Which Are MORE Viral – Memes Or Real Viruses?

From MinuteEarth.

When we say a meme goes “viral,” we aren’t actually saying it’s making people sick. But the math behind a meme’s spread suggests it’s actually a pretty spot-on analogy.

LEARN MORE
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To learn more about this topic, start your googling with these keywords:
– Basic reproduction number: a figure expressing the average number of cases of an infectious disease arising by transmission from a single infected individual, in a population that has not previously encountered the disease.
– Epidemic: a widespread occurrence of an infectious disease in a community at a particular time.
– Meme: an image, video, piece of text, etc., typically humorous in nature, that is copied and spread rapidly by internet users, often with slight variations.
– Viral: of the nature of, caused by, or relating to a virus or viruses. Or relating to or involving an image, video, piece of information, etc., that is circulated rapidly and widely from one internet user to another.

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CREDITS
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Cameron Duke | Script Writer, Narrator and Director
Arcadi Garcia i Rius | Storyboard Artist
Sarah Berman | Illustration, Video Editing and Animation
Nathaniel Schroeder | Music

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Lizah van der Aart • Sarah Berman • Cameron Duke
Arcadi Garcia i Rius • David Goldenberg • Melissa Hayes
Alex Reich • Henry Reich • Peter Reich
Ever Salazar • Leonardo Souza • Kate Yoshida

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REFERENCES
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“The Power of a Good Idea: Quantitative Modeling of the Spread of Ideas from Epidemiological Models.” https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physa.2005.08.083

“Estimates of the Reproduction Number for Seasonal, Pandemic, and Zoonotic Influenza: A Systematic Review of the Literature.” https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2334-14-480

“Measles Epidemic from Failure to Immunize.” www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1022280/?page=4

“Complexity of the Basic Reproduction Number (R0).” https://doi.org/10.3201/eid2501.171901

“Ebola Virus Disease Outbreak – 8 October 2019.” africacdc.org/disease-outbreak/ebola-virus-disease-outbreak-8-october-2019/

“Epidemic Calculator.” gabgoh.github.io/COVID/index.html

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“The Possibility of an Epidemic Meme Analogy for Web Community Population Analysis.” https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-77226-2_107

“Do Memes Behave like Viruses?” https://doi.org/10.5070/bs326258270

“The Reproduction Number of COVID-19 and Its Correlation with Public Health Interventions.” https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.05.01.20088047

“The Basic Reproduction Number (R0) of Ebola Virus Disease: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.” https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tmaid.2023.102685

“Deterministic Epidemic Models for Ebola Infection with Time-Dependent Controls.” https://www.hindawi.com/journals/ddns/2020/2823816/

Sir, Weiss, and Ronald Ross. The SIR Model and the Foundations of Public Health. https://mat.uab.cat/matmat_antiga/PDFv2013/v2013n03.pdf

“The SIR Model for Spread of Disease – the Differential Equation Model | Mathematical Association of America.” https://maa.org/press/periodicals/loci/joma/the-sir-model-for-spread-of-disease-the-differential-equation-model

“Susceptible‐Infectious‐Recovered (SIR) Model Based Forecasting of COVID‐19 Outbreak in Bangladesh.” https://doi.org/10.1111/ijcp.13648

“An Epidemiological Approach to Model the Viral Propagation of Memes.” https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apm.2011.04.035

On the Origins of Memes by Means of Fringe Web Communities.