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This article studies how sentiment strength and cognitive language may influence the levels of tweet virality. A total of 11,381 tweets about a horror movie ('Mother!') were collected. Based on the definitions of two independent variables: sentiment strength and cognitive language use, and the dependent variable: tweet virality, the data descriptive statistics and analysis of variance (ANOVA) analysis were applied to reveal the relationships between tweet virality and sentiment and cognitive factors. The results indicate that a high tweet virality is associated with either a lower level of sentiment strength or/and a higher level of cognitive language use by a statistically significant margin. This finding is more evident for negative tweets. The study findings help improve the understanding about sentimental and cognitive factors impacting tweet virality and guide the movie industry to improve marketing movie content to achieve high virality on social media. The conclusions can also be applied to other industries, government agencies, organisations and individuals who intend to quickly disseminate specific information on social media platforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The proper measurement of emotion is vital to understanding the relationship between emotional expression in social media and other factors, such as online information sharing. This work develops a standardized annotation scheme for quantifying emotions in social media using recent emotion theory and research. Human annotators assessed both social media posts and their own reactions to the posts' content on scales of 0 to 100 for each of 20 (Study 1) and 23 (Study 2) emotions. For Study 1, we analyzed English-language posts from Twitter (N = 244) and YouTube (N = 50). Associations between emotion ratings and text-based measures (LIWC, VADER, EmoLex, NRC-EIL, Emotionality) demonstrated convergent and discriminant validity. In Study 2, we tested an expanded version of the scheme in-country, in-language, on Polish (N = 3648) and Lithuanian (N = 1934) multimedia Facebook posts. While the correlations were lower than with English, patterns of convergent and discriminant validity with EmoLex and NRC-EIL still held. Coder reliability was strong across samples, with intraclass correlations of.80 or higher for 10 different emotions in Study 1 and 16 different emotions in Study 2. This research improves the measurement of emotions in social media to include more dimensions, multimedia, and context compared to prior schemes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines what types of messages users posted and spread about #Black/Blue/AllLivesMatter during the Black History Month of 2022. Using both qualitative and quantitative methods, about one million tweets were analyzed to test if different levels of opinion leaders tend to spread different kinds of messages related to the context. Using the curation logic of Thorson and Well and Lakoff's semantic theory as theoretical lenses, we offer some observations about the differences in logics (incentives and norms) that opinion leaders in our dataset might face. We find that different levels of opinion leaders shared different types of messages. The implications of this study call for strategies that foster meaningful discussions on social movements amid polarized views. The study also advocates for refining platform design to encourage the dissemination of factual information over contentious arguments and reaching a societal consensus on critical social issues, such as racial inequality and police brutality. This research contributes to updating the theory of curation logics, virality, and opinion leaders, as well as provides empirical data for the discussions of the #BlackLivesMatter social movement and its related discussions of #AllLivesMatter and #BlueLivesMatter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rebecca Black was thirteen when her music video "Friday" went massively viral after it was uploaded to YouTube in 2011. Black re-entered the news cycle in 2020 after coming out as queer, and shortly thereafter releasing a remix of "Friday" for the video's tenth anniversary. Through references to the online spaces and memetic cultures where Black was trolled and harassed, "Friday (Remix)" repackages trauma in a bright, nostalgic bundle. Through an analysis of the music video and media coverage around Black's coming out, this article considers how "Friday (Remix)" positions Black's rebrand as one in which, as a payoff for the resiliency she has exhibited throughout her career, the singer possesses newfound agency to express herself in an authentic way. Simultaneously, Black's play with her virality in "Friday (Remix)" demonstrates an increasing need in contemporary celebrity culture to engage in constant self-commodification and self-"memeification" to achieve this sense of authenticity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social media allow democratization and immediate access to information. Despite this, a significant disadvantage of these platforms is the dissemination of fake news. Fake news is usually presented in the form of text; therefore, it is relevant to investigate it with linguistic, content-based analysis, to better understand how and why users decide to share the content regardless of its trustworthiness. To this date, few studies have a qualitative approach and most linguistic analyses of fake news often use machine learning or deep learning techniques. To overcome this shortcoming and improve fake news recognition, this research aims at analysing 50 racial hoaxes selected from debunking websites in Italy (Bufale.net, Butac. it), with a quanti-qualitative approach. Hoaxes' titles were collected, classified, organized, and analysed using psycholinguistic methodologies. The study aims to identify the language features that make racial hoaxes engaging and explore their variation across different types of threats. The main results of the study pointed out how racial hoaxes are characterised by the widespread use of provocative emotional content; moreover, more negatively polarised words, more vulgar expressions and in general, a more aggressive connotated language were found in criminality threat hoaxes compared to the others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article calls for narratives that would accommodate the collision of two complex forms: climate change and social media. Science communication is currently on the lookout for personal stories that make climate change concrete and relatable for both decision-makers and the general public; similarly, climate activism on social media increasingly draws from personal experiences. Yet climate related stories going viral on social media often end up fostering political polarization and stark moral positioning instead of collective climate action. Building on Caroline Levine's work on new formalism, I argue that this problem results from the collision between (1) climate change and (2) social media as complex forms that challenge the centrality of embodied experience and individual agency, and (3) the prototypical experiential story as a non-complex form. I analyze some viral climate change stories and focus particularly on experientiality, easily shareable masterplots, and moral positioning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Online virality has attracted the attention of academics and marketers who want to identify the characteristics of online content that promote sharing. This article adds to this body of research by examining the phenomenon of improvised marketing interventions (IMIs)—social media actions that are composed and executed in real time proximal to an external event. Using the concept of quick wit, and theorizing that the effect of IMIs is furthered by humor and timeliness or unanticipation, the authors find evidence of these effects on both virality and firm value across five multimethod studies, including quasiexperiments, experiments, and archival data analysis. These findings point to the potential of IMIs in social media and to the features that firms should proactively focus on managing in order to reap the observed online sharing and firm value benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Attention is a valuable and scarce resource in the online "attention economy." But not all attention is equally valuable. This article advances a relational theory of the value of attention by situating social media content production as a field. I draw from an ethnography of a "content farm" and interviews with 60 creators who make highly-paid but low-status entertainment videos designed to go viral on Facebook, as well as on SnapChat, TikTok, and YouTube. I propose an inverse relationship between status and reach: higher reach may pose risks to a creator's status and reputation. Furthermore, in pursuit of the highest possible reach, viral creators construct situational authenticity, rather than personal authenticity, and they relate to their audiences antagonistically, in contrast to existing studies of influencers. How creators seek attention, from whom, and with what conversion strategies, I argue, depends upon their location in a cultural field because online audiences exist in a hierarchy of perceived social worth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article tracks new conceptualizations of viruses both as a scientific object of study and a cultural object of fear and fascination. After World War II, the scientific study of viruses took on greater significance. The discovery of viral DNA and RNA revolutionized the understanding of microbial and human evolution. Technological innovations (electron microscopy, x-ray crystallography) and improvements in vaccine development gave scientists greater confidence in managing diseases such as polio and influenza. But in the 1980s, the emergence of HIV-AIDS, a deadly new virus that provoked intense stigma and discrimination, undercut that confidence. Scientific understandings of HIV led to more evolutionary, ecological views of disease origins; widely disseminated through the news and entertainment industries, those views inspired a newer, darker era of viral imaginaries. The identity of viruses as objects of scientific study, national security planning and popular culture have become difficult to disentangle as a result. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The social media revolution has affected all areas, including activism. However, there is scepticism about its emancipatory capacity, and it is considered by some to be a distorted form of activism. This article presents a review of the existing literature on digital activism, starting with the concept itself, and examines its impact on the organisation of activists and citizen participation. Likewise, based on the platformisation of these spaces and the evolution of their affordances, we observe a growth in individual, strategic and low-commitment participation, the accentuation of the role of emotions in media that promote virality, and the assumption of playful forms of politainment by activists -especially on TikTok-. On the other hand, the strategies carried out by organisations to promote activism in relation to their causes are investigated, such as the generation of arguments provided by the interest group and the involvement in an action of dissemination, co-creation and replication of activists. Finally, the main challenges of digital activism are indicated: the growing inequality in terms of access to algorithmic visibility between activists and brands, influencers and interest groups; the desirability of complementing playful activism with work in alternative digital media that allows for more stable forms of collaboration; and the need to protect activists against the growth of hate speech on these platforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital platforms are spaces for social participation with significant value in the development of the identity of adolescents and emerging adults. The objective is to identify the behavior and visibility of LGBT content using Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter posts of such content from May 16 to November 16, 2022, collecting 539,389 posts. Social media monitoring techniques gathered the posts with the keywords “LGTB” or “LGBT” in Spanish and English, forming the database. The methodology is based on a mixed design: first, the database is analyzed using Big Data techniques and, second, the 10 most viral posts from each social network are selected. The results show that dissemination of gender identity in content and meaning is uneven across the various social networks. Twitter profiles have a higher number of posts (61%), polarization, and lower virality and exhibit visible LGBTphobia. Instagram has a number of posts (37%) and average virality, with positive sentiments. TikTok has fewer posts (2%), less polarization, positive messages, and extreme virality. The three networks consider the Pride demonstrations to be a symbol of the community because they destabilize and confront LGBTphobic oppression by occupying public spaces, opening the closet without stigma or shame, as is reflected on social networks. The behavior of LGBT content on these platforms is multidimensional, uneven, and differentiated, which demonstrates the necessity of ensuring respect for the diversity of sexual orientation and gender identity on digital platforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors test five theoretically derived hypotheses about what drives video ad sharing across multiple social media platforms. Two independent field studies test these hypotheses using 11 emotions and over 60 ad characteristics. The results are consistent with theory and robust across studies. Information-focused content has a significantly negative effect on sharing, except in risky contexts. Positive emotions of amusement, excitement, inspiration, and warmth positively affect sharing. Various drama elements such as surprise, plot, and characters, including babies, animals, and celebrities arouse emotions. Prominent (early vs. late, long vs. short duration, persistent vs. pulsing) placement of brand names hurts sharing. Emotional ads are shared more on general platforms (Facebook, Google+, Twitter) than on LinkedIn, and the reverse holds for informational ads. Sharing is also greatest when ad length is moderate (1.2 to 1.7 minutes). Contrary to these findings, ads use information more than emotions, celebrities more than babies or animals, prominent brand placement, little surprise, and very short or very long ads. A third study shows that the identified drivers predict sharing accurately in an entirely independent sample. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social media posts made by ordinary people are in most cases only viewed by a small number of friends and contacts. But some posts get thousands of likes, comments, and shares, a phenomenon often dubbed as going viral. This paper provides a content analysis of viral Facebook posts published by common people in Norway, and of the news coverage they received. The social media posts that go viral in Norway deal with a variety of topics, like health care, elderly care, bullying, traffic safety, unemployment, animal welfare, school, and education. Some of the viral posts were open job applications, and some were creative expressions. Many of the posts address political issues, and becomes part of the public debate. The posts are personal in their mode of address, often with an emotional appeal for civic engagement. They resemble the letters to the editor, though they bypass the editor and go directly to online self-publication, and in this way, moving parts of the public debate from the newspapers to social media. Most of the viral posts got news coverage, which in most cases focused more on the popularity cues and the virality of the post, and less on the topic the post addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ordinary people have always been of interest to journalists, and social media has become a common place to find material for new stories. This paper presents a quantitative content analysis of Norwegian news articles that are based on social media posts published by ordinary people. The analysis focuses on the topics of the news stories, sources, headlines, lead paragraphs, use of amateur photos, and what news criteria they fulfill. The news articles generated covered a wide variety of topics but were mostly soft news. Social issues, culture, and politics were the largest categories. They were episodic in form and replicated much of the content from the original social media post together with an interview with the person who posted it. There was little use of other sources or follow-up stories. Most of the photos used were amateur photos. The journalistic processing of the material is at a minimum. Compared with Norwegian news in general, the sources in the material were slightly more female and of a wider age range, and they were picked up by journalists because of popularity cues on social media. For journalists, this poses an opportunity and a challenge to develop the stories into something more than mere snapshots of society. For the individuals involved it poses an opportunity to reach a larger audience, but also the challenge of context collapse when the audience shifts from their contacts on social media to the general news audience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Donald Trump's response to the Covid-19 pandemic, and particularly around his own bout with the disease, the intersection of "traditional" themes and tropes – i.e. the representation and narration of communicable disease, presidential image-making, and the visual language of play and politics – come together in novel manners. We will argue that Trump's employment of cartoon logic relies on his grotesquely exaggerated treatment of pre-existing norms, which generates speculation, innuendo, and in reaction an often cartoonesque meme production. Through an investigation of three case studies – the rumour that Trump would return into public view revealing a Superman shirt, Trump's slapdash suggestion that imbibing disinfectant might cure Covid-19, and his treatment of face masks – we arrive at the conclusion that cartoon logic can generate online political constituencies. The memes' visual rhetoric moves gradually from cartoonesque, narrative, and directly related to Trump's body and person (as in the case of the Superman rumour), to more photographic and more directed at broader consumer behaviour, though still decidedly absurd (as in the case of the disinfectant claim), to acutely and directly politicising constituents' everyday behaviour (as in the case of Trump's masking and unmasking claims). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on previous literature that valence and arousal constitute the fundamental properties of emotions and that emotional content is a determinant of social transmission, this study examines the role of valence and arousal in the social transmission of politicians' messages on Twitter. For over 3,000 tweets from five Austrian party leaders, the discrete emotion that the message intended to elicit in its recipients was captured by human coders and then classified on its valence (positive or negative) and arousal (low or high). We examined the effects of valence and arousal on the retweet probability of messages. Results indicate that tweets eliciting a negative (vs. positive) valence decreased retweet probability, whereas tweets eliciting a high (vs. low) arousal increased retweet probability. The present research replicates previous findings that arousal constitutes a determinant of social transmission but extends this mechanism to the realm of political communication on Twitter. Moreover, in contrast to the frequently mentioned negativity bias, positive emotions increased the likelihood of a message being shared in this study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The novel coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic provided new and various opportunities for corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities. This study intended to compare three types of CSR activities – product development, in-kind donation and CSR commercial – undertaken by two companies – Nike, Inc. and The Coca-Cola Company in response to the pandemic. The purpose of this study was to investigate how CSR activity type and their attributes affected effectiveness. Design/methodology/approach: This study used an experiment using a 3 (CSR activity type) × 2 (company) mixed factorial design. CSR activity type was a between-subjects factor, and company was a within-subjects factor. The attributes of dynamism and innovativeness, corporate image, brand equity and social media sharing likelihood were dependent variables. Findings: The findings underscored the importance of CSR activity type and their attributes of dynamism and innovativeness in the effects on corporate image and brand equity. Product development and in-kind donation, which were perceived as more dynamic than CSR commercial, resulted in more desirable corporate images. Product development, which was perceived as more innovative than in-kind donation and CSR commercial, did not result in greater brand equity than in-kind donation, but resulted in greater brand equity than CSR commercial. The CSR activity type and their attributes did not affect social media sharing likelihood. Differences in content modes could be considered. Originality/value: This study advanced the knowledge on the effectiveness of CSR activities by comparing CSR activity types varying in dynamism and innovativeness in the context of a public health crisis that caused unprecedented societal changes and challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: In the age of social media, when publishers are vying for consumer attention, click-baits have become very common. Not only viral websites but also mainstream publishers, such as news channels, use click-baits for generating traffic. Therefore, click-bait detection and prediction of click-bait virality have become important challenges for social media platforms to keep the platform click-bait free and give a better user experience. The purpose of this study is to try exploring how the contents of the social media posts and the article can be used to explain and predict social media posts and the virality of a click-bait. Design/methodology/approach: This study has used 17,745 tweets from Twitter with 4,370 click-baits from top 27 publishers and applied econometric along with machine learning methods to explain and predict click-baitiness and click-bait virality. Findings: This study finds that language formality, readability, sentiment scores and proper noun usage of social media posts and various parts of the target article plays differential and important roles in click-baitiness and click-bait virality. Research limitations/implications: The paper contributes toward the literature of dark behavior in social media at large and click-bait prediction and explanation in particular. It focuses on the differential roles of the social media post, the article shared and the source in explaining click-baitiness and click-bait virality via psycho-linguistic framework. The paper also provides explanability to the econometric and machine learning predictive models, thus performing methodological contribution too. Practical implications: The paper helps social media managers create a mechanism to detect click-baits and also predict which ones of them can become viral so that corrective measures can be taken. Originality/value: To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is one of the first papers which focus on both explaining and predicting click-baitiness and click-bait virality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study seeks to uncover the effects of source and repetition on the illusory truth effect and the dissemination of fake news on social media with an online experiment. This study found that in a personalized source system where trustworthy traditional news sources and personal contacts converged on social media, repetition has a big influence on the trustworthiness of news source and balance of news story. Although most people intend to share real news stories with balance, the illusory truth effect causes mis-judgement, which makes fake news more likely to go viral than real news. The multi-group SEM analysis of the two groups – without source and with source – showed that readers in the no source group rated the effect of repetition on news evaluation as more significant than the with source group. The findings suggest that the effect of source has diminished in the evaluation of news quality. However, sharers on social media are becoming more influential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This paper aims to contribute to the emerging body of research on firestorms, specifically on the inflammatory user-generated content (UGC) created in response to brand transgressions. By analyzing and segmenting UGC created and shared in the wake of three different events, the authors identify which type of inflammatory message is most likely to be widely shared; thus, contributing to a possible online firestorm. Design/methodology/approach: Tweets were collected involving brand transgressions in the retail, fast food and technology space from varying timeframe and diverse media coverage. Then, the tweets were coded for message intention and analyzed with linguistics software to determine the message characteristics and framing. A two-step cluster analysis identified three types of UGC. Findings: The authors found that message dimensions and the framing of tweets in the context of brand transgressions differed in characteristics, sentiment, call to action and the extent to which the messages were shared. The findings contradict traditional negative word-of-mouth studies involving idiosyncratic service and product failure. During online brand firestorms, rational activism messages with a call to action, generated in response to a firm's transgression or "sparks," have a higher likelihood of being shared (virality). Originality/value: This research provides novel insights into UGC created after brand transgressions. Different types of messages created after these events vary in the extent that they "fan the flames" of the transgression. A message typology and flowchart are provided to assist managers in identifying and responding to three message types: ash, sparks and embers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars and industry stakeholders have exhibited an interest in identifying the underlying dimensions of viral memes. However, the recipe for creating a viral meme remains obscure. This study makes a phenomenological contribution by examining viral memes, exploring the antecedents (i.e., content‐related factors, customer‐related factors, and media‐related factors), consequences, and moderating factors using a mixed‐method approach. The study presents a holistic framework for creating viral memes based on the perceptions of customers and industry stakeholders. Four quantitative studies (i.e., a lab experiment, an online quasi‐experiment, an event study, and a brand recall study) validate the theoretical model identified in the qualitative study. The research underlines the potential of viral memes in marketing communications as they enhance brand recall and brand engagement. The study found that viral memes are topical and highly relatable and are thus well received by the target groups, which increases customer engagement and brand recall. Marketers can adopt the findings of this study to design content for memes that consumers find relevant, iconic, humorous, and spreadable. Furthermore, marketers can use customer‐related factors suggested in the theoretical framework for enhancing escapism, social gratification, and content gratification for their target customers which in turn shall organically increase their reach within their target segments and enhance brand performance in terms of brand recall and brand engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Policy & Internet is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The influence of TikTok has reached the news media, which has adapted to the logic of the platform, in a context marked by the incidental consumption of news, virality and the intermediation of technology in access to information. The popularity of this social network invites news outlets to address a young audience on a platform characterized by visual and short content and dynamics defined by algorithmic recommendations, trending hashtags and challenges. Based on an exploratory search of news media and programmes on TikTok from around the world, we selected 234 accounts and conducted a content analysis of the 19 news media and programmes identified with a verified profile and general thematic scope. The results point to a progressive incorporation of the media since 2019, with the purpose of informing, positioning their brand and adapting to the logic of TikTok in a new approach to journalism for younger generations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article takes up German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk's attention to air and atmospheres to argue for the influential part "objective" thinking plays in disseminating viral pandemics. It follows Sloterdijk's broad approach to "air-conditioning" to interpret the way modern cultures increasingly work to explicate and construct objective figures of (and in) air. A fundamental, yet invisible, "anthropopoietic" element, air resists the forms and figures we use to describe it. This is acutely demonstrated by airborne viruses like COVID-19 and the pandemics they create, where the medial willingness to perceive or "figure" the air becomes a critical, everyday necessity. When Sloterdijk attributes the spread of "affective epidemics" to mass-media technologies, he draws attention to how airborne transmission is a symptom of breathing the same air, which, by affecting and altering air-conditions to reproduce identical figures all across the globe, increases its spread. This article argues that the willingness to make air objective — in both senses of identifying its material properties, and believing in a uniform or consensus figure — eradicates the possibility of vital difference. In doing so, inhabiting what Sloterdijk calls the "World Interior" of reproducible sameness that props up international exchange, modern, globalized culture becomes far more susceptible to the rapid spread of epidemics. Virality is increased by the sameness of objective air-conditioning, and by reintroducing difference into the atmosphere we can bring back its life-giving potential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

WhatsApp facilitates easy communication as users can send messages, images, videos, and group conversations instantly. Forwarding the messages received is one of the desires of WhatsApp users. Hence, it is imperative to understand the key determinants of this phenomenon. This study examine the level of influences of infotainment, purposive value, social identity, and emotional evocativeness on the decision to forward received messages via WhatsApp. Using a random sampling method, primary data was obtained from 342 respondents from a Private University in Cyberjaya, Malaysia. The data was analyzed through Partial Least Square Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) using SmartPls. Findings show that infotainment does not affect the decision to forward WhatsApp messages; however, purposive value, social identity, and emotional evocativeness have significant effects. Similarly, while emotional evocativeness mediates between purposive value, social identity, and the decision to forward WhatsApp messages, it does not mediate between infotainment and the decision to forward WhatsApp messages. These findings will help users to understand the key elements that should be implemented to achieve virality for WhatsApp messages and other social media. Limitations, future study opportunities, practical and theoretical implications were also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on different iterations of virality to explore the racial logic of death and the crisis of our time during the coronavirus pandemic. By examining the war on the coronavirus, the sanctions on Iran, and the rise of white supremacy in the United States, this article argues that the optimistic analyses of virus and virality are predicated upon the abstraction of the human, thus overlooking race and geopolitics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Other Modernities / Altre Modernita / Otras Modernidades / Autres Modernités is the property of Altre Modernita and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Since its appearance in 2018, TikTok has become one of the most popular social media platforms among digital natives because of its algorithm-based engagement strategies, a policy of public accounts, and a simple, colorful, and intuitive content interface. As happened in the past with other platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, various media are currently seeking ways to adapt to TikTok and its particular characteristics to attract a younger audience less accustomed to the consumption of journalistic material. Against this background, the aim of this study is to identify the presence of the media and journalists on TikTok, measure the virality and engagement of the content they generate, describe the communities created around them, and identify the presence of journalistic use of these accounts. For this, 23,174 videos from 143 accounts belonging to media from 25 countries were analyzed. The results indicate that, in general, the presence and impact of the media in this social network are low and that most of their content is oriented towards the creation of user communities based on viral content and entertainment. However, albeit with a lesser presence, one can also identify accounts and messages that adapt their content to the specific characteristics of TikTok. Their virality and engagement figures illustrate that there is indeed a niche for current affairs on this social network. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

TikTok's meteoric rise in recent years is unparalleled by any other social media platform. From a music standpoint, TikTok differs from other social media as sound lies at the center of its user experience. Unknown artists have used the platform's democratized algorithm to get their music in front of fans; one viral song trend can catapult an artist into a massive chart and commercial success. This has led to TikTok becoming responsible for the bulk of new music discovery, from breaking new artists to resurrecting older ones. While studies have shown the link between how smaller artists have used TikTok to find a following, little research has been done to show how major labels should leverage TikTok in their marketing rollouts. Certainly, digital marketing's peer-to-peer or co-creation between larger artists and their fans has been part of music marketing for some time, and this strategy worked well for Harry Styles and Lizzo on TikTok in the summer of 2022. Yet, music virality on the platform is more often than not being dictated by the users over the strict marketing intent of the labels. This paper shows how TikTok's music virality eschews the co-creation of traditional social media marketing in favor of user-generated content. In other words, users don't merely comment or circulate content; they become the content. TikTok is changing music marketing from a co-creative ecology to a user-generated medium using micro-influencers and agile marketing methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Shakespeare's protean quality is an intrinsic feature: his works and even his persona have always been adapted and have been capable of transmitting through time and space. Rather than merely being the latest form of remediations, this paper suggests that memes can be related to the very nature of a classic, which resides in its transmissibility. In this paper, informed by the idea that a classic is comparable to a viral content, I analyse a few Shakespeare-related internet memes created in the first half of 2020, during the initial phase of the Coronavirus pandemic emergency, that assimilate Shakespeare in a pandemic context. An English icon, Shakespeare seems to be able to speak to different audiences in their own language, even in the lyophilized form of the internet meme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of contact‐tracing apps to curb the spreading of the COVID‐19 pandemic has stimulated social media debates on consumers' privacy concerns about the use and storage of sensitive data and on conspiracy theories positing that these apps are part of plans against individuals' freedom. By analyzing the type of language of tweets, we found which words, linguistic style, and emotions conveyed by tweets are more likely to be associated with consumers' privacy concerns and conspiracy theories and how they affect virality. To do so, we analyze a set of 5615 tweets related to the Italian tracing app "Immuni". Results suggest that consumers' privacy concerns and conspiracy theories belong to different domains and exert different effects on the virality of tweets. Furthermore, the characteristics of the text (namely, complexity, certainty and emotions) cue different Twitter users' behaviors. This study helps researchers and managers to infer the psychological mechanisms that lead people to spread tweets about privacy concerns and conspiracy theories as well as how these texts impact the user who receives it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of aDResearch ESIC: International Journal of Communication Research / Revista Internacional de Investigación en Comunicación is the property of ESIC Business & Marketing School and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of aDResearch ESIC: International Journal of Communication Research / Revista Internacional de Investigación en Comunicación is the property of ESIC Business & Marketing School and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This study investigates how the emotional tone of food safety risk communication messages predicts message virality on social media. Through a professional Internet content tracking service, we gathered news articles written about the 2018 romaine lettuce recall published online between October 30th and November 29th, 2018. We retrieved the number of times each article was shared on Twitter and Pinterest, and the number of engagements (shares, likes, and comments) for each article on Facebook and Reddit. We randomly selected 10% of the articles (n = 377) and characterized the emotional tone of each article using machine learning, including emotional characteristics such as discrete emotions, emotional valence, arousal, and dominance. Conveying negative valence, low arousal, and high dominance, as well as anger and sadness emotions were associated with greater virality of articles on social media. Implications of these findings for risk communication in the age of social media are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of El Profesional de la Información is the property of EPI SCP and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article sets out three ways of conceiving publics: (1) an organic conception, the public as the body politic; (2) an individualized conception, the public as an aggregate of individuals, grouped by social categories; and (3) a relational conception, in which publics are defined as open-ended networks of actors linked through flows of communication, shared stories, and civic or other collective concerns. These conceptions have emerged not only through theoretical reflection but also as the result of historical and institutional developments. Building on work from Tarde and Habermas down to recent theorists, I seek to advance the relational conception, suggest its implications for research, and highlight its connection to contemporary developments in both theory and society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The level of viral diffusion expected after a technology product or service is launched is important for determining the marketing budget, forecasting revenue, and understanding the resources necessary to manufacture and/or support the technology. Based on a review of academic and industry literature, this study proposes the "Comprehensive Framework of Viral Technology Diffusion—Stages and Factors." The framework specifically draws on stage models developed by Wiedemann et al. (Wiedemann DG, Palka W, Pousttchi K (2008) Understanding the determinants of mobile viral effects-towards a grounded theory of mobile viral marketing. Paper presented at the 2008 7th international conference on mobile business) and Phelps et al. (Phelps et al., J Advert Res 44:333–348, 2004), other academic and industry viral marketing literature, and information systems literature including theories widely used in IS research, such as reasoned actioned (Fishbein and Ajzen Fishbein and Ajzen, Intention and behavior: an introduction to theory and research, Addison-Wesley, MA, 1975), Technology Acceptance Model (Davis 1989; Davis et al. 1989) and planned behavior (Ajzen Ajzen, I. (1985). From intentions to actions: a theory of planned behavior. In: Action control, Springer. New York, Ajzen, Organ Behav Hum Decis Process 50:179–211, 1991). It details five major stages of viral diffusion campaigns, their relationships to each other, and relevant findings from the literature. The five stages recognized are: content development; virality prediction; seed engagement; content propagation; and virality response. Each stage has been identified in prior studies; however, no comprehensive framework of these constructs, nor their relationships to one another, has so far been found. Some important factors included are, for example, at the propagation stage, consideration of the networks through which viral propagation occur and potential transmission costs faced by content forwarders. Our framework contributes to the literature by providing an outline and related set of factors that may be useful for understanding and positioning future research on viral marketing and may also help practitioners who seek to launch products virally. We also offer directions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research note describes an exploratory study that examined what makes two types of campaigns go viral online. Using research in communication, persuasion, and emotional valence, we conducted a survey experiment that exposed viewers to persuasive videos and asked about sharing behaviors. Results demonstrated that personal relevance and cognitive elaboration on content are key predictors of viral sharing behaviors. In addition, both positive and negative emotions play a role, but in different circumstances. Overall, this study provides a framework for future scholars to examine the phenomenon of "virality." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Advancing the concept of multimodal voicing as a tool for describing user-generated online humour, this paper reports a study on humorous COVID-19 mask memes. The corpus is drawn from four popular social media platforms and examined through a multimodal discourse analytic lens. The dominant memetic trends are elucidated and shown to rely programmatically on nested (multimodal) voices, whether compatible or divergent, as is the case with the dissociative echoing of individuals wearing peculiar masks or the dissociative parodic echoing of their collective voice. The theoretical thrust of this analysis is that, as some memes are (re)posted across social media (sometimes going viral), the previous voice(s) – of the meme subject/author/poster – can be re-purposed (e.g. ridiculed) or unwittingly distorted. Overall, this investigation offers new theoretical and methodological implications for the study of memes: it indicates the usefulness of the notions of multimodal voicing, intertextuality and echoing as research apparatus; and it brings to light the epistemological ambiguity in lay and academic understandings of memes, the voices behind which cannot always be categorically known. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Her Instagram and Tik Tok account were a nonstop thread of information about anti-Asian discrimination, police brutality, and protest activity, which encouraged her to act. As we have seen, social media has and should be harnessed to support crisis response and provide youth the opportunity to voice their experiences and engage with others. Keywords: Marginalized youth; intersectionality; social media; social change; virality EN Marginalized youth intersectionality social media social change virality 105 108 4 03/08/21 20210201 NES 210201 The COVID-19 pandemic and violence inflicted on communities of color by police in the United States has caused unrest across the country. [Extracted from the article]

Copyright of Collectanea Theologica is the property of Uniwersytet Kardynala Stefana Wyszynskiego w Warszawie and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Previous research on the success of politicians' messages on social media has so far focused on a limited number of platforms, especially Facebook and Twitter, and predominately studied the effects of textual content. This research reported here applies computer vision analysis to a total of 59,020 image posts published by 172 Instagram accounts of U.S. politicians, both candidates and office holders, and examines how visual attributes influence audience engagement such as likes and comments. In particular, this study introduces an unsupervised approach that combines transfer learning and clustering techniques to discover hidden categories from large-scale visual data. The results reveal that different self-personalization strategies in visual media, for example, images featuring politicians in private, nonpolitical settings, showing faces, and displaying emotions, generally increase audience engagement. Yet, a significant portion of politician's Instagram posts still fell into the traditional, "politics-as-usual" type of political communication, showing professional settings and activities. The analysis explains how self-personalization is embodied in specific visual portrayals and how different self-presentation strategies affect audience engagement on a popular but less studied social media platform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The commentary examines coronavirus memes circulating around forms of generational conflict that have risen from experiences of self-isolation. Employing participant-observation methods within online spaces of meme circulation, the commentary analyzes the political, social, and affective aspects of the memes considered. The commentary offers insight into how we operationalize our social media spaces in times of deep uncertainty in order collectively bring differing experiences and perspectives into a contingent, shifting, and affectively constituted public sphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay is an endeavor to historicize and speculate on the post-contact zone in the pandemic era of Anthropocene. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we argue that the campy affectations of contestants of RuPaul's Drag Race (RPDR) serve as the perfect vehicle through which GIFs and memes can be created and have the potential to go viral online. RPDR relies heavily on social media for its success, and we claim that the queens who go on to establish a celebrity persona beyond the show are often the ones who fully exploit this relationship by condensing themselves into self-branded caricatures. These simplified personas, with their distinctive phrases, quirks and idiosyncrasies, can be easily captured and expressed in short GIFs, clips and memes. We argue that memeability – that is, having a persona that lends itself to becoming a meme that in turn acts as a mechanism in the production of stardom – is the online celebrity's equivalent of charisma in the social media age. In this article, by drawing on queens from RPDR such as Miss Vanjie and Alyssa Edwards, we assert that virality and memes have become part of the celebrity-making process, as well as a vehicle to enable brand collaborations and capitalisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Viral communication has experienced noticeable changes since its first definition by Rushkoff in 1994. Some changes have been of such a nature that they have rendered the notions employed at the end of the last century and at the start of the 21st century obsolete. This present article tries to update and synthesize the concept of virality as the backbone of the current forms of communication and, especially, those that are born and triggered in social networks. For this we will use a classic bibliographic review methodology, which will try to investigate the background, the elements and the foundations of the concept. As a result of this revision, we will extract a new concept of viral communication, as a form of integration between the media and their messages or, also, as a form of global hybridization. In this context, the article will try to establish the theoretical foundations of virality as a paradigm of digital and connected communication. Personal communication, originally developed from leader theory and personal influence starting with contacts in close proximity (word-of-mouth), is redefined by the Internet and by the application of marketing (which has developed it under the name of permission or relational). With its rapid expansion in the early 1990s, the phenomenon of personal influence took on a new dimension. This happened mainly because the Internet is essentially a decentralized structure, where the nodes and points of influence are crucial for the flow of information. So we must think of network-based communication as a collaborative process. These forms of communication stand out for requiring personal information and allowing segmentation of the public and personalization of communication related actions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]