Some Research Questions
- Q: How popular are Dave jokes?
- A: In 2008, Tim Vine won the Dave award with the joke "Velcro. What a rip-off". This joke has been the most retold and the most popular of all the jokes shortlisted by the Dave panel. Ten years on, in 2017, this joke was being independently tweeted 10 times every day, and you could almost fill Elland Stadium (home to Leeds FC, capacity 35000) with everyone who liked, replied to or retweeted that joke in just that year alone. So I'd say that at their best, they can be really popular.
- Q: How in tune with public tastes are the panels' decisions?
- A: Almost every year, Dave's choice of best joke was (very clearly) the most tweeted joke of the shortlist. In 2017 and 2019 the first and second ranked jokes by the panel were ranked second and first respectively by the Twitter audience, and the 2017 jokes were separated by just a single tweet! It seems that the panel vote and the popular vote are pretty close, and there is no gap between "critics" and "audience"!
- Q: Where do Dave joke-tellers come from?
- A: 60% from the UK, 20% from America/Canada, 5% from Ireland/Europe and 5% from Australia/New Zealand, and 6% from Asia/Africa (see pie chart.)
- Q: Which kinds of jokes are more popular: Edinburgh jokes or Christmas Cracker jokes? Are old jokes really the best?
- A: Have a look at this graph showing other recent jokes and a Tommy Cooper joke on Twitter recently. Tommy Cooper's joke performs really well - old jokes are good jokes too.
- Q: What about kids jokes and Dad jokes?
- A: Previous work has tried to track the popularity of jokes, see The Laugh Lab by Richard Wiseman of the University of Hertfordshire. He crowd-sourced jokes and asked his correspondants to vote for the funniest. There were lots of dad jokes submitted, but they didn't get many votes from the participants. Twitter provides us with an even larger scale of investigation, and lets us catch up with how those jokes, studied in 2002, are performing now on social media. Spoiler - the most popular jokes on social media - even more popular than the Edinburgh jokes - is a dad joke.
- Q: What is the role of comedy bots?
- A: Not particularly significant. Three of the 144 Dave jokes had the majority of their response from bots, but for most there was little effect.