Replicators in chain messages

From: Enric Senabre Hidalgo (esenabre@uoc.edu)
Date: Tue 01 Jun 2004 - 22:07:17 GMT

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    Hello,

    I’m a PhD candidate at The Open University of Catalonia
    (www.uoc.edu), currently collecting data, via web survey, for a study on chain messages through electronic mail. Although the study is only in Spanish (directed mainly to e-mail users from Spain and South America) I would appreciate your comments about the memetics concerning the replication and natural selection of this type of messages:

    I have always considered (and my initial data confirms) that the replication here is determined mainly by the active role of the known sender, who selects the addressees and usually modifies some critical aspects of the text (mainly subject, head and message format) before forwardind it. It seems to me that this guarantees the surviving of these chains and that the sender could be considered here as a replicator (for he determines the natural selection of the messages), but I will apreciate very much your opinions about it, because I am not very familiar with the basis of memetics.

    Thank you in advance,

    Enric Senabre esenabre@uoc.edu http://cv.uoc.edu/~esenabre/re/cuestionario.html

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