Hype is an exaggerated or overstated interest in something. It can be positive or negative and is used to market products and services. In marketing, hype is usually used for products or services that are expected to be successful and popular. It is also sometimes used for events.
To hype an event or a product is to make people excited about it and believe it will be successful. Often this can be done by advertising it so much that it becomes popular or by bringing in influencers who will talk about the event and promote it.
This kind of marketing is very effective, especially when the product or event is new and has not been around for a long time. It is important that the hype is ethical and the event or product is of high quality.
Using this kind of marketing is a great way to get more people interested in your company, but it can be dangerous too. You may be tempted to sell something too quickly, or to use the hype to make your product seem better than it really is.
The word hype comes from the Greek words hypnos and podos, meaning “speech or speech sounds that are made with an exaggerated or overstated tone.” It is commonly used to describe marketing language.
Research shows that hype can undermine scientific integrity, but it is unclear why. Moreover, there are few studies that have examined the change in the prevalence of hype over time.
To explore the change in the frequency of hype, we extracted 139 adjective forms from abstracts in the NIH RePORTER archive. We then plotted the yearly frequencies of these words for 1985-2020 to assess patterns of change.
We identified a number of hype adjectives that had significant changes in their frequency during the analysis period. We grouped them into 8 broad semantic categories (importance, novelty, rigor, scale, utility, quality, attitude, and problem).
In order to examine the absolute and relative change in these adjectives, we compared each of the hype terms from 1985 to 2020, as well as to those that were absent in 1985 but have since gained popularity. The largest absolute increases were for the terms novel (1054 wpm), critical (555 wpm), key (461 wpm), innovative (391 wpm), and scientific (334 wpm).
The most common hype adjectives were important, groundbreaking, and incredible, but other hype adjectives were also used in abstracts. These include renowned, epic, groundbreaking, and stellar.
This study suggests that the use of hype is widespread and that it has increased over time. This is an important issue for researchers who are trying to communicate their findings to funding agencies and the public.