Marc Hummel (MLA ’17), a content marketing creator, used his Master of Liberal Arts capstone project to explore why framing ideas as viruses doesn’t help influencers understand how ideas spread. Furthermore, he wrote that the “viral” model doesn’t tell individuals and organizations what they can do to make an idea spread. For his research, Marc interviewed 10 professionals and academics in a wide variety of fields on how ideas grow in their industries. According to Marc, “I now think that a more comprehensive way of thinking about the spread of messages and ideas in a culture is to consider the process in terms of an ecosystem.”
