An Anatomy of Media Hypes

Abstract

■Media hypes are a well known phenomenon. They occur on a regular basis and attract much media attention, but there is very little knowledge about them. This article supplements Vasterman's analysis of the phenomenon and presents new empirical evidence. Through a case study of five Danish media hypes occurring between 2000 and 2005, the article shows that not every event has the potential to trigger a media hype: it must, of course, satisfy the general news values, but should also contain some violation of norms, be suitable for public debate and, finally, it must be possible for the media to cover the event from a variety of perspectives. Concerning the structure and dynamics of the media hype, the article concludes that media hypes begin with a trigger event, they last approximately three weeks and come in several, usually three, waves of decreasing intensity. ■

The Dynamics of Issue Attention in Online Communication on Climate Change

“…Brossard et al, 2004;Downs, 1972;McComas & Shanahan, 1999;Nisbet & Huge, 2006;Shih et al, 2008). The specifics of short event-based issueattention cycles have only been investigated for events that trigger an extremely high level of attention, such as media hype or media storms (Boydstun, Hardy, & Walgrave, 2014;Wien & Elmelund-Praestekaer, 2009). Furthermore, so far, most studies examine the process only in the traditional mass media.…”

Emergence of News Waves: A Social Simulation Approach

“…This positive feedback loop models the reverse influence of the mass media on sponsors as shown by policy agenda-setting studies (Walgrave & van Aelst, 2006;Yanovitzky, 2002). Journalists may interview sponsors as experts for a topic (Wien & Elmelund-Praestekaer, 2009). Even if sponsors initially refuse statements, massive public attention might press them to react (Mahon & Waddock, 1992).…”

“…Figure 1 shows the stylized pattern of the issue-attention cycle, as observed in many empirical studies (see Kolb, 2005, p. 95, for a similar illustration). During the whole lifespan of an issue, this pattern may repeat itself several times (Wien & Elmelund-Praestekaer, 2009) and also create superordinate patterns of meta-cycles (Djerf-Pierre, 2013). Throughout the article, the term issue-attention cycle is used only to denote this specific pattern of media attention, while news wave generally stands for "a sharp and continuous increase of reporting on a specific issue for a limited period of time" (Geiß, 2011, p. 272).…”

A Tempest in a Teacup? Analyzing Firestorms on Twitter

“…Vasterman [14] characterizes media hypes as being selfreinforcing, potentially being driven less by external events after the triggering event and more by discussion about itself [14], [15] until the issue is crowded out by another topic. Vasterman suggests a smooth left-skewed distribution as a model, while Wein and Elmelund-Praestekaer [15] find evidence of a decreasing oscillatory pattern.…”

“…Vasterman [14] characterizes media hypes as being selfreinforcing, potentially being driven less by external events after the triggering event and more by discussion about itself [14], [15] until the issue is crowded out by another topic. Vasterman suggests a smooth left-skewed distribution as a model, while Wein and Elmelund-Praestekaer [15] find evidence of a decreasing oscillatory pattern. For news cycles, Leskovec et al [16] found a 'saw-toothed' shaped increase followed by an exponential decay, which they were able to reproduce in a simulation model that combined an imitation effect and a recency effect.…”