Social contagion and virality in online networks

Abstract

The existence of viral phenomena in human communication are multifaceted. From word-of-mouth spreading of a scandal, to virality and contagion of academic scientific breakthroughs. Academics disseminate ideas as conjunctures from research findings in academic publications. An idea is adopted or rejected by others who are influenced by reading the idea. Some articles are referenced in other studies and propagate to become seminal works. Other ideas gain follow-up research, and like memes, evolve, while others are barely read and create little impact on the research community, if any. Viral content is content that replicates itself to spread across interacting living organisms or a network of relationships at scale. In word of mouth, ideas, thoughts and beliefs are spread across social groups. Some ideas propagate as persons ‘contage’ others with their thoughts. Contagion is the transfer or replication of the element being spread from one member to the next. What starts as a rumour may become collective belief. Social media has given rise to faster speed of contagion and propagation of text messages, images, blogs, memes, books, and videos among many others. Rumours can now spread instantly across the globe irrespective of geographical distance. Popularity of the term viral marketing started around 1996 (see Figure 9.1) and is often attributed to Steve Jurvetson who used the word to describe the rapid product adoption of Hotmail in its initial stages (Jurvetson & Draper, 1997). Content virality has received increasing attention from marketeers starting from the invention of internet hyperlinks, email sharing, online social media platforms and, more recently, a proliferation of messaging applications. The invention of hyperlinks facilitated content consumption as hyperlinks provided personalized content selection and a network of relationships. The digitization of content simplified instant sharing, as unlike sharing a physical book, sharing a URL is at finger click distance. Subsequent, email and early messaging systems such as IRC (Internet Relay Chat) expedited the widespread adoption of sharing behaviour. As the quantity of digital content increased, through economies of scale, more and more digital content surpassed the users’ threshold of interest enough to nudge the content-consumer into sharing. Social media platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and many others were then designed with the intent of content sharing and propagation. During this time, we have seen new terms such as viral content, viral media, and viral videos emerge (see Figure 9.1). Other terms, such as ‘meme', adopted a different connotation. The field drew broad attention in academia and industry, often with an interest in answering questions such as: the impact of message virality and propagation (Eady, Nagler, Guess, Zilinsky, & Tucker, 2019); the features that determine virality (Berger & Milkman, 2012); and why people share content (Salganik, Dodds, & Watts, 2006). We shall delve into these questions throughout this chapter.