 2015).

Two studies bargain with cat videos on the net: O‟Meara (2014) and Gall Myrick

(2015) both discuss pleasures of watching cat videos from different perspectives.

O‟Meara (2014) analysed cat videos, which are commonly generated by users with their

mobile devices, and sees thursdaydue east appeal of cat videos in the cats‟ apparent

unselfconsciousness of being recorded and watched. Additionally, the audience tends

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to anthropomorphise cats and projection their own emotions onto cats. People also run across

cats as cute and as beingness skilful for their mood (O‟Meara, 2014).

Gall Myrick (2015) conducted a study with well-nigh 7000 respondents on the upshot of

cat videos onorth people. The report provides statistical evidence that true cat videos act every bit

positive mood enhancers. Though some people might experience a 1000uilt trip later on

watching cyberspace cats instead of working, true cat videos could actumarry be used to

positively influence emotional wellbeing (Gall Myrick, 2015).

Miltner (2012) looked at the entreatment of LOLcats using focus groups. LOLcats are ca t

pictures with funny misspelled captions and might be considered the quintessential

internet meme. LOLcats are created past users to provide non simply entertainment but

also social interaction, communication and expressions of emotions (Miltner, 2012,

p.7f).

The sense of humour of LOLcats lies in the anthropomorphic portrayal of cats and in the

captions. The LOLcat sphere has its own language, namely lolspeak. Lolspeak is used

every bit the lingua franca, is characterised by a childlike tone and wrong grammar and is

supposed to be the true cat‟s vox in the motion-picture show. Lolspeak also serves as an in -joke in the

LOLcat community (Miltner, 2012, p.30).

3 Cat Content

Section iii discusses the research arroyo to cat content and outlines the results:

Cats appear in the news, have their place in modern popular culture, play a office on the

net, and influence language.

True cat content mostly deals with cats in popular culture, with news articles most cats,

cat memes, and cat videos in the public sphere, such equally online newspapers and

magazines, social media, impress media, Tv, movies, books, paintings, and

merchandise.

3.1 Approaching Cat Content

The approach taken for this research projection is an inductive approach and is based on

a two-year continuous observation from 2014 to 2016. The aim is to define and

categorise cat content and to outline some impacts. The research projection has been

accompanied past the weblog The Meow Factor (Podhovnik, 2016), in which some

research results and initial observations are documented.

The inquiry involves active interaction with the research subject area: the writer interacts

every bit @freemurrli on Twitter and Instagram and as The Meow Factor on Facebook and

on the blogging site WordPress.com.

The kickoff field of ascertainment are news stories featuring cats. The 2nd sphere

includes social media, like YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, and

WordPress to follow developments of internet cats: social media phenomena like

Grumpy Cat and Henri, thdue east Existentialist True cat , user generated cat content on social

media platforms, and cat blogs.

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The third field touched upon is popular culture. To be precise, cats in TV serial, films,

and books. When intentionally looking out for cats, it becomes obvious that cats are

about ubiquitous, at least in western civilisation.

In the grade of research it has become apparent tlid cats are present not merely in

online or offline media but are also, maybe increasingly, used as cat merchandise,

for instance on everyday household goods, similar chiliadugs, key-rings, and calendars, in

advertising, and in fashion, such as the Choupette Collection by Karl Lagerfeld

(karl.com, 2016) or the Kitty Collection by Charlotte Olympia (2016). Sanrio‟s cat How-do-you-do

Kitty is a merchandise phenomenon with items ranging from clothes, accessories, and

toys to credit cards (Sanrio, 2016) and airplanes (Eva Air, 2016). Though cat

merchandise could as well be called cat content due to its presence in the public sphere,

information technology is not described here.

3.ii #catnews

With the assist of online news aggregators, newspaper manufactures on cats accept been

collected and categorised. On the English-linguistic communication news.yahoo.com and the

Russian-linguistic communication news.yandex.ru English cat, German Katze, and Russian кошка

(koška ) have been used every bit key-words for the news search. The results evidence that cats

feature in the media very often. For example, in Feb 2014 lone, 108 cat news

articles appeared in the English language speaking media in one calendar month (February 2014), and

31 Russian language articles appeared just on one 24-hour interval (28 February 2014).

To establish the categories of news stories, a qualitative data analysis with the help of

QDA Miner Low-cal (Provalis Inquiry, n.d.) was conducted with the 108 cat articles in

English. News articles about cats tin fall into ten categories: cruelty to cats, testify

cats, cats and business concern, cats and human health, homeless cats, feral cats, cat

companions, cat heroes, unbelievable cats, and internet cats. Cat news stories can be

put in more than than one category, such as feral cats being a danger to human health or a

celebrity internet cat making an impact in business organisation.

The categories are on theast whole self-explanatory. At first glance, some categories are

similar to each other and are therefore explained in more detail here: True cat heroes are

cats who take helped humans in some way, such as a true cat saving people from a

burning house, while unbelievable cats refers to stories like run-away cats returning

home after years or cats surviving trips hidden in the motor block of a car. Homeless

cats and feral cats differ from each other by definition: homeless cats refer thousandore to

stray cats which are essentially used to treatment by people, whereas feral cats are

untamed cats living in cat colonies.

The coding frequency, shown in Table 1 below, gives some thought about which

categories are used the almost. Still, as the analysis is based on only 108 English-

language articles of one calendar month found on news.yahoo.com, the results are non

representative.

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Table 1 – Coding Frequency of Story Types

Source: Author

Autonomously from categorising true cat news stories based on the story blazon, news values

(Galtung & Ruge, 1965) tin be applied to find out why cat stories brand the news.

Selections of stories are based on unexpectedness, unambiguity, reference to aristocracy

nations, reference to aristocracy people, continuity, meaningfulness, negativity, and cultural

proximity.

Cat stories oftentimes comport with them the news values of unexpectedness, unambiguity,

continuity, meaningfulness, composition, and cultural proximity. The story on a cat

stuck on a pole for 3 days the so-called Hydro Pole Cat (Podhovnik, 2016) is a

good example: the story is unexpected, unambiguous, meaningful and culturally northear.

Additionally, the story was covered for a few days telling the reader about the rescue

and the last adoption of the true cat by a family.

Unexpectedness and composition are probably the primal factors for cat news stories.

Some cat stories make the news worldwide because of that. The news sections range

from current diplomacy to sports. In the backwash of the terrorist attacks in Paris in 2015,

news around the world focussed on the true cat pictures tweeted with the hashtag

#brusselslockdown. News items appeared for example in Chile, the UK, the U.s., Italia,

Austria, and Russia. Other examples include the cat strolling onto the football pitch

during a game of Everton FC and the cat on the tennis court in a WTA tournament,

which appeared in the USA, the UK, Germany, Spain, New Zealand, Ukraine, and

Russian federation.

3.3 Modern Popular True cat Culture

When using the term „popular civilization‟ in the sense of cultural artefacts or media

content produced for mass audiences (Chandler & Munday, 2011, p.327), some

productions featuring cats have become a commercial success for companies. The

roles of cats equally warriors, friends, familiars, guardians, healers, or mystical creatures

take not changed. The prototype of the true cat is mostly positive.

Cats are at present heroes in popular civilisation in music, literature, and film: Andrew Lloyd

Webber‟s musical Cats, Erin Hunter‟s Warrior Cats, Judith Kerr‟s Mog , the animated

serial Tom & Jerry, theastward comic books with Garfield, Simon's Cat, and Oatmeal ,

Disney‟s Aristocats, and DreamWorks‟ movie Puss in Boots, which is a spin-off to the

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successful Shrek serial featuring the true cat Puss in Boots. Cats likewise accept guest

appearances, such as in the Star Expedition serial, The Simpsons, and James Bail

movies, and are, in addition to appearing, recurring vocal themes in pop series like

Friends and Big Blindside Theory .

The role of the cat as healer and guardian is especially evident in existent life story

accounts, such equally James Bowen‟southward extremely successful The Street Cat Bob series, in

which a stray cat helps a homeless homo to get dorsum on his feet, or Gwen Cooper‟s

Homer's Odyssey: A Fearless Feline Tale, or How I Learned about Love and Life with

a Bullheaded Wonder True cat, with the blind true cat Homer defeating a infiltrator.

The true cat is still a muse for art. Cats in art are directed towards a broader audience, for

example with the CatArtShow (2016) and the Internet Cat Video Festival (Walker Art

Centre, 2016), as well referred to as Catvidfest. The CatArtShow showcases paintings of

cats by mod artists, and the Catvidfest is a compilation of cat videos southwardhown at

festivals around the world.

3.4 Catnet

Equally mentioned in the section Cat ii.0, cats are very popular on the internet, and social

media play an important function. Social media can exist regarded as a virtual meeting place

and refers to a broad category of communications media enabling people to collaborate

with each other beyond geographic and linguistic boundaries regardless of whether

they know each other or non (Chandler & Munday, 2011, p.397).

Based on algorithms, social media platforms suggest posts which might interest the

users. Eppink (2015) refers to this phenomenon as path dependence. In other words,

the previous online history of a user influences which posts appear in thursdaye newsfeed or

in the search suggestions.

The social media platforms discussed here are Facebook and Instagram. On

Facebook, cats appear in different ways: every bit memes, cat videos, and cat gifs on users‟

newsfeed, equally cats with their own accounts, in special interest Facebook communities,

every bit shelter cats waiting to exist rescued, and as cats equally public figures with their own

pages. Examples for a Facebook community is For the Honey of Black Cats (Black Cat

Appreciation Folio) with about 195,000 likes (as of 17 March 2016), the news/media

website Love Meow with more than two million likes, and the non-profit organisation

Cats Protection with 368,000 likes. Among cats equally public figures are Grumpy Cat with

8.5 million likes, Nyan True cat with almost iv.9 meg likes, Lil Bub with 2.seven million likes,

and Henri le Conversation Noir with 175,000 likes.

The photograph-sharing platcourse Instagram can exist considered as one of the virtual cat

parks (Eppink, 2015) where users testify their cats to others. In the absence of a real

meeting identify where true cat owners can run across other true cat owners together with thursdayeir pets ,

cat owners have the possibility to share their cats‟ photos. There are more than 87

one thousand thousand photos and videos with the hashtag #cat (as of 17 March 2016)

.

At that place are more than 98 million photos and videos with the hashtag #dog. While at that place areastward more dogs on

instagram.com, cats are much more than likely to go viral (Eppink, 2015)

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With regard to cats, Instagram accounts can be categorised as follows: users who

postal service primarily true cat photos and videos, organisations posting photos and videos of their

cat mascots, creature charities posting rescue cat photos, and users who post true cat

photos only one time in a while. Accounts are oftentimes given the proper noun of the cat, such as

freemurrlli, uglycatmary, ravenvonmaven, scootertheblackcat, simbathebengal2015, or

station57cat.

Sharing of cat related topics besides happens on blogs and on Twitter. One such blog is

Katzenworld (Katzenworld Weblog Team, 2016), which is a special interest blog

dedicated to cats and cat products. This blog has more than 5,400 followers. To give

an example of Twitter, the hashtag #academicswithcats attracted more than 1000

people to take function in Academia Obscura‟s competition, westhich also featured in the

Guardian and the Times Higher Education (Lock, 2015; Wright, 2015a, 2015b). The

cat community is, thus, very active.

3.5 Caterwauling

Users and traditional media alike utilise specific language referring to cats. In improver to

LOLspeak, which was briefly discussed in Section two.5, wordplay is quite mutual.

Even though English language is the lingua franca of the net, but, depending on the

customs, other languages play a role, likewise. Meme captions, hashtags, and

comments are non limited to English. To communicate with users of specific linguistic communication

and to increment the reach of adue north business relationship, the languages of the hashtags are not limited

to the languages a specific user speaks. Users include hashtags in other languages.

Wordplay in English language includes for case pawtrait for portrait , purrfect for perfect ,

furreal for for real , meowgic for magic, meowjesty for majesty, paws for interruption, purr

review for peer review. In Italian meowgiorno might be used for buon giorno, and in

Russian the phrase pret-a-kote – kote is a Russian slang term for cats - was created

past an online shop selling cat merchandise equally a wordplay on pret-a-porter .

Hashtags are also of interest. Table two below shows a pick of hashtags, nerveless

in February 2016. Most hashtags are in English, but in that location are likewise examples from

German, Italian, and Russian.

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Tabular array ii – Hashtags on instagram.com

#katze, #katzen, #mieze,

#katzenliebe,

#babykatze,

#katzenbabys,

#schmusekatze,

#instakatze,

#katzenaufinstagram,

#katzenselfie,

#catcontent,

#katzencontent

#gatto, #gatti,

#instagatto,

#gattogram,

#gattonero

#кот (kot), #кошка

(koška), #котэ

(kotè), #котик

(kotik),

#babykatze,

#katzenbabys,

#kätzchen,

#kätzchenliebe

#котята (kotjata),

#котейки (kotejki),

#котенок

(kotënok )

#чернаякошка

černajakoška),

#чёрнаякошка

(čërnajakoška )

Source: Author

Apart from the hashtags, the captions are of interest. In the captions, the cats are very

often given a phonation with I, similar in LOLspeak, and call their owners my humans. There is

a slight unequalerence betwixt the use in English language and High german. While in English theastward pet

owners refer to themselves as mom or dad, they call themselves Dosenöffner (can

opener) in German.

4 Conclusion

Cats share not only people‟s real lives only also their virtual due westorld, and cat content

plays a large role in the public sphere. Nowadays, cats have a positive prototype and are

regarded as fellow creatures, companions, symbols, metaphors, allegories, heroes,

guardians, healers, and muses. Cats are appreciated for their cuteness, secrecy, and

independence. Not the roles of the cat have inverse throughout history just the

technical possibilities which are used to look at and portray cats. True cat content

influences the public sphere with cats having become the symbol for the amusement

and communication possibilities of the internet.

In how far and why cats influence the public sphere still needs to exist investigated.

While this newspaper has given an overview over cat content enquiry and has fabricated some

initial observations of cats in the public sphere, more research is needed concerning

27 April 2016, Arts & Humanities Conference, Venice ISBN 978-80-87927-24-3, IISES

137http://world wide web.iises.net/proceedings/arts-humanities-briefing-venice/front-page

qualitative content analysis of news articles, the analysis of news selection, the

language, cross-cultural approaches to online communities and the image of cats, and

the reasons why cats are so successful in the public sphere of today.

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