This research paper looks at the active role played by the known sender in the phenomenon of the transmission of email chain letters, examining the types of intervention carried out by recipients and the context of the technological and social conditioning factors that influence their spread on the internet and what could be called the natural selection of these messages. These conditioning factors include explanatory and conative functions of the message’s text, the general level of media disinformation of those involved in the forwarding process and the unidirectional relationships between the personal nodes in which this takes place.

The main results from this study highlight the active role of the sender, showing that they, far from merely forwarding messages in the chain mechanically and without defined criteria, are habitually employing preliminary selection processes for recipients and modifying the information. Likewise, it has been seen how a context can be defined, in terms of the phenomenon, for the relationships between email sender and recipient, and sender and information media: by sending chain letters, they are, on the one hand, trying to establish minimum and regular online communication links with the recipients, whilst on the other hand, they often look to complement or overcome the perceived ineffectiveness of traditional communication media for transmitting certain kinds of information.