Questões: Universidade Estadual do Ceará (UECE) — com gabarito

Texto 2
Berço esplêndido 

T E X T

The word ‘viral’ has lost its meaning

      The nature of virality has shifted radically over the past decade as the internet has fractured into uncounted disparate algorithms, platforms, and niche communities. The volume of content being churned out every day has skyrocketed, the life cycle of each piece of media has grown shorter and social media platforms continue to inflate public metrics, devaluing previously impressive online stats.

        All of these factors have rendered the term “viral” nearly meaningless, say experts, and have led to a condition we’ll call “viralflation.” The term speaks to the diminished meaning of virality. If everything is labeled viral, then is nothing viral?

       “Back in the day, 1 million views was the thing,” said Marcus Stringer, a partner manager at Social Blade, a social media analytics platform. “That meant you’d gone viral, and you’d get picked up by news agencies around the world. Now, tens of millions of views is the norm for top YouTube channels. Soon, 20 million views will eventually become the norm.”

      “Because the concept of virality has been so watered down, truly viral pieces of content must reach hundreds of millions of people at a scale that’s increasingly unattainable for anyone but MrBeast,” said Lara Cohen, vice president of partners and business development at Linktree, a platform that allows creators to aggregate links to their social media profiles on one page. MrBeast is the internet name of Jimmy Donaldson, YouTube’s most watched creator.

        A decade and a half ago, there was a clear delineation between viral content and the vast majority of media that users would encounter every day. The internet was smaller, and most sharing was manual (people emailing and messaging links to each other) or via early internet aggregators such as sites like Digg and StumbleUpon.

         Viral content emerged slowly, so the life span of a viral video was long. Some content remained viral for up to a year, worming its way through the internet as it gained traction. When social media platforms began to switch to algorithmic feeds optimized for engagement in the mid 2010s, the viral content cycle accelerated, experts said. Brands began recognizing the power of virality and started to attempt to manufacture it. Content creators joined engagement groups where they’d reshare each other’s content in attempts to force virality.

       Platforms themselves also began to realize the power of virality and sought to generate it, or at least generate the appearance of it. This was the beginning of the era of viralflation. Facebook helped lower the industry-wide threshold for what counted as a video view, and began inflating view counts on various Facebook videos in an effort to make them appear more viral than they were.

      Then TikTok broke into the mainstream in 2020, lowering the bar even further for what counted as a “view.” While a view on Facebook counts after three seconds of watch time, a view on TikTok is simply an impression, meaning the video was served to a user for at least a fraction of a second on screen. According to the company, TikTok also counts each loop of the video as a view, allowing videos to rake in massive view counts.

       “The speed at which we cycle through trends and sort of moments of virality on the internet is faster now largely because of TikTok,” Cohen said. This has created an arms race among tech platforms to see which could inflate metrics the most. There’s been an incentive to have these numbers look bigger because they look better to advertisers, so there’s a financial incentive to cause this viral inflation.

       A new class of content creators also has raised the bar for what’s considered viral. “When MrBeast started to explode, things really started to change in the landscape,” Stringer said. “People didn’t consider [earlier metrics of virality] viral anymore, because he’s getting multi millions of views per video.”

     Coco Mocoe, a trend forecaster in Los Angeles, said that along with these shifts, users are also consuming a higher total amount of content online per day, especially members of Generation Z, those born between 1998 and 2012. They are more likely to consume all forms of media through the internet and social platforms, rather than via newspapers or TV. And, much of that content is short form and less than 60 seconds long. “The main reason there are bigger numbers now is because people are consuming so much more content in a given sitting,” she added.

     This has made virality more ephemeral. “There’s not that same… permanence,” Mocoe said. “If you’re watching 50 videos with 1 million views, you’re less likely to remember one as opposed to a decade ago, when you might only watch five videos a day, and just one would have 1 million views.” For the average consumer, viralflation has made it increasingly difficult to tell what is and isn’t actually viral. Because we no longer have any shared sense of virality, it makes it easier for people who don’t understand the mechanics of the internet to fall for fake viral trends.

Adapted from: https://www.washingtonpost.com/ 2024/03/09/

T E X T

The word ‘viral’ has lost its meaning

      The nature of virality has shifted radically over the past decade as the internet has fractured into uncounted disparate algorithms, platforms, and niche communities. The volume of content being churned out every day has skyrocketed, the life cycle of each piece of media has grown shorter and social media platforms continue to inflate public metrics, devaluing previously impressive online stats.

        All of these factors have rendered the term “viral” nearly meaningless, say experts, and have led to a condition we’ll call “viralflation.” The term speaks to the diminished meaning of virality. If everything is labeled viral, then is nothing viral?

       “Back in the day, 1 million views was the thing,” said Marcus Stringer, a partner manager at Social Blade, a social media analytics platform. “That meant you’d gone viral, and you’d get picked up by news agencies around the world. Now, tens of millions of views is the norm for top YouTube channels. Soon, 20 million views will eventually become the norm.”

      “Because the concept of virality has been so watered down, truly viral pieces of content must reach hundreds of millions of people at a scale that’s increasingly unattainable for anyone but MrBeast,” said Lara Cohen, vice president of partners and business development at Linktree, a platform that allows creators to aggregate links to their social media profiles on one page. MrBeast is the internet name of Jimmy Donaldson, YouTube’s most watched creator.

        A decade and a half ago, there was a clear delineation between viral content and the vast majority of media that users would encounter every day. The internet was smaller, and most sharing was manual (people emailing and messaging links to each other) or via early internet aggregators such as sites like Digg and StumbleUpon.

         Viral content emerged slowly, so the life span of a viral video was long. Some content remained viral for up to a year, worming its way through the internet as it gained traction. When social media platforms began to switch to algorithmic feeds optimized for engagement in the mid 2010s, the viral content cycle accelerated, experts said. Brands began recognizing the power of virality and started to attempt to manufacture it. Content creators joined engagement groups where they’d reshare each other’s content in attempts to force virality.

       Platforms themselves also began to realize the power of virality and sought to generate it, or at least generate the appearance of it. This was the beginning of the era of viralflation. Facebook helped lower the industry-wide threshold for what counted as a video view, and began inflating view counts on various Facebook videos in an effort to make them appear more viral than they were.

      Then TikTok broke into the mainstream in 2020, lowering the bar even further for what counted as a “view.” While a view on Facebook counts after three seconds of watch time, a view on TikTok is simply an impression, meaning the video was served to a user for at least a fraction of a second on screen. According to the company, TikTok also counts each loop of the video as a view, allowing videos to rake in massive view counts.

       “The speed at which we cycle through trends and sort of moments of virality on the internet is faster now largely because of TikTok,” Cohen said. This has created an arms race among tech platforms to see which could inflate metrics the most. There’s been an incentive to have these numbers look bigger because they look better to advertisers, so there’s a financial incentive to cause this viral inflation.

       A new class of content creators also has raised the bar for what’s considered viral. “When MrBeast started to explode, things really started to change in the landscape,” Stringer said. “People didn’t consider [earlier metrics of virality] viral anymore, because he’s getting multi millions of views per video.”

     Coco Mocoe, a trend forecaster in Los Angeles, said that along with these shifts, users are also consuming a higher total amount of content online per day, especially members of Generation Z, those born between 1998 and 2012. They are more likely to consume all forms of media through the internet and social platforms, rather than via newspapers or TV. And, much of that content is short form and less than 60 seconds long. “The main reason there are bigger numbers now is because people are consuming so much more content in a given sitting,” she added.

     This has made virality more ephemeral. “There’s not that same… permanence,” Mocoe said. “If you’re watching 50 videos with 1 million views, you’re less likely to remember one as opposed to a decade ago, when you might only watch five videos a day, and just one would have 1 million views.” For the average consumer, viralflation has made it increasingly difficult to tell what is and isn’t actually viral. Because we no longer have any shared sense of virality, it makes it easier for people who don’t understand the mechanics of the internet to fall for fake viral trends.

Adapted from: https://www.washingtonpost.com/ 2024/03/09/

TEXTO 2

Ministério da Saúde atualiza cenário epidemiológico sobre a dengue no Brasil

VICTOR, Nathan. Disponível em https://www.gov.br/saude/ptbr/assuntos/noticias/2024/marco/ministerio-da-saude-atualizacenario-epidemiologico-sobre-a-dengue-no-brasil

T E X T

Han Kang Is Awarded Nobel Prize in Literature

    Han Kang, the South Korean author best known for her surreal, subversive novel, “The Vegetarian,” was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature [2024] — the first writer from her country to receive the award.

    Mats Malm, the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, which organizes the prize, said at a news conference in Stockholm that Han was receiving the honor “for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.”

    “The Vegetarian,” published in Korea in 2007, won the 2016 International Booker Prize after it was translated into English. Porochista Khakpour, in a review of “The Vegetarian” for The New York Times, said that Han “has been rightfully celebrated as a visionary in South Korea.” 

    Han’s Nobel was a surprise. But the news was celebrated by authors and fans on social media, and greeted with fanfare in South Korea. “This is a great achievement for South Korean literature and an occasion for national celebration,” said President Yoon Suk Yeol in a statement, in which he noted Han’s ability to capture painful episodes from their country’s recent history. Members of the K-pop band BTS also celebrated, with one posting a crying-face emoji and a heart alongside a picture of Han. Han’s groundbreaking work has reshaped the literary landscape in South Korea, said Paige Aniyah Morris, co-translator of Han’s novel, “We Do Not Part,” which will be published by Hogarth in the United States in January.

    “Han’s work has inspired a generation of Korean writers to be more truthful and more daring in their subject matter,” Morris said. “Time and time again, she has braved a culture of censorship and saving face, and she has come out of these attempts at silencing her with stronger, more unflinching work each time.” 

    Han, 53, was born in 1970 in Gwangju, South Korea. Her father was also a novelist, but much less successful. The family struggled financially and moved frequently. In a 2016 interview with The Times, Han said her transitory upbringing “was too much for a little child, but I was all right because I was surrounded by books.” When Han was 9, her family moved to Seoul just months before the Gwangju uprising, when government troops fired on crowds of pro-democracy protesters, killing hundreds. The event shaped her views on humanity’s capacity for violence, Han said in the 2016 interview, and its specter has haunted her writing. In her 2014 novel “Human Acts,” a writer observes a police raid on a group of activists.

    She also recalled seeing images of people who lined up to donate their blood to those who were injured in the uprising. “It was like two unsolvable riddles imprinted on my mind: How can humans be so violent, and how can humans be so sublime?” she said. “When I write novels, I find myself always returning to the theme of what it means to be human.”

    Han studied literature at Yonsei University in Korea, and her first published works were poems. Her debut novel, “Black Deer,” which came out in 1998, was a mystery about a missing woman. Following her debut, Han went on to write seven more novels, as well as several novellas and collections of essays and short stories. Among her other novels are “The White Book,” which was also nominated for the International Booker Prize, and “Greek Lessons,” published in English in 2023. 

    “Han Kang is a visionary — there’s no other word for it,” said Parisa Ebrahimi, executive editor at Hogarth, Han’s North American publisher, who noted that Han’s work reflects “remarkable insight into the inner lives of women.” 

    Han’s writing is now celebrated in South Korea, but that took some time. She had been publishing fiction and poetry for more than two decades before her work was issued in English, after Deborah Smith translated “The Vegetarian” and sold it to a British publisher based on the first 10 pages. “Her work, and the translation and success of her work, has led Korean literature in translation to be edgier and more experimental and daring,” said Anton Hur, a South Korean translator and author who is based in Seoul. “She changed the conversation about Korean literature.”

    Ankhi Mukherjee, a literature professor at the University of Oxford, said that she had taught Han’s work “year in, year out” for almost two decades. “Her writing is relentlessly political — whether it’s the politics of the body, of gender, of people fighting against the state — but it never lets go of the literary imagination,” Mukherjee said, adding: “It’s never sanctimonious; it’s very playful, funny and surreal.

    The Nobel Prize is literature’s pre-eminent award, and winning it is a capstone to a writer. Along with the prestige and a huge boost in sales, the new laureate receives 11 million Swedish krona, about $1 million. In recent years, the academy has tried to increase the diversity of authors considered for the literature prize, after facing criticism over the low number of laureates who were female or came from outside Europe and North America. 

    Han is the 18th woman to receive the Nobel in literature, which has been awarded to 120 writers since 1901. Some scholars and translators said it was fitting that the first Korean writer to win a Nobel is a woman. Much of the most groundbreaking and provocative contemporary Korean literature is being written by female novelists, including some who are challenging and exposing misogyny and the burdens that are placed on women in South Korea.

Adapted from: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/10/

T E X T

Social Media Use Is Linked to Brain Changes in Teens, Research Finds

    The effect of social media use on children is a fraught area of research, as parents and policymakers try to ascertain the results of a vast experiment already in full swing. Successive studies have added pieces to the pu    zzle, fleshing out the implications of a nearly constant stream of virtual interactions beginning in childhood.

    A new study by neuroscientists at the University of North Carolina tries something new, conducting successive brain scans of middle schoolers between the ages of 12 and 15, a period of especially rapid brain development. 

    The researchers found that children who habitually checked their social media feeds at around age 12 showed a distinct trajectory, with their sensitivity to social rewards from peers heightening over time. Teenagers with less engagement in social media followed the opposite path, with a declining interest in social rewards.

    The study has important limitations, the authors acknowledge. Because adolescence is a period of expanding social relationships, the brain differences could reflect a natural pivot toward peers, which could be driving more frequent social media use.

    “We can’t make causal claims that social media is changing the brain,” said Eva H. Telzer, an associate professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and one of the authors of the study.

    But, she added, “teens who are habitually checking their social media are showing these pretty dramatic changes in the way their brains are responding, which could potentially have long-term consequences well into adulthood, sort of setting the stage for brain development over time.”

    A team of researchers studied an ethnically diverse group of 169 students in the sixth and seventh grades from a middle school in rural North Carolina, splitting them into groups according to how often they reported checking Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat feeds.

    At around age 12, the students already showed distinct patterns of behavior. Habitual users reported checking their feeds 15 or more times a day; moderate users checked between one and 14 times; nonhabitual users checked less than once a day.

    The subjects received full brain scans three times, at approximately one-year intervals, as they played a computerized game that delivered rewards and punishment in the form of smiling or scowling peers. While carrying out the task, the frequent checkers showed increasing activation of three brain areas: reward-processing circuits, which also respond to experiences like winning money or risk-taking behavior; brain regions that determine salience, picking out what stands out in the environment; and the prefrontal cortex, which helps with regulation and control.

    The results showed that “teens who grow up checking social media more often are becoming hypersensitive to feedback from their peers,” Dr. Telzer said. Social sensitivity could be adaptive, showing that the teenagers are learning to connect with others; or it could lead to social anxiety and depression if social needs are not met.

    “They are showing that the way you use it at one point in your life does influence the way your brain develops, but we don’t know by how much, or whether it’s good or bad,” said Jeff Hancock, the founding director of the Stanford Social Media Lab, who was not involved in the study. He said that many other variables could have contributed to these changes. He described the paper as “a very sophisticated piece of work,” contributing to research that has emerged recently showing that sensitivity to social media varies from person to person.

    Over the last decade, social media has remapped the central experiences of adolescence, a period of rapid brain development. Researchers have documented a range of effects on children’s mental health. Some studies have linked use of social media with depression and anxiety, while others found little connection.

    Without more information about other aspects of the students’ lives, “it is challenging to discern how specific differences in brain development are to social media checking,” said Adriana Galvan, a specialist in adolescent brain development at the University of California Los Angeles, who was not involved in the study.

    Dr. Telzer, one of the study’s authors, described the rising sensitivity to social feedback as “neither good nor bad.” “It’s helping them connect to others and obtain rewards from the things that are common in their social world, which is engaging in social interactions online,” she said. This is the new norm,” she added. “Understanding how this new digital world is influencing teens is important. It may be associated with changes in the brain, but that may be for good or for bad. We don’t necessarily know the long-term implications yet.” 

 Adapted from: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/03/

T E X T

Social Media Use Is Linked to Brain Changes in Teens, Research Finds

    The effect of social media use on children is a fraught area of research, as parents and policymakers try to ascertain the results of a vast experiment already in full swing. Successive studies have added pieces to the pu    zzle, fleshing out the implications of a nearly constant stream of virtual interactions beginning in childhood.

    A new study by neuroscientists at the University of North Carolina tries something new, conducting successive brain scans of middle schoolers between the ages of 12 and 15, a period of especially rapid brain development. 

    The researchers found that children who habitually checked their social media feeds at around age 12 showed a distinct trajectory, with their sensitivity to social rewards from peers heightening over time. Teenagers with less engagement in social media followed the opposite path, with a declining interest in social rewards.

    The study has important limitations, the authors acknowledge. Because adolescence is a period of expanding social relationships, the brain differences could reflect a natural pivot toward peers, which could be driving more frequent social media use.

    “We can’t make causal claims that social media is changing the brain,” said Eva H. Telzer, an associate professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and one of the authors of the study.

    But, she added, “teens who are habitually checking their social media are showing these pretty dramatic changes in the way their brains are responding, which could potentially have long-term consequences well into adulthood, sort of setting the stage for brain development over time.”

    A team of researchers studied an ethnically diverse group of 169 students in the sixth and seventh grades from a middle school in rural North Carolina, splitting them into groups according to how often they reported checking Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat feeds.

    At around age 12, the students already showed distinct patterns of behavior. Habitual users reported checking their feeds 15 or more times a day; moderate users checked between one and 14 times; nonhabitual users checked less than once a day.

    The subjects received full brain scans three times, at approximately one-year intervals, as they played a computerized game that delivered rewards and punishment in the form of smiling or scowling peers. While carrying out the task, the frequent checkers showed increasing activation of three brain areas: reward-processing circuits, which also respond to experiences like winning money or risk-taking behavior; brain regions that determine salience, picking out what stands out in the environment; and the prefrontal cortex, which helps with regulation and control.

    The results showed that “teens who grow up checking social media more often are becoming hypersensitive to feedback from their peers,” Dr. Telzer said. Social sensitivity could be adaptive, showing that the teenagers are learning to connect with others; or it could lead to social anxiety and depression if social needs are not met.

    “They are showing that the way you use it at one point in your life does influence the way your brain develops, but we don’t know by how much, or whether it’s good or bad,” said Jeff Hancock, the founding director of the Stanford Social Media Lab, who was not involved in the study. He said that many other variables could have contributed to these changes. He described the paper as “a very sophisticated piece of work,” contributing to research that has emerged recently showing that sensitivity to social media varies from person to person.

    Over the last decade, social media has remapped the central experiences of adolescence, a period of rapid brain development. Researchers have documented a range of effects on children’s mental health. Some studies have linked use of social media with depression and anxiety, while others found little connection.

    Without more information about other aspects of the students’ lives, “it is challenging to discern how specific differences in brain development are to social media checking,” said Adriana Galvan, a specialist in adolescent brain development at the University of California Los Angeles, who was not involved in the study.

    Dr. Telzer, one of the study’s authors, described the rising sensitivity to social feedback as “neither good nor bad.” “It’s helping them connect to others and obtain rewards from the things that are common in their social world, which is engaging in social interactions online,” she said. This is the new norm,” she added. “Understanding how this new digital world is influencing teens is important. It may be associated with changes in the brain, but that may be for good or for bad. We don’t necessarily know the long-term implications yet.” 

 Adapted from: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/03/

BRUNO, Elias. Fomo, Fobo e Jomo: conheça as síndromes que podem surgir com o uso excessivo dos aparelhos eletrônicos. Disponível em https://www.segs.com.br/demais/352747-fomofobo-e-jomo-conheca-as-sindromes-que-podem-surgir-com-o-usoexcessivo-dos-aparelhos-eletronicos

BRUNO, Elias. Fomo, Fobo e Jomo: conheça as síndromes que podem surgir com o uso excessivo dos aparelhos eletrônicos. Disponível em https://www.segs.com.br/demais/352747-fomofobo-e-jomo-conheca-as-sindromes-que-podem-surgir-com-o-usoexcessivo-dos-aparelhos-eletronicos