Online news can quickly reach and affect millions of people, yet little is known about potential dynamical regularities that govern their impact on the public. By analyzing data collected from two nation-wide news outlets, we demonstrate that the impact dynamics of online news articles does not exhibit popularity patterns found in many other social and information systems. In particular, we find that the news comment count follows a universal exponential distributionwhich is explained by the lack  of the otherwise omnipresent rich-get-richer mechanism . Exponential aging induces a universal dynamics of article impact. We finally find that the readers' collective attention does "stretch" in the presence of high-impact articles, thus effectively canceling possible competition among the articles. Our findings challenge the generality of widespread popularity dynamics patterns as well as common assumptions of attention economy, suggesting the need to critically reconsider the assumption that collective attention is inherently limited .
Online news can quickly reach and affect millions of people, yet we do not know yet whether there exist potential dynamical regularities that govern their impact on the public. We use data from two major news outlets, BBC and New York Times, where the number of user comments can be used as a proxy of news impact. We find that the impact dynamics of online news articles does not exhibit popularity patterns found in many other social and information systems. In particular, we find that a simple exponential distribution yields a better fit to the empirical news impact distributions than a power-law distribution. This observation is explained by the lack or limited influence of the otherwise omnipresent rich-get-richer mechanism in the analyzed data. The temporal dynamics of the news impact exhibits a universal exponential decay which allows us to collapse individual news trajectories into an elementary single curve. We also show how daily variations of user activity directly influence the dynamics of the article impact. Our findings challenge the universal applicability of popularity dynamics patterns found in other social contexts .
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little is known about
we do not know yet whether there exist
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By analyzing data collected from two nation-wide
We use data from two major
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we demonstrate
BBC and New York Times, where the number of user comments can be used as a proxy of news impact. We find
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the news comment count follows a universal exponential distributionwhich
a simple exponential distribution yields a better fit to the empirical news impact distributions than a power-law distribution. This observation
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or limited influence
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. Exponential aging induces a universal dynamics of
in the analyzed data. The temporal dynamics of the news impact exhibits a universal exponential decay which allows us to collapse individual news trajectories into an elementary single curve. We also show how daily variations of user activity directly influence the dynamics of the
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We finally find that the readers' collective attention does "stretch" in the presence of high-impact articles, thus effectively canceling possible competition among the articles.
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generality of widespread
universal applicability of
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as well as common assumptions of attention economy, suggesting the need to critically reconsider the assumption that collective attention is inherently limited
found in other social contexts