The Power of Memes

Blackmore, Susan

doi:10.1038/scientificamerican1000-64

Cited by 137 publications

(69 citation statements)

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“…This phenomenon is perfectly reflected by the process of homophily. At the same time, memes can be transferred among users by copying and imitation, owing to varied information channels, including social networks (see Dawkins 1982;Blackmoore 2000;Shifman 2013). This process in turn refers to the possibility of acquiring new patterns of behaviours and their dissemination.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Blog Content Management in Shaping Pro Recreational Attitudes

Stepaniuk

2017

Journal of Business Economics and Management

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Abstract. The main aim of this article was to research the impact of the content of recreational blogs on the change of attitude and behaviours of their recipients, as well as creating the basis to manage the content of blogs directed to achieve particular results. The study was conducted with the use of quantitative and qualitative content analysis. The contents of 691 comments left by 4 main types of commentators were analysed. The evaluation of individual entries was performed using the assumptions of the modified AIDA model of consumer behaviour. The possibility of a positive causal link between the presented content and the appearance of the signs of its impact on the behaviour of individuals tracking the posts has been proven to a minor extent only. Merely 0.5% of commentators and individuals were not engaged in running declared changing their way of life to a pro recreational and sports-related one. Conducting analyses directly on the large, narrative story-telling content with the use of a consumer behaviour model is a novelty of this paper and rarely appears in the scientific literature. The theoretical significance of the work is connected with the development of the theory of marketing management in the context of social networks content management.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Blog Content Management in Shaping Pro Recreational Attitudes

Stepaniuk

2017

Journal of Business Economics and Management

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“…Ideally we could flesh out a theoretical framework for this process that unifies the psychological and social sciences as did the theory of evolution for the biological sciences. Accordingly, there have been attempts to develop formal mathematical (Boyd and Richerson 1985;Cavalli-Sforza and Feldman 1981;Schuster and Sigmund 1983) to as memes (Aunger 2000;Blackmore 1999Blackmore , 2000Dawkins 1976;Dennett 1995;Gabora 1996) as well as to the analysis of growth and change in economics (Borgers 1997;Borkar et. al.…”

Section: Does Culture Evolve Like Biological Lineages Do?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Ideas are not replicators but minds are

Gabora¹

2004

Biology & Philosophy

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Abstract. An idea is not a replicator because it does not consist of coded self-assembly instructions. It may retain structure as it passes from one individual to another, but does not replicate it. The cultural replicator is not an idea but an associatively-structured network of them that together form an internal model of the world, or worldview. A worldview is a primitive, uncoded replicator, like the autocatalytic sets of polymers widely believed to be the earliest form of life. Primitive replicators generate self-similar structure, but because the process happens in a piecemeal manner, through bottom-up interactions rather than a top-down code, they replicate with low fidelity, and acquired characteristics are inherited. Just as polymers catalyze reactions that generate other polymers, the retrieval of an item from memory can in turn trigger other items, thus cross-linking memories, ideas, and concepts into an integrated conceptual structure. Worldviews evolve idea by idea, largely through social exchange. An idea participates in the evolution of culture by revealing certain aspects of the worldview that generated it, thereby affecting the worldviews of those exposed to it. If an idea influences seemingly unrelated fields this does not mean that separate cultural lineages are contaminating one another, because it is worldviews, not ideas, that are the basic unit of cultural evolution.Keywords: associative network, acquired characteristics, autocatalytic closure, conceptual closure, culture, evolution, idea, origin of life, replicator, self-replication, worldview. Does Culture Evolve like Biological Lineages Do?It is clear that cultural entities (such as ideas, habits, mannerisms, attitudes, and languages, as well as artifacts such as tools and art) evolve in the general sense of incremental change reflecting the constraints and affordances of an environment (Campbell 1987;Csanyi 1989;Cziko 1997;Gabora 1997;Hull 1988a;Lorenz 1971;Lumsden and Wilson 1981;Plotkin 1997;Popper 1963; Hofbauer and Sigmund 1988). Ideally we could flesh out a theoretical framework for this process that unifies the psychological and social sciences as did the theory of evolution for the biological sciences. Accordingly, there have been attempts to develop formal mathematical (Boyd and Richerson 1985;Cavalli-Sforza and Feldman 1981;Schuster and Sigmund 1983) to as memes (Aunger 2000;Blackmore 1999Blackmore , 2000Dawkins 1976;Dennett 1995;Gabora 1996) as well as to the analysis of growth and change in economics (Borgers 1997;Borkar et. al. 1998;Metcalfe 2001;Rivkin 2001;Saviotti and Mani 1995;Witt 1992), financial markets Lo 1999), social customs (Durham 1991;Marsden 2001), art (Sims 1991, and the design of artifacts in primitive societies (Lake 1998). However, the endeavor to frame culture in evolutionary terms has not taken hold. It certainly hasn't had the effect of uniting previously disparate phenomena and paving the way for further inquiry, the way Darwin's theory of how life evolves through natural selection did for biology....

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“…Our concern is with memes that pertain to the group rather than to an individual, such as the routines and norms within a business corporation (Nelson and Winter, 1982). For general discussions of memes and social transmission mechanisms, see Dawkins (1976), Blackmore (1999Blackmore ( , 2000 and comments on the latter by Boyd and Richerson, Lee Alan Dugatkin, and Henry Plotkin.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Negative Reciprocity: The Coevolution of Memes and Genes

Friedman

Singh

2003

SSRN Journal

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A preference for negative reciprocity is an important part of the human emotional repertoire. We model its role in sustaining cooperative behavior but highlight an intrinsic free-rider problem: the fitness benefits of negative reciprocity are dispersed throughout the entire group, but the fitness costs are borne personally. Evolutionary forces tend to unravel people's willingness to bear the personal cost of punishing culprits. In our model, the countervailing force that sustains negative reciprocity is a meme consisting of a group norm together with low-powered (and low-cost) group enforcement of the norm. The main result is that such memes coevolve with personal tastes and capacities so as to produce the optimal level of negative reciprocity.

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The Power of Memes

Cited by 137 publications

References 0 publications

Blog Content Management in Shaping Pro Recreational Attitudes

Blog Content Management in Shaping Pro Recreational Attitudes

Ideas are not replicators but minds are

Negative Reciprocity: The Coevolution of Memes and Genes

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