On the mathematics of Memetics

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Title: On the mathematics of Memetics
Description: As technology, embeds itself in almost every facet of our society, new rules of interacting
and signalling emerge, specifically in the case of mass communication. These new imitated
non-genetic behaviours that are called memetics are the chief area of inquiry of this thesis.
The thesis is an exploratory project in which I present a study of memetic social behaviour
and how belief structures form amongst groups online. I specifically look at the case of
Reddit. More interestingly, I look at early belief propagation, how and what causes
conflicts amongst these groups, and the interdependence of beliefs and the conflicts that
result in the mutation and spread of memes. I hypothesize and verify that these belief
spread methods are a function of the differential rates of updates in the belief sets of the
groups. In the process of enquiry, I draw upon existing trans-scaler methods of studying
social behaviour and build upon them to introduce new metrics based on proxy
information as derived from sentiment data of messages exchanged amongst groups.
Subsequently, I present a method by which to plant these ideas, in this case, memes, so
that they may propagate most effectively amongst people as a verificatory process.
Lastly, I examine other online spaces where these memetic exchanges take place and
speculatory prospects of applying these methods and tools that were developed; looking at
the case of fake news and response methods that are proactive as opposed to reactive
Creator: Haldar, Indrajeet
Subject: Memes; Memetics; Opinion diffusion; Social Networks; Behavioral sciences; Mathematics; Information science
Contributor: Witt, Andrew J
Date: 2022-06-09T04:01:14Z; 2022; 2022-06-08; 2022-05; 2022-06-09T04:01:14Z
Type: Thesis or Dissertation; text
Format: application/pdf; application/pdf; application/pdf
Identifier: Haldar, Indrajeet. 2022. On the mathematics of Memetics. Master's thesis, Harvard Graduate School of Design.; 29211544; https://nrs.harvard.edu/URN-3:HUL.INSTREPOS:37372334; 0000-0001-8395-6056
Language: en

Item sets: Graduate School of Design