Going Viral

Karine Nahon, Jeff Hemsley

• Publisher: Polity
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780745675480
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Media Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

We live in a world where a tweet can be instantly retweeted and read by millions around the world in minutes, where a video forwarded to friends can destroy a political career in hours, and where an unknown man or woman can become an international celebrity overnight. Virality: individuals create it, governments fear it, companies would die for it. So what is virality and how does it work? Why does one particular video get millions of views while hundreds of thousands of others get only a handful? In Going Viral, Nahon and Hemsley uncover the factors that make things go viral online. They analyze the characteristics of networks that shape virality, including the crucial role of gatekeepers who control the flow of information and connect networks to one another. They also explore the role of human attention, showing how phenomena like word of mouth, bandwagon effects, homophily and interest networks help to explain the patterns of individual behavior that make viral events. Drawing on a wide range of examples, from the Joseph Kony video to the tweet that spread the news that Osama Bin Laden was dead, from the video of Homer Simpson voting in the US elections to the photo of a police officer pepper-spraying students at the University of California Davis, this path-breaking account of viral events will be essential reading for students, scholars, politicians, policymakers, executives, artists, musicians and anyone who wants to understand how our world today is being shaped by the flow of information online.

1

Introduction: Virality of pets and presidents

Viral information is not new. When we look back in time, before the Internet, there are plenty of examples of fast-moving information flows that reached many people and happened as a result of people sharing – the key elements of virality. One likely candidate is the news of the arrest of Rosa Parks, on Thursday, December 1, 1955. She was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama, for not giving up her seat to a white person on a segregated bus (Parks and Haskins 1999). Instead of the Internet, people used phones, hand-bills, and word of mouth. It is estimated that within three days, roughly 40,000 blacks had heard about, and joined a boycott of the bus system in protest at Rosa Park’s arrest (Dove 1999). They walked, often miles, every day to their schools and jobs. And they continued to walk for more than a year until the segregation law was repealed.

Viral events are not new. What is new is that a viral video, a news story, or a photo can reach 40,000 people in hours, or even minutes, instead of days. And it isn’t just the speed and reach of these information flows that makes them worth understanding; it is their frequency. We would be hard pressed to find more than a handful of viral events from the 1950s, but today viral events are ubiquitous. Viral events are a naturally occurring, emergent phenomenon facilitated by the interwoven collection of websites that allow users to host and share content (YouTube, Instagram, Flickr), connect with friends and people with similar interests (Facebook, Twitter), and share their knowledge (Wikipedia, blogs). Collectively, these sites have formed a social infrastructure that we refer to as social media. In this new information ecosystem, an individual can share information that can flash across our digitally supported social networks with a speed and reach never before available to the vast majority of people. It can go viral.

Of course, even in their ubiquity viral events are the exception while the vast majority of content remains obscure. Viral content is what stands out as remarkable in a sea of content. What do we mean when we claim that something has gone viral? And what is virality’s impact on society? In this book we explore these and many other questions about the nature of viral events facilitated by our new social infrastructure. To do this we will use examples of well-known viral videos, tweets, and news stories that spread so fast that we, as researchers, pundits, journalists, and individuals, wrote about just exactly that: how far and how fast the video, tweet, or story spread. We will also draw on digital content that spread virally within interest communities.

Before looking at our first few viral cases, we need to address the first, and perhaps most important, question about virality: why should you invest your attention, an increasingly scarce resource, reading about virality? And, perhaps more importantly, why this book? Unlike many pundits and researchers, we don’t think virality is an absolute game-changer that empowers the masses. We also don’t think it is yet another control mechanism of the political, media, and financial elites. Instead, we will argue that virality can both reproduce and transform existing social norms and institutions. To do so we will explore how virality works by looking at real-life examples, our own research, and the research of many others who are seeking to understand how information flows in social media. We will show that virality is a complex process and provide a theoretical model that will be useful in understanding how virality works and the effects it can have on individuals, collectives, and institutions, and that it feeds back into and affects social systems. This approach requires that we synthesize two, often completing, perspectives; first, a technical, quantitative perspective that helps us explain network structures and gives us ways to identify, describe, and visualize viral events; and second, a more qualitative social perspective, wherein we examine the qualities of specific viral events and draw on well-known existing social theories to describe virality as a social process and outline its effects in our current and future societies.

Virality’s prevalence in contemporary society is an emergent feature of the interconnected social media platforms that together have created a dynamic social infrastructure. In other words, for better or worse, we think virality is here to stay and that those who can ride its wave will enjoy a competitive advantage in whatever sea of human attention – big or small – they surf in.

Our first example involves a singer and a savvy producer. Before her audition on the TV show Britain’s Got Talent, no one would have predicted that Susan Boyle could reach an audience of close to 100 million people in less than ten days. But that is what happened. Within just a few days of being posted, almost 2 million people watched the YouTube video¹ of Ms. Boyle singing “I Dreamed a Dream” from Les Misérables on Britain’s Got Talent.

Susan Boyle didn’t fit the bill of a global singing sensation. She wasn’t young and trim, the piece she selected for her audition on Britain’s Got Talent wasn’t hip, fresh music, and no one would characterize her presence on stage as commanding. No, the 47-year-old, unemployed, single woman with a cat named Pebbles would better be described as awkward, stout, and frumpy. And yet, as her video gained views on YouTube, interview requests poured in from well-known media outlets such as the Guardian newspaper and Reuters. Blogs, from the mighty Huffington Post to a plethora of blogs with only a few followers, posted reactions to the video itself, to Ms. Boyle, and to the phenomenal speed at which the video had reached a global audience.

Speed and reach are nearly always cited as qualities of virality, but how fast and how far does something have to spread for it to be called viral? Where does the concept of virality end and other concepts, such as memes, behavior cascades, and word-of-mouth, start? In chapter 2 we will offer a definition that addresses these and other questions, and support it with a great deal of research, our own as well as many other scholars’. In this chapter we will move toward that definition by identifying specific aspects of virality, starting by agreeing that speed and reach are definitely key elements.

Another idea we tend to think of when we think of virality is that it is simply the result of people sharing amateur content with each other. If that is true, then we have to ask: was the YouTube video of Ms. Boyle singing “I Dreamed a Dream” really an example of a viral video? It was professionally produced with a well-crafted narrative and her voice was apparently auto-tuned,² a computerized method of enhancing vocals. Before the video was posted on YouTube, her audition was aired on ITV, a commercial TV network in the United Kingdom. Additionally, a great many prominent news services discussed the video as it gained popularity, which likely caused more people to see it than would have otherwise been the case. On the other hand, Letty Cottin Pogrebin, a prominent Huffington Post blogger, wrote of the video that she “sent the YouTube link to everyone on my Women’s Issues list”³ in what we have come to think of as a typical viral spread: one where each person who sends a link out, sends it to many others, each of whom might again send it to many others so that each time the link is forwarded an ever-increasing audience is exposed to the video, often in a very short time frame.

The case of Susan Boyle is one case among many that exemplifies how fast and far information can spread through networks, and it highlights one of the most important questions about virality: is the viral process driven organically by those who view and spread content; in other words is it a bottom-up process? If not, then is virality something that can be designed by content makers and promoted by powerful gatekeepers, in other words, a top-down process? We address these questions later by exploring the top-down perspective in chapter 3 and the bottom-up perspective in chapter 4. In chapter 5 we tie both perspectives together by showing how both perspectives are subject to structural elements of the networks in which we are all embedded.

In terms of the impact of viral events, Susan Boyle’s audition video certainly shows that it can quickly and often unexpectedly propel someone to stardom. Boyle went from singing in her church to performing world tours and reportedly has personal assets worth over £20 million. She is living the dream of many: she is a world-famous, professional musician. Certainly, she would have gained greater attention, and likely more opportunities to perform, just from having been on Britain’s Got Talent. Virality amplified the affect by bringing Susan to the attention of many people who would otherwise not have heard of her. In chapter 4 we delve into some of the reasons why people share content. We also explore the ways we are connected to each other and how that facilitates viral events.

Of course, virality can bring individuals’ attention in ways they had not expected. Soon after Alexandra Wallace, a student at the University of Los Angeles, uploaded a racist rant video titled “Asians at the Library,”⁴ she suddenly became the focus of a great deal of attention. According to LA Weekly blogger Simone Wilson (Wilson 2011), tens of thousands of people on Facebook had shared the video. Response videos and remixes were showing up on YouTube as well. The video received enough attention that, on the next day, the Huffington Post,⁵ one of the most highly visible blogs on the Internet, had learned about the video and reported on it. By Wednesday she was receiving email death threats. She had taken down the video by then, but enough people had copied and reposted the content that it was easily found and reshared again. By March 21, Wallace had publicly apologized and decided to leave UCLA (O’Neil 2011).

Alexandra Wallace wasn’t famous to start with, so the question arises, how did people find out about the video? Was it just the result of people sharing the video, one to the next and on and on? Certainly, one fundamental aspect of viral events is that they emerge through people sharing content with other people. However, for content to reach truly large audiences, networks need to be connected, and this is where gatekeepers come in. Gatekeepers are people, collectives, companies, or governments that, as a result of their location in a network, can promote or suppress the movement of information from one part of a network to another. Their role in the flow of information, including viral events, is important enough that we devote most of chapter 3 to them. For now, let’s take a quick look at an example of how modern social and communication infrastructures allow people to circumvent the control that gatekeepers normally have over information flows and how people can unexpectedly become gatekeepers on their own.

Just after midnight, on May 2, 2011, two low-flying U.S. Black Hawk helicopters entered Pakistani airspace carrying U.S. Navy Seals. Perhaps the first announcement of this event came from an IT consultant named Sohaib Athar, who tweeted that the presence of the low-flying craft in Abbottabad at such a late hour was a rare and possibly ominous event.⁶ Like all but a handful of top-level U.S. officials and C.I.A. operatives, Sohaib could not have guessed the nature of the operation. In the White House Situation Room, President Obama, Vice-President Biden, Secretary of State Clinton and others watched the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound in real time on night-vision screens.⁷

The mission turned out to be successful, but President Obama wanted to wait to make the announcement until DNA testing could confirm that the body was indeed that of Osama bin Laden. His advisers, however, urged him to schedule a briefing, arguing that the story would get out anyway. They were right. And from a source they wouldn’t have predicted. Just 38 minutes after the announcement that Obama would address the media, Keith Urbahn, the chief of staff of Donald Rumsfeld, former U.S. Secretary of Defense, tweeted “So I’m told by a reputable person they have killed Osama bin Laden. Hot Damn.”⁸ His tweet went viral. It was retweeted and talked about by millions before any media outlet or the White House’s scheduled press conference could break the news.

The question of who posted content first and the order of those who forwarded this have tremendous importance to the topic of virality. By tracing when people post and share content, we can analyze the life cycle of a viral event and detect important gatekeepers in the process. In chapter 3 we will do so by decomposing the process and studying people and organizations involved in disseminating the information. Not many people followed Keith Urbahn at the time, but one of his followers was the New York Times journalist Brian Stelter, who retweeted (shared) Keith’s message to his own network.⁹ What happened at this point? How did Brian Stelter’s tweet affect the trajectory of the viral event?

At the heart of virality lay both the ability and the decision of people and organizations to share information. This means that each time we are faced with a decision to forward information into our own networks, we are acting as gatekeepers. In our roles as gatekeepers we can also act as a bridge, connecting disparate networks by allowing information to flow. Herein lay the challenge to many traditional institutions. Instead of CNN or Fox breaking the news of bin Laden’s death on TV, Urbahn broke it on Twitter.

In chapter 3 we will look at other examples of viral events that circumvented gatekeepers. What is important here is that virality has the power to challenge institutions precisely because it circumvents gatekeepers and captures public attention. Virality can raise awareness on a given topic, can show new ways of viewing the world, and can expose truths. Virality can transform attitudes and spark intentions to act in new ways. People witnessed this in 2011 as social movements around the world (democratic and non-democratic) emerged to protest against their governments: The Indignant Movement in Spain or Greece, the Tent Movement in Israel, the Occupy Movement in the U.S., or the Arab Spring. We are not claiming that virality caused these events. Far from it. The seeds for each of these events lie in preexisting grievances. But viral events have the potential to get the word out about injustices.

For example, on November 18, 2011, Occupy protesters at the University of California Davis (hereafter: UC Davis) sat in a line, arms linked, blocking traffic. As they would not budge, Lieutenant John Pike walked along the line of protestors and sprayed each one in the face with pepper spray. Unfortunately for him, many people in the crowd had cameras. Within seconds, photos of what appeared to be a cold and callous Pike spread via social networks and soon after on traditional media as well. The uproar from the public was focused on Pike, but the university came under fire as well. A heated discourse developed around the photo on blogs, Twitter and Facebook. The most significant refrain demanded accountability for Lieutenant Pike’s actions. The public needed to make sense of the event and understand how Pike could do such a thing, and how the university could allow it. One outcome was that the board of UC Davis issued a statement calling for the resignation of the Chancellor of the university and the end of police policies of removing non-violent demonstrators from the campus. As for Lieutenant John Pike, as of August 2012 he is no longer employed by the university. We have no doubt that the viral spread of the photos and videos played a critical role in forcing the institution of the university to be accountable for their actions. Accountability is only one element in a bigger story of how virality helps in promoting the principles of open government: transparency, accountability, and participation of the public. We will discuss this in depth in chapter 5 and 6.

It is worth noting that many people took pictures and movies of Pike’s actions. Certainly most of these photos and videos did not go viral, but enough did to create a climate that forced the university to act. In many of the examples we will use in this book, we will focus on a single viral event: a tweet, a video, a photo, a news story, or a computer game. The UC Davis case is an example of many viral and non-viral events that, together, formed a trending, or viral, topic. In a viral topic, many posts and shares interact and feed off of each other in a digitally mediated conversation. Some of these posts and shares are viral events in their own right and contribute to and shape the larger topic. Viral topics share similar features with individual viral events, and we will explore this in more detail later because understanding how individual viral events and viral topics are similar and different will be an important part of understanding how virality both transforms and recreates our society. For now, let’s zoom back in to the scale of a si...