Re: Is Suicide Contagious? A Case Study in Applied Memetics

From: Kenneth Van Oost (Kenneth.Van.Oost@village.uunet.be)
Date: Wed Apr 25 2001 - 21:29:00 BST

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    From: "Kenneth Van Oost" <Kenneth.Van.Oost@village.uunet.be>
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    Subject: Re: Is Suicide Contagious? A Case Study in Applied Memetics 
    Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2001 22:29:00 +0200
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    ----- Original Message -----
    From: Vincent Campbell <v.p.campbell@stir.ac.uk>
    To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
    Of course, the problem of how such things actually influence
    > people remains, let alone what constitutes legitimate forms of
    > representations of certain social problems (e.g. screening rape- how to do
    > this without making it voyeuristic and thus counter-productive).

    << After I posted my response to you I thought about it.

    Actually what the influence of pro- social soap is, remains to be seen,
    you said... that stays to be seen though !!

    How many soap-actors don 't get compared to the role they play !?
    JR in dallas, Joan,Alexis the Bitch, Collins in falcon Crest, I believe it
    was.
    I do believe that those have influnce upon people, but indeed we can
    ask the question if the perception goes that far that people indeed would
    show interest for the many efforts which a pro- soap endeavors !!

    But, maybe we underestimate that influence !!
    On the other hand, how many soaps are there, and not everybody is
    looking at the same.
    To measure some result, we should endeavour to cover a social issue in
    all soaps at the same time, and measure the outcome.
    But that will be very difficult, because one, not every soap is the same,
    two, not everybody looks at it for the same reason/ person/ actor/
    character/..
    and three, I think that each soap has it own kind of public/ fans.

    Just a thought here, I think soaps do influences people but not in the way
    we suppose they should or would be, to know this and to know how
    people think about of what they see, we should endeavour to set up
    lists like this one, where characters, issues, problems,... should be dis-
    cussed like we do.
    Books are being discussed, the MOQ for instance of Dawkins, but
    soaps !?
    I don 't have any recall about this and / or in what way this is/ should
    be done... !! A film comes to mind, but I don 't have any recall of when,
    where and what kind....

    Best,

    Kenneth

    ( I am, because we are) educated

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