from one particular site to another, and sometimes in a messy manner (Nightingale, 2011). Stickness, on the other hand, is the feature of a media content to initiate and maintain attention to an audience, and create an engagement for the audience as well. While spreadability uses the vehicle of social interaction to have ideas flow from one to many points, stickness involves the point concentration of the attention created by a particular piece of media. Indeed, stickness has the characteristic of creating a unified experience for the audience while spreadability creates a diversified experience. It is true to say that spreadability induces the need to diffuse the content while stickness induces the need to hold the information.

The case of Susan Boyle is a good illustration of content. Spreadability is very evident in that the dispersion of the content was as a result of the sharing over the social media sites.

It is wrong to understand the spread of the media as ‘viral media’ or ‘memes,’ as many people mistake. By viral media, people simply try to mean that the media has the ability to spread very quickly. However, this is a poor way to understand the spread of the media because there is a distinct difference between spreadability and stickness (Nightingale, 2011). In truth, a media content that has the stickness feature will not necessarily have the spreadability feature.

Reference

Nightingale, V. (2011). The handbook of media audiences. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.