Infectious ideas: a socio-epidemiological approach to Internet memes as information disorders.

During this postdoctoral mandate, I will study Internet memes as carriers of misinformation and disinformation. More specifically, I will follow a socio-epidemiological approach in which I will analyze both the intrinsic meme ingredients as well as the contextual spread dynamics. The purpose of this mandate is to gain a better understanding of the role and social contagion of Internet memes about certain political/social issues within the current online media ecology. During my one-year postdoctoral fellowship, I will focus primarily on developing an automatic data collection method and systematic content analysis. This will form a fertile basis for a three-year FWO follow-up mandate.

Keywords:Information disorders, Media Ecosystem, Internet memes, Polarization, Democracy

Disciplines:Communications and media policy