Final answer:
The 'laws of going viral' encompass various concepts, with Metcalfe's law explaining network value growth and psychological principles like the law of contagion and similarity affecting content sharing. Despite these insights, no exact laws predict virality, as it is highly unpredictable compared to the spreading of viral diseases.
Step-by-step explanation:
The question 'What are the laws of 'going viral'?' falls under the subject of Social Studies, specifically within media studies and the examination of social networks' impact. To describe phenomena such as 'going viral' on social media, one can refer to several concepts and theories. Metcalfe's law, for example, suggests that the value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of its users, indicating how quickly content can spread as more people become interconnected.In the context of viral content, it is also important to understand the underlying psychological principles that drive sharing. These include the law of contagion, where the idea is that things once in contact remain connected, and the law of similarity, suggesting that alike items exert force on each other. Furthermore, a piece of content's ability to go viral heavily relies on its reach and resonance with the audience, as well as its timing and the platforms it's shared on.Finally, the term 'viral' is also used in the context of viral diseases, which spread from person to person, and 'going viral' in a media sense can metaphorically draw from the quick and widespread nature of actual virus transmission. However, the specific requirements of a content piece to go viral are not as predictable or defined as those for a virus to spread, which entails factors like mutation and host susceptibility. Viral diseases and social media virality are conceptually similar but are governed by different types of 'laws'—biological and informational respectively.