Social Contagian: What is it?

Overall it's the idea that information, ideas, and behaviors can spread through networks of people in the same way that infectious diseases do. This idea is explained in further detail from this PopTech article. In one part he states "if someone could create the conditions for a social epidemic, the reasoning goes, and if only they could find the right people to trigger it, awesome change could be unleashed for relatively little cost."

Crowd of People from Pixabay. CC0 Public Domain Image.

Emotion can spread rapidly through large crowds, as the vast world of social media leads people into extreme states. Social contagion effects occur when people believe they have been infected by a disease (meaning an idea/behaviour). As more people show the psychosomatic symptoms, more people think ‘I am bound to get it’. So we may see infectious disease as a bad thing, but if it starts with the right idea and right people, social contagion doesn't have to be seen negatively.

This video is great to watch to get more of an understanding about how information and ideas are spread throughout the internet. It talks about four topics: Infectiousness, Resistance, Topology & Strategy and how each of these affects how things are spread.