Cohort: ESOL 37°
Topic of the thesis: Meme-based exchange, trust, and polarization: how social media can convey signals of conflict and cooperation.
Abstract: In recent times social media have dramatically changed the way individuals interact with their personal networks. On the one hand, these changes might lead to increased opportunities for individuals to interact and cooperate with socially distant others; on the other hand, they might bring about further social conflict and segregation, instead. Since trust in others is a crucial factor in online as well as offline interpersonal exchanges, a cooperative vis à vis conflicting outcome is likely given by the mechanisms through which individuals evaluate the allocation of trust on social media. Indeed, in order for strangers to assess each other’s trustworthiness on social media, a new form of exchange has been developed that acts as an immediate trust marker in online interactions: sharing Internet ‘memes’. Memes are units of information – typically, a joke formed by the combination of a picture with a brief text inside – that are transmitted by an individual to another while signaling the group identity of those who share them on social media. Although meme-based exchanges are currently recognized as a viral global trend and their spread on online interpersonal networks dates back to the very first introduction of the web 2.0 platforms, their consequences on individuals’ behavior are still unclear. This project responds to calls for further research into the effects of Internet memes on cooperation and social integration. Moreover, the project aims to provide an original, foundational research to empirically establish whether meme-based exchanges can foster polarization and identity-based segregation among individuals. More specifically, the project focuses on memes’ effects on trust – as well as looking for evidence for hypothetical priming, framing, and cultivation effects in consuming political memes – by means of an original experimental study composed by a survey-based observational study and three distinct experiments – factorial, network, and longitudinal – that will be performed over three years.
Research interests: Behavioral sociology; Memetic studies; Polarization studies; Media studies.
Graduated from: Università degli Studi di Milano (BA and MA).
Degrees obtained: Public and Business Communication (MA); Communication and Society (BA).
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