Witt, Andrew JHaldar, Indrajeet2022-06-0920222022-06-082022-05Haldar, Indrajeet. 2022. On the mathematics of Memetics. Master's thesis, Harvard Graduate School of Design.29211544https://nrs.harvard.edu/URN-3:HUL.INSTREPOS:37372334As technology, embeds itself in almost every facet of our society, new rules of interacting and signalling emerge, specifically in the case of mass communication. These new imitated non-genetic behaviours that are called memetics are the chief area of inquiry of this thesis. The thesis is an exploratory project in which I present a study of memetic social behaviour and how belief structures form amongst groups online. I specifically look at the case of Reddit. More interestingly, I look at early belief propagation, how and what causes conflicts amongst these groups, and the interdependence of beliefs and the conflicts that result in the mutation and spread of memes. I hypothesize and verify that these belief spread methods are a function of the differential rates of updates in the belief sets of the groups. In the process of enquiry, I draw upon existing trans-scaler methods of studying social behaviour and build upon them to introduce new metrics based on proxy information as derived from sentiment data of messages exchanged amongst groups. Subsequently, I present a method by which to plant these ideas, in this case, memes, so that they may propagate most effectively amongst people as a verificatory process. Lastly, I examine other online spaces where these memetic exchanges take place and speculatory prospects of applying these methods and tools that were developed; looking at the case of fake news and response methods that are proactive as opposed to reactiveapplication/pdfenMemesMemeticsOpinion diffusionSocial NetworksBehavioral sciencesMathematicsInformation scienceThesis or Dissertation2022-06-090000-0001-8395-6056