From: Bruce Edmonds (bruce@cfpm.org)
Date: Tue 06 May 2003 - 10:00:20 GMT
Competing Memes Analysis
David K. Dirlam
Abstract
Aunger (2000) and Edmonds (2002) argue that memetics is a theory
without a methodology, in imminent danger of dying from lack of novel
interpretations and empirical work. Edmonds challenges memeticists to
conduct empirical tests. This article presents Competing Memes Analysis,
an empirical methodology that can readily be applied to significant
social problems. The methodology is implemented in three steps. Step 1
identifies the organization of memes within an activity. Each activity
is assumed to exhibit numerous small groups of memes where each meme
within a group competes with all other memes in the group and can be
combined with any meme from any other group. The succession of memes
that occurs with increasing experience can be a powerful clue to
identifying competing memes. Step 2 collects records of activities and
codes them for the presence or absence of each meme identified in Step
1. Any activity that people acquire from each other by imitation can be
readily coded for the presence or absence of competing memes. Step 3
analyzes changing frequencies of each coded meme over time or space.
Models of these changes can give useful clues to suggest empirical
studies that will provide important social and scientific results.
Ecology’s Lotka-Volterra model of competing species illustrates the
usefulness to memetics of population models.
Keywords: memetic methodology, meme, drawing, writing, scientific
research, Lotka-Volterra, competition
Available at:
http://jom-emit.cfpm.org/2003/vol7/dirlam_dk.html
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