Conspiracies & Memetic Epidemics

by Joe Katzman at May 1, 2003 8:55 AM

Conspiracy theories and how to combat them were a big topic here last week, right on the heels of Dean Esmay's major contribution with his post about conspiracy theories generally. Well, here's a model that may help us get a handle on them: memetic epidemics.

meme: (pron. 'meem') A contagious information pattern that replicates by parasitically infecting human minds and altering their behavior, causing them to pass on the pattern. (Term coined by Dawkins, by analogy with "gene".) Individual slogans, catch-phrases, melodies, icons, inventions, and fashions are typical memes. An idea or information pattern is not a meme until it causes someone to replicate it, to repeat it to someone else. All transmitted knowledge is memetic.
Couple that concept with epidemic spread patterns and mechanisms, and we have a useful framework that also suggests counter-strategies. Here's how it all fits...

Some societies are indeed more predisposed to this behaviour than others, and conspiracy theories have a more "contagious" environment there. There's also a societal correction factor, which we might define as the "immune response capability." Call it the "Fisk Factor." When contagiousness in an environment is high and immune responses are low, conspiracy memes can and do go epidemic quickly. For a whole host of historical and cultural-political reasons, Arab/Islamic culture is a good example.

Simple enough. To fight these epidemics, however, we need to understand how they spread.

Malcolm Gladwell may have handed us the key. Fortunately, most members of a society are really passive players in this little drama. As he notes in his book "The Tipping Point" and in some of his articles, the people who really matter are a sequence of:

  • Mavens: Experts with credibility, who can communicate with laypeople;

  • Connectors: The folks who just seem to know everybody. They take the Mavens' memes and quickly spread them widely within and among social groups; and/or

  • Salesmen: Master convincers. You can interfere with any of these nodes to stop a meme, or leverage them instead to spread other memes. You also have the choice of attacking contagious environments directly (just as we drain standing puddles to remove mosquitoes), and/or building response and immunity capabilities (just as we use vaccinations and/or a system of readily available counter-medications) in a population.

    If we think in terms of these players and approaches, a number of potential strategies and approaches open up. Give it some thought, and I'm sure you can come up with a few of your own - or fit examples you've seen into this pattern.

    UPDATE: Lazypundit has an excellent point in this post's Comments section re: where satire fits into this framework.

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