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Is A. What. Meme?. By: Michael Maeltzer , Carly Ringo , Andy Estabrook , and Michael Segoviano. MEME. GENE. REPLICATION. CULTURE. NATURAL SELECTION. Richard Dawkins. A meme is a “a unit of cultural transmission”. In other words, a meme is an idea, behavior,
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Is A What Meme? By: Michael Maeltzer, CarlyRingo, Andy Estabrook, and Michael Segoviano
MEME GENE REPLICATION CULTURE NATURAL SELECTION
Richard Dawkins A meme is a “a unit of cultural transmission” In other words, a meme is an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture
Examples of Memes Inventions Skills Stories Videos Songs Habits Pictures Gestures Phrases
Memes are like genes Memes are replicators They have the ability to be passed from one individual to another, or between groups of individuals “Memes appeared in human evolution when our ancestors became capable of imitation. From this time on, two replicators memes and genes coevolved.”
Susan Blackmore The replication process of memes relies on our ability to imitate, or reproduce, the meme in question. This process is not perfect and as a result… “The copying of memes from one person to another is imperfect, just as the copying of genes from parent to child is sometimes inaccurate”
Susan Blackmore (Continued) “Whenever people copy skills, habits or behaviors from one person to another by imitation, a new replicator is at work.” “Most important is that memes compete with other memes and produce memetic evolution, the results of which then affect the selection of genes.”
LimorShifman Digital Culture Internet Meme Virality
According to John Wilkins: Vehicles reproduce but only genes replicate “No matter how you might be able to conceptualize cultural phenomena in biological terms you can independently conceptualize them in social terms”
What affects The potential survival and Transmission of memes?
longevity: the longer any instance of the replicating pattern survives, the more copies can be made of it fecundity: the faster the rate of copying, the more the replicator will spread copying-fidelity: the more accurate or faithful the copy, the more will remain of the initial pattern after several rounds of copying
Affordances of Meme Circulation “A ‘meme pool’ is an accumulation of ‘memes’ in a society and functions like a gene pool.” “Meme media technologies, when applied to Web contents, open a new vista especially in the circulation and reuse of scientific knowledge.”