The concept of a meme was coined by the eminent biologist Richard Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene. Dawkins suggested that it one can view genes as propagating through organisms, and not the other way around; similiarly, a meme propagates through minds and media.

The popular lexicon of memetics omits any notion of memegate, so we supply it here. A meme may have a barrier or gate which it needs to pass in order to propagate. Thus, the expression “get through the memegate” would conveny how a particular meme amplified to a large part of the population.

It is not merely that the meme is to be reported on one of the national newspapers or network newscasts. It is often necessary for such a meme needs a name which people can pass it along. Of course, in recent years, anything suggesting of a political or media scandal have been suffixed with -gate, after Watergate.

The following some stories of recent “gates”– and how they did or didn’t get through their respective memegates.

• What if there were no blogosphere? — A thought experiment about other “spheres” which could exist on the web.
• Was it the blogosphere that exposed the 60 Minutes memo forgeries? (“RatherGate”)
• Theories of the Bulge (“BulgeGate”) — how come the blogosphere was not able to get the truth out about the “bulge” in President Bush’s back in the debates (accompanied by timeline)
• Stuck at the Gates (“GannonGate”) — why did it take almost a year for the Jeff Gannon story to break after first being reported on a blog and in the major media?

In draft is a hypothesis which differs from Gladwell’s Tipping Point. See also Comparative Studies of Blogs and Other Online Journalism .