Memetic Noise and Silence (D01)

• Subject Area: Empirical Social Research ; Applied Linguistics, Computational Linguistics
• Term: since 2026
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 551281144

Social media shapes communication by introducing novel means of expression, including silence and noise. Online silence appears as memetic silence, using whitespace for pauses. Memetic noise intentionally obscures text with Unicode diacritics, acting as gatekeeping. D01 investigates the social, linguistic, and computational roles of memetic noise and silence through statistical analyses of large-scale social media data, lab experiments, and analysis of language models. Empirical insights inform a generative agent-based model to explain the emergence of memetic noise and silence and their impact in information spreading.

• DFG Programme: Collaborative Research Centres
• Subproject of: SFB 1760: SiNoSi: Silence, Noise and Signal in Language
• Applicant Institution: Universität Konstanz
• Project Head: Professor Dr. David Garcia