Love and Light, Rainbows and Unicorns: Meme dynamics and Spread of Superstition in Social Media

Digital platforms have become a fertile ground for the emergence of "digital nomads", "healers", "digital
entrepreneurs" and so on. In this presentation, drawing on the latest research on the "spread of superstition", "evolutions of
meme dynamic and use of hashtags", "resilience theory", and insights from Native Americans' rituals and habits aka ways and
methods of communication with the unknown, we argue that our ability to create cohesion and resilience in this emerging
data-driven and data-enabled future is highly dependent on our capacity to verify the large stream of data that percolates into
our awareness. We propose the need for a fundamental education plan on the nature of data and information, and
development of new code of ethics and behaviour (e.g., verification system) in the cyberspace.