Communication can spread like a virus through populations in three main ways: 1) Ideas and information spread from person to person through social contact, maintaining and propagating themselves, just as viruses do. 2) Memes are informational and cultural phenomena that behave like viruses by spreading widely and affecting how people think and act. 3) New forms of communication like viral marketing and internet memes are able to propagate and maintain themselves on a large scale through social networks, demonstrating how communication itself can spread virally.

1. communication is viral
Lucas Rizoli
Un-Distinguished Lecture Series
2007-01-19

2. metaphors of communication

3. describing the movement of ideas

4. communication on a large scale

5. pre-enlightenment, western world

6. illiterate majority

7. centralized power

10. single source

11. certainty

12. rise of empires

14. economic powers

15. renaissance

16. onset of modernity

18. radical changes in thought

19. large literate population

20. decentralized powers

21. religion losing grip on thought

22. enlightenment

23. scribe-centred

24. industrialization

25. infrastructure of information

27. militarization

30. propaganda

32. war-minded metaphors

34. “aiming for”

35. “bombarded with”

36. “target audience”

37. cold war

38. awareness of information itself

41. computation and globalization

45. world through and of information

46. the past thirty years

48. herpes simplex

49. communicable disease

50. spread through physical contact

51. mononucleosis

52. iloveyou

53. self-propagating infection

54. spread through contact

55. nyxem

56. virus

57. parasitic information

58. maintains itself

59. affects its host

60. propagates itself

61. maintains itself
affects its host
propagates itself

63. chuck norris facts

64. the chief export of chuck norris is pain

65. chuck norris does not go hunting

66. the word hunting implies a chance of failure

67. chuck norris goes killing

68. spread from irc to washington post

70. chuck norris facts are viral

71. internet meme

72. maintains itself
affects its host
propagates itself

73. large-scale communication is viral

74. major changes in thought

75. genetics

77. gene

78. physiological characteristics

79. cultural characteristics

80. meme

83. memes as viruses

84. informational epidemiology

85. memetics

86. internet memes

88. change in terminology

89. may follow change in military thinking

90. “spread”

91. “catchy”

92. “get the message out there”

93. “exposure”

95. subversive attachment

96. viral advertising

101. burger king

102. spread through word-of-mouth

103. fifteen to twenty million visitors

104. exploited social contact

105. maintains itself
affects its host
propagates itself

106. not limited to advertising

107. grassroots

108. astroturfing

109. fake bottom-up political movements

110. alexis de tocqueville institution

112. evangelical christianity

113. jehovah’s witnesses

114. not necessarily negative

118. spread of written language

119. maintains itself
affects its host
propagates itself

122. is it a virus, a drug, or a religion?

123. what’s the difference?

124. vectors of infection

128. communication is viral