What is a 'Meme?' Internet meme. A meme is "an idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture".[3] An Internet meme may take the form of an image, hyperlink, video, picture, website, or hashtag. It may be just a word or phrase, including an intentional misspelling. These small movements tend to spread from person to person via social networks, blogs, direct email, or news sources. They may relate to various existing Internet cultures or subcultures, often created or spread on sites such as 4chan, Reddit and numerous others in our time, or by Usenet boards and other such early-internet communications facilities.
Fads and sensations tend to grow rapidly on the Internet, because the instant communication facilitates word-of-mouth transmission. History[edit] In the early days of the Internet, such content was primarily spread via email or Usenet discussion communities. Evolution and propagation[edit] Marketing[edit] See also[edit] Further reading[edit] Blackmore, Susan (March 16, 2000). Overview of memetics.
Journal of Memetics -Evolutionary Models of Information Transm Back to JoM-EMIT Home The History of the Memetic Approach At least since the early seventies several authors have tried to adopt the principle of evolution by selection to understand the continuous change in cultural behaviors (Boyd [1], Calvin [2], Campbel [6], Cloak [7]). Richard Dawkins popularized the memetic approach. He coined the term 'meme' as an analog to the biological unit of inheritance, the gene or the genetic replicator (Dawkins [11], [12]).
The rather simple distinction between genetic replicators as 'genes' on the one hand, opposed to all non-genetic replicators as 'memes' has been firmly imprinted in the evolutionary thinking about cultural information (Dennett [14, 15, 16], Hays & Plotkin [18], Hofstadter [21], Hull [23, 24, 25], Lynch [28, 29], Westoby [35]). Memetics and Related Evolutionary Approaches We see the memetic approach as an evolutionary one. Meme. Meme. Thought or idea that can be shared, in analogy to a gene A meme ( MEEM)[1][2][3] is an idea, behavior, or style that spreads by means of imitation from person to person within a culture and often carries symbolic meaning representing a particular phenomenon or theme.[4] A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols, or practices, that can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena with a mimicked theme.
Supporters of the concept regard memes as cultural analogues to genes in that they self-replicate, mutate, and respond to selective pressures.[5] In popular language, a meme may refer to an Internet meme, typically an image, that is remixed, copied, and circulated in a shared cultural experience online.[6][7] A field of study called memetics[10] arose in the 1990s to explore the concepts and transmission of memes in terms of an evolutionary model.
Etymology Origins Early formulations Dawkins Memetics Applications.