Memes, Meme Viruses: Their Essence and Distribution in the Infosphere and Media Space

Abstract

The article is dedicated to memes, their genesis, essence and typology. The purpose of the research was to analyze the current state of infosphere from memetics perspective. The meth­odology is based on the extrapolation principle of conceptual construct of evolutionary biol­ogy to understanding of the essence of culture and its development. The final conclusion of this research was an assumption that biological evolution continues in cultural. Cultures, which are evaluated as highly developed, spread their values in form of memes: any culture carries out semantic expansion and is aimed at their “advance”. Memes of life-affirming or rational values contribute to preservation and development of culture, and memes of life-rejecting or irrational values lead culture to the dead-end by causing intellectual stagnation in society. The latter could be interpreted as viruses. The environment for appearance and replication of meme-viruses is mass media and mediasphere in general. Based on the findings there are two main theses: there is a need to deal with meme-viruses, which requires improving skills/tech- niques of effective confrontation; it is necessary to develop intellectual immunity, providing a professional handicap to its carrier.