Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Virality
Literature review...................................................................................................................................2
Research question.................................................................................................................................5
Research design.....................................................................................................................................6
Expected results....................................................................................................................................7
Appendix...............................................................................................................................................8
1 - Definitions....................................................................................................................................8
References.............................................................................................................................................9
Abstract
1
‘Meme’, in Wikipedia, 31 March 2020, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Meme&oldid=948329666.
2
‘Internet Meme’, in Wikipedia, 13 April 2020, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?
title=Internet_meme&oldid=950640798.
3
Annaliese Griffin, ‘“Dank” Is the New Umami’, Quartz, accessed 14 April 2020,
https://qz.com/quartzy/1221995/dank-is-the-new-umami/.
4
‘Social Transmission, Emotion, and the Virality of Online Content - MSI Web Site »’, Marketing Science
Institute, accessed 14 April 2020, https://www.msi.orghttps://www.msi.org/reports/social-transmission-
emotion-and-the-virality-of-online-content.
5
Andrew Stephen et al., ‘The Effect of Transmitter Activity on Information Dissemination Over Online Social
Networks’, 6 September 2012.
6
Jonah A. Berger and Raghuram Iyengar, ‘How Interest Shapes Word-of-Mouth Over Different Channels’, SSRN
Electronic Journal, 2012, https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2013141.
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Vincent PAVE Research Design Report Virality
Literature review
7
Andrew Stephen and Olivier Toubia, ‘Deriving Value from Social Commerce Networks’, Journal of Marketing
Research 47 (9 January 2009), https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1150995.
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Vincent PAVE Research Design Report Virality
Jonah Berger and Katherine L. Milkman assess how individuals naturally communicate and
word to mouth place in buying decisions and behaviour towards a brand.
They start from the premise that word to mouth over social media is far more implicating
for customers and cheaper for brands than a traditional media campaign. But there is an
issue over possible backlash and negative contents.
- Second experiment: Rather than seeing whether the content that evokes certain
emotions is more likely to be shared (as in the field study), participants have been
exposed to film clips that explicitly share certain specific emotions. The aim was to
“activate” a certain emotion to see if it influences their choices.
Main results:
Content that evokes either positive (awe) or negative (anger or anxiety) emotions
characterized by high arousal is more viral. Content that evokes low arousal emotion
(sadness) is less viral. Field study: 96% of articles that make the most emailed list do so only
once. The more positive the content is, the more likely it is to become viral.
Laboratory study: exposing participants to high arousal content (amusement) increased
their willingness to share content with others.
People share content regarding the way they want to be seen, some want rather be
spreading “positive” content to make others feel better than to make them feel angry or
upset.
External factors can affect too, separated from the content, functioning like advertising such
as appearance, the position of the content etc.
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Vincent PAVE Research Design Report Virality
In Andrew T. Stephen, Yaniv Dover, Jacob Goldenberg’s paper two characteristics are
compared: a transmitter’s activity (how frequently they transmit information on their social
media) and connectivity (how well connected they are on the network).
The premise is that sharing information (links) have become significant traffic sources for
many blogs and websites. In some cases, traffic to major websites (link sharing) coming from
social media (Facebook, Twitter) exceeds traffic from Google directly.
Retransmission is essential for information to diffuse over online social networks like
Twitter, Facebook but even through “old fashioned” email forwarding.
- The second experiment (simulation) is an agent-based model and test the sharing
and retransmission of information over a large macro-scale still regarding activity
and connectivity. The third empirical analysis of twitter will address that further.
Main results:
Retransmission is a micro individual-level action but can lead to collective and
aggregate-level retransmission which is macro-level diffusion.
A transmitter's activity influence diffusion and its connectivity have a large positive impact
on top.
The activity of the transmitter is more important than the content he is sharing itself.
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Jonah Berger with Raghuram Iyengar differentiates different means or “channels” for
people to share information, classified in continuous and discontinuous regarding the pace
at which the information is transmitted (pauses in between each information or not).
For them, channels and their continuity are shaping a new form of word of mouth.
People communicate information when they talk, but as with many types of consumer
behaviours, they also communicate things about themselves, this shows that consumer
propensities to talk about satisfying and dissatisfying experiences depend in part on their
desire to communicate certain expertise as well.
But people not only communicate through what they talk about, but they also communicate
through how they talk. Stylistic elements of conversation, such as rate of speech, speed of
each turn, and avoidance of pauses between conversational turns, all communicate things
about the speaker.
They Analyse that over 21,000 conversations (two datasets) and a laboratory experiment.
Main results:
Conversation channel continuity norms shape what gets discussed. In discontinuous
conversation channels (e.g., online posts or text), pauses between conversational turns are
expected, so people have time to select and craft what they say. Consequently, more
interesting products should be talked about more than boring ones.
In channels where conversations are expected to occur more continuously (e.g., face-to-face
or on the phone), however, there is less time to selectively pick what one talks about.
Consequently, how interesting products are to talk about should have less of an impact on
whether they get discussed.
Research question
There is plenty of content out or “memes” that seems to have the potential to go
viral but never do, “Is virality just random, as some have argued (Cashmore 2009; also see
Salganik, Dods, and Watts 2006), or might certain characteristics predict whether content
will be highly shared?”8.
8
‘Social Transmission, Emotion, and the Virality of Online Content - MSI Web Site »’.
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Research design
A meme is a carrier of information, it replicates itself across a population and
competes with other memes for survival9. Our experiment will try to assess why is it that
makes a meme “survive” among others, to estimate his potential of going viral.
In this experiment, you are going to review a set of images. You will have 90 seconds to
choose a picture you will share to others in a random set of four. This process will be
repeated for three periods.
“You might see pictures you have seen before; they represent the most shared in the
previous periods.”
Additional instructions at the end of period 6 – to participants assigned as “influencers”
“You are now influencer; you will have two minutes to build a set of four images that will be
shown to others, your pool is divided in most shared pictures so far and less shared, you can
from all of them to build your set.”
9
The Science of Dank Memes, accessed 14 April 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?
time_continue=683&v=HV9WEqLeBuo&feature=emb_title.
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Vincent PAVE Research Design Report Virality
“You might see pictures you have seen before; sets are now built by other participants.”
“Experiment is about to end, you will now be shown the most successful pictures so far,
please select from the list the media in which you will be more likely to share any of those
pictures for real”.
Expected results
Attention span is limited, people have less and less time to review information today,
our experience mimic that by the timer for each turn, therefore they are more tended to
repost of “share” content that is already massively shared, just because it is what they are
seeing at first10.
The most successful memes are the one who survives the longest while mutating the
one who performs less. We give a chance to less successful memes to go out again when
sets are being made by participants themselves, but as time is short, successful memes
might get shared again, and just flourish further.
Not all media are suitable for memes, some social media are even considered as the
“place where the meme goes to die”11, we might see that in the choices the participants
made at the last turn.
10
L. Weng et al., ‘Competition among Memes in a World with Limited Attention’, Scientific Reports 2, no. 1 (29
March 2012): 1–9, https://doi.org/10.1038/srep00335.
11
The Science of Dank Memes.
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Vincent PAVE Research Design Report Virality
Appendix
1 - Definitions
Word-of-Mouth
Communication from individuals to people. Ex: telling people you know about a
product or service, usually because you think it is good and want to encourage them
to try it.
Viral Marketing
Marketing activity in which information spreads between people quickly, mainly on
the internet.
Social Transmission
Social Transmission is the transfer of information or behaviours within a group of
individuals. It can include verbal and nonverbal communication, actions, knowledge,
and beliefs. It is, in other words, the spread of knowledge and cultures through social
interactions and the media.
Online Content
Any material that is available on the Web. Online content includes text, images,
animations, music and videos.
Diffusion
the spreading of something more widely.
Networks
A group or system of interconnected people or things.
Online Networks
A website that provides a virtual community for people interested in a subject.
Social Media
Websites and applications that enable users to create and share content or to
participate in social networking.
Channel
The mean in which a piece of information is transmitted.
Meme
A meme is an idea, behaviour, or style that spreads through imitation from person to
person within a culture, often to convey a phenomenon, theme, or meaning
represented by it.
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References
Berger, Jonah A., and Raghuram Iyengar. ‘How Interest Shapes Word-of-Mouth Over Different
Channels’. SSRN Electronic Journal, 2012. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2013141.
Marketing Science Institute. ‘Social Transmission, Emotion, and the Virality of Online Content - MSI
Web Site »’. https://www.msi.orghttps://www.msi.org/reports/social-transmission-emotion-
and-the-virality-of-online-content.
Stephen, Andrew, Yaniv Dover, Lev Muchnik, and Jacob Goldenberg. ‘The Effect of Transmitter
Activity on Information Dissemination Over Online Social Networks’, 6 September 2012.
Stephen, Andrew, and Olivier Toubia. ‘Deriving Value from Social Commerce Networks’. Journal of
Marketing Research 47 (9 January 2009). https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1150995.
Weng, L., A. Flammini, A. Vespignani, and F. Menczer. ‘Competition among Memes in a World with
Limited Attention’. Scientific Reports 2, no. 1 (29 March 2012): 1–9.
https://doi.org/10.1038/srep00335.
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