Why are certain pieces of online content (e.g., advertisements, videos, news articles) more viral than others? this article takes a psychological approach to understanding diffusion. Using a unique data set of all the New York Times articles published over a three-month period, the authors examine how emotion shapes virality. the results indicate that positive content is more viral than negative content, but the relationship between emotion and social transmission is more complex than valence alone. Virality is partially driven by physiological arousal. Content that evokes high-arousal positive (awe) or negative (anger or anxiety) emotions is more viral. Content that evokes low-arousal, or deactivating, emotions (e.g., sadness) is less viral. these results hold even when the authors control for how surprising, interesting, or practically useful content is (all of which are positively linked to virality), as well as external drivers of attention (e.g., how prominently content was featured). experimental results further demonstrate the causal impact of specific emotion on transmission and illustrate that it is driven by the level of activation induced. taken together, these findings shed light on why people share content and how to design more effective viral marketing campaigns. Keywords: word of mouth, viral marketing, social transmission, online content

1. JonahBergerandKatherineL. MiLKMan
ByHallwestM. Qader
(Berger & MiLKMan, 2011)
What Makes onl i ne Cont ent Vi ral ?
TheSummeryof
Dr. Burak

2. MakesOnlineContentViral?
What

3. JonahBergerisamarketingprofessorattheWhartonSchoolattheUniversityofPennsylvaniaandbestsellingauthorof
Contagious: WhyThingsCatchOn, KatherineMilkman istheprofessoratTheWhartonSchooloftheUniversityofPennsylvania.
Authors
Dr. Jonah Berger Prof essor Kat heri ne

4. Keywor ds: wor d of mout h, vi r al mar ket i ng, soci al t r ansmi ssi on,
onl i ne cont ent

5. THE QUESTION
Whyarecertainpiecesofonlinemoreviralthanothers?
Thisarticletakesapsychologicalapproachto
understandingdiffusion.

6. THE APPROACH
How emotion shapes social transmission
Theyexaminewhicharticlesmakethenewspaper’s
“mostemailedlist.”
01
Theyexperimentallymanipulatetheparticular
emotionevokedbycontenttotestthecausalimpact
ofarousalonsocialtransmissiondirectly.
02

7. Formulating the
Research

8. World U.S. Politics N.Y. Business Opinion Tech Science Health Sports Arts Books Style
With Whom NYT articles is shared?
Its articles are shared with a mix of
friends (42%),
relatives (40%),
colleagues (10%), and others (7%),
making it an ideal venue for examining the link
between content characteristics and virility.
Fr i day, 10 May- MBA Cl ass
What types of New York Times articles are highly
shared?
The first study investigates what types of New York
Times articles are highly shared.
*These figures are based on 343 New York Times readers who were asked with whom they had most recently shared an article.
The New Yor k Ti mes r epor t s

9. Fi rst
How an ar t i cl e’ s
val ence.
01
Second
The ext ent t o whi ch i t evokes
var i ous speci f i c emot i ons ( e. g. ,
anger or sadness) af f ect .
02
They Exami ne:

10. DATA
COLLECTION

11. 6956 articles
03Month
WebCrawler
NYTimes. com
• Article’stitle
• Fulltext
• Author(s)
• Topicarea(e.G., Opinion, sports)
• Atwo-sentencesummarycreatedbytheNYT
• Article’ssection, page,
• Publicationdate
• Times
• Locations
• Durationsofallappearancesitmadeon
thenewyorktimes’ homepage

12. ARTICLE CODING
01
02
They used Aut omat ed anal ysi s t o quant i f y t he Post ai vet i t y and emot i onal i t y
of each ar t i cl e By LI WC*
* Li ngui st i c I nqui r y and Wor d Coun
They r el i ed on human coder s t o cl assi f y t he ext ent t o whi ch cont ent
exhi bi t ed ot her , mor e speci f i c char act er i st i cs ( e. g. , evoked anger )
03 They Cod t he ar t i cl es' cont ai ned pr act i cal l y usef ul i nf or mat i on or evoked
i nt er est or sur pr i se ( cont r ol var i abl es) .
04 Ext er nal f act or s ( separ at e f r om cont ent char act er i st i cs) may af f ect an
ar t i cl e’ s vi r al i t y by f unct i oni ng l i ke adver t i si ng.

13. THE RESULT

14. Is positive or negative content more viral?

16. THAN NEGATI VE CONTENT.
POSITIVE CONTENT
ismore
VIRAL

18. How do specific emotions affect virality?

19. Other factors. These results persist when we control for a host of
other factors (Table 4, Model 4). More notably, informative
(practically useful), interesting, and surprising articles are more
likely to make the New York Times’ most e-mailed list, but our
focal results are significant even after we control for these
content characteristics.

20. Some negat i ve emot i ons are posi t i vel y associ at ed wi t h
vi ri l i t y.

22. Awe ( +1 SD)
Sadness ( +1 SD)
Anger
( +1SD)
Anxi et y ( +1
SD)
-20% 0%
21%
40%
The Chance Of Goi ng Vi ral
34%
-16%
34%
20%
Posi t i vi t y ( +1
SD)
13%
18%
20%
Emot i onal i t y ( +1
SD)
Ti me at t op of Home Page ( +1
SD)
-40%

23. THANKYOU