Speed, Trend and Viral in Media

It is the dynamics of a topic exploding simultaneously across multiple sources, spreading rapidly, and entering circulation.

In digital media, short-lived passing trends are generally followed much more than fundamental events. A news item being copied quickly and spreading with great speed (becoming viral) without hitting any obstacles shows only its surface attractiveness, not its structural importance. When topics become a trend, the feed changes completely.

Example: A celebrity statement being given as breaking news with the exact same sentences across all platforms within 3 hours.

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In journalism, speed is the biggest enemy that disables verification mechanisms. A word appearing in many different sources in a short time makes it a trend. Systems can track this speed mathematically by producing different scorings (+7, +4, +2 like trend bonuses) based on the age of the items. However, rapidly spreading viral content is mostly superficial. Items satisfying the viral condition in algorithmic tracking are a meaningful indicator for understanding mass psychology rather than information value.