Definition of the concept
A meme is an idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture—often with the aim of conveying a particular phenomenon, theme, or meaning represented by the meme. Per analogiam, a meme is to ideology what a gene is to biology. The word meme was coined by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene as an attempt to explain how ideas replicate, mutate, and evolve (memetics). Memetics is the study of information and culture based on an analogy with Darwinian evolution. Proponents describe memetics as an approach to evolutionary models of cultural information transfer. Memetics describes how an idea can propagate successfully, but doesn’t necessarily imply a concept is factual. The term ‘conspiracy theory’ referes to a psychologically designed meme which has been strategically introjected into public discourse in order to steer narratives and worldviews of the masses. The terminus is thus a psycholinguistic tool which has been effectively utilised for propagandistic purposes.