A video of a cat jumping at the sight of a cucumber, a joke on current events, the denunciation of an unjust phenomenon: we are all aware that we live in a culture of virality, where success is measured by the speed of propagation. And we all consider this to be a mark of our modernity, that social networks are responsible for the change in which ideas are disseminated. The authors, all specialized in the history of the press, prove that this is not so: in the 19th century, “copy and paste” already reigned supreme in the press; a well-packaged, yet entirely false story could be reproduced hundreds of times across several continents, similarly to a good Facebook post; the proper words of a writer reappeared just about everywhere, like a popular tweet; urban legends, fake news, and rumors circulated from newspaper to newspaper; mysterious advertisements covered entire walls in an effort to create a buzz, as we say today.
