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A Generational War Is Launched With The Birth Of Ok Boomer In The Digital Age, Young Joon Lim, Jennifer Lemanski

Communication Faculty Publications and Presentations

This study examined recent virality of “Ok Boomer” in the United States. The term of Ok Boomer gained overnight momentum in the public sphere as the symbol of a generational war. While previous research has primarily examined racial and gender tensions, this study introduced a new phenomenon of the generational conflict between “Ok Boomers” and “Baby Boomers,” in which social media originated the term of Ok Boomer and traditional media diffused it with framed meaning. Diffusion of Innovation theory was used to better understand the path of how “Ok Boomer” as a catchphrase, hashtag, noun cluster or trend resulted in …