**4. The dissipative structures of communication**

Digital communication is a system of dynamic states designed to create information, whose by-product is entropy. Therefore, a way to dispel such entropy is necessary. The main objective of incorporating these presuppositions is due to the isomorphism that we have used throughout this text to explain how viral information and its social action emerge. We talk about Ilya Prigogine's theory about dissipative structures [13–16]. Ilya Prigogine postulated that matter and energy are transformed throughout a trajectory that begins at a microscopic and unstable level. The next level is the irreducible statistics by which a rupture in the temporal symmetry takes place; that is, once it enters this process, neither matter or energy can be reduced. Finally, at the macroscopic level, energy and matter find balance, and the final result is irreversible [13].

This succession, instability (chaos) → probability → irreversibility, involves properties of probabilistic evolution that can be measured [13]. In the dimension of culture, that evidence is observed through virtual environments and their statistical evolution in their network topology.

Under these criteria, we understand dissipative structures as by-products of an interpretative semiosis, which operates when there's a big difference in the interpretation between the public and the private. These structures are what network literature calls information cascade. Sun et al. [66] were the first to research this type of cascade phenomena with real Facebook data. According to these authors, the models of statistical evolution have contributed to the comprehension of how diseases are transmitted and, also, of how ideas between people are transmitted through diffusion structures. These can be small chains at the level of a family or peer conversation, or it can very well scale to the famous cascades of viral information, which, in its more outstanding cases, have effects on the objects of a concrete environment, and over the objects of a virtual environment [67].

From theory, network's interaction and topology allow observing the time of propagation of false or fake news, so that it is possible to place them within the Harry Wiener index [68].

According to the Wiener index,<sup>2</sup> there are at least two network structures through which the news can be disseminated: (1) a structure that has great depth; the propagation is slow and from person-to-person but, in a moment, it reaches a concentration point that triggers a rapid viral spread; (2) the second structure implies a rapid propagation, of long-range but little depth and its lifetime is very short.

The first kind of structure is known as "string-like," while the second kind is commonly denominated "viral" [69–72]. Nevertheless, it must be noted that the behavior itself of the propagation shows a notable difference between an artificial and a natural viralization.

<sup>2</sup> Wiener index carries the name of Harry Wiener; in his time [68], he named it "number of trajectory." It is the most antique topological index related to molecular ramification.
