Effects of ‘Sudden Bursts of Popularity’ on social media

Abstract

With the development of the Internet, social media become an important way to disseminate information. Words and events spread quickly, and so do people. Today, there are many chances when a characteristic of one single person is exaggerated, leading to him or her becoming popular and suddenly going viral on the Internet. This seems to give people the illusion of becoming more connected to each other. However, there are good and bad effects behind the phenomenon, and this article focuses on discussing them. The research mainly focuses on the effect of the phenomenon, using methods of case and theory analysis to discuss the effects, mainly the bad ones. The finding is that there are negative effects on different groups of people from the person himself or herself, the audience, and young people. It comes to the suggestion that it is important to improve media literacy and emphasise value dissemination.