What is a trend?
2025-06-19
Trends are a common feature in the contemporary media and cultural environment as well as media and communication research. Yet trends remain undertheorized. This article seeks to address this gap. Rather than just a synonym for shift or change, I define trend as a temporally bounded, dynamic pattern of observable change and argue that such a concept deserves greater prominence within the study of media and communication. In addition to this definition, I theorize trends by characterizing the trend’s key features, exploring its relationship to media, and mapping its connection to questions that animate media and communication research. The case of “brat summer” of 2024 is offered as an exemplary case from which trend’s core features may be discerned. The article’s primary contribution is to advance the trend as a central concept through which communication and media studies researchers may think more comprehensively and critically about change.