Beliefs by contagion

the semiotic structure of viral content transmission on networks

Abstract

The Peircean discussion on the modes of fixing belief remains relevant in the contemporary informational landscape, in which digital networks occupy a central role in the production and circulation of content. However, the criteria that once ensured the reliability of scientific beliefs—such as the continuity of experience, empirical testing, and community scrutiny—have been increasingly replaced by immediate social validation processes grounded in speed, repetition, and information virality. In this article, we analyze the phenomenon we call belief transmission by contagion, understood as an emerging mode of belief reproduction in environments mediated by digital platforms. To this end, we revisit the concept of belief in Peirce’s pragmatism and situate it within the semiotic context of networks. We then describe the triadic structure underlying the dynamics of this contagion, articulated through the meme–network–belief relation: the meme as an iconic element, the network as an index, and belief as a symbol understood as a general rule of action. We demonstrate that this form of dissemination does not result from engagement with facts, but rather from the community and algorithmic dynamics that simulate scientific inquiry while undermining the formation of habits responsive to reality. Finally, we argue for the need to promote, in digital environments, modes of belief circulation that recover the cooperative and investigative principles of the scientific method, so that rationality may also become the object of a contagion oriented toward the growth of experience and the ideal of truth.