Erick Valle
3/24/19
ENG2150
Prof. Graves
Annotated Bibliography
Source 1(Book): Tony D. Sampson. Virality: Contagion Theory in the Age of Networks. NED – New ed. U of Minnesota, 2012. Web.
Key Words: Social network, collective contamination, contagion theory, crowd, neurotic.
Summary: The source’s content is an analysis and synthesis of the ideas of contagion theory and the current social network. Specifically looking at a virality diagram from Tarde, otherwise known as; according to the book, as Tardean Hypnosis. This is connected to the contemporary phenomenon of social media and explains the group thinking associated with the virality of social media content.
Response: This source gives me a lot to talk about in response to my main research question. I could support the claim that there are sociological factors that play into the virality of contemporary subjects. I agree with all of the content in this book, mostly the quotations that I will use. These quotations analyze logically what happens when we process things in social media, and puts virality under a microscope, both of which I feel, could strengthen my paper.
Key Quotes: CH2 “This chapter begins with the premise that what spreads through a social network is all too often attributed to two largely uncontested logics of resemblance and repetition. First, cultural contagion is assumed to correspond to a distinctive biologically determined unit of imitation. This is unquestionably a mechanistic virality analogically compared to the canonical imprint of genetic code. Second, what spreads is said to occur in a representational space of collective contamination in which individual persons who become part of a crowd tend toward thinking in the same mental images (real and imagined). Like this, the reasoned individual is seemingly overpowered by a neurotic mental state of unity unique to the crowd, which renders subjectivity vulnerable to further symbolic contagious encounters and entrainments.”
CH1 “The aim here is to disentangle Tarde from Durkheim’s collective consciousness and unravel contested claims that try to make him a forefather of both memetics and actor network theory. Virality instead aligns Tarde to Deleuzian assemblage theory and connects him to a disparate series of past and present contagion theories”
CH5 “Virality presents, as such, an abstract diagram of contagion that considers how social singularities are assembled in relation to each other in the grip of discursive semiotic regimes (e.g., the metaphor of contagion) but also includes presocial affective processes of contagion.”
Borrowed Sources: 40. Tarde, Laws of Imitation, 53– 54.
Tarde, Social Laws, 178.
Aaron Lynch, Thought Contagion: How Belief Spreads through Society (New York: Basic Books, 1996).
Blackmore, Meme Machine, 24.
Le Bon, The Crowd, 7.
Source 2(Journal): Pancer, Ethan, and Maxwell Poole. “The Popularity and Virality of Political Social Media: Hashtags, Mentions, and Links Predict Likes and Retweets of 2016 U.S. Presidential Nominees’ Tweets.” Social Influence, vol. 11, no. 4, Oct. 2016, pp. 259–270. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/15534510.2016.1265582.
Keywords: Content, Users, tools, diffusion, messages, interaction.
Summary: This article analyzes the 2016 election candidate’s uses of the tools of social media to influence political social media.
Response: The candidates mentioned that use social media tools like the hashtag, @, and picture posts, do this as a way to pander to our attraction of shorter cognitive processes and therefore influence political social media. This could be also connected to my previous source, Source 1.
Quotations: “Mentions (e.g. @realDonaldTrump) include other users in their content, allowing them to quickly join the conversation and be recognized by viewers. Users that are mentioned in posts receive a notification when they log onto the site that someone has tagged them in a post. Mentions are made by placing the (@) symbol in front of an alphanumeric string. Users can even embed links (URLs) to external websites in their post (e.g. www.hrc.io/studentdebt). All of these Twitter tag and link tools are designed to facilitate content diffusion to reach a broad audience in a crowded social media landscape.”
“’the important point is that fluency at large arises from many different sources rather than which particular cognitive process drives any one particular fluency experience’ (Alter & Oppenheimer, [ 2], p. 233). We predict that only tools that facilitate message processing fluency, like embedding photos or video in a tweet, should increase social media interactions.”
Borrowed Sources:
Arieh, Y., & Algom, D. (2002). Processing picture-word stimuli: The contingent nature of picture and of word superiority. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 28, 221–231. doi:10.1037/0278-7393.28.1.221
Berger, J., & Milkman, K. L. (2012). What makes online content viral? Journal of Marketing Research, 49, 192–205. doi:10.1509/jmr.10.0353
Source 3: Nikolinakou, Angeliki, and Karen Whitehill King. “Viral Video Ads: Emotional Triggers and Social Media Virality.” Psychology & Marketing 35.10 (2018): 715-26. Web.
Keywords: Emotion, positive emotions, social media, viral advertising.
Summary: This article correlates emotional arousal and activity to a viral strategy used by marketers to achieve advertising virality.
Response: My research question can be applied to many different fields that require virality top be used as a means of success, such as marketing. While my paper isn’t about marketing, I could discuss another cognitive aspect in ourselves as a reaction to these products, emotion. Emotion has a lot to do in dictating what we share.
Quotes : “Psychology studies suggest that experiencing affection and awe may make an individual more emotionally open and receptive to others (e.g. Batson, 2005). This study supports this finding and indicates that in the context of viral advertising, affection experienced via ads strongly elicits intentions to share in order to achieve emotional connection and offer emotional support in social media. The results indicate that awe may also have similar effects. By shifting attention from the self toward others, awe may prompt expressions of emotional connection and emotional generosity in social media.”
“They can be defined as impulses, mental actions, or predispositions that represent “states of readiness” to react to a situation or a stimulus in ways that serve one’s needs (Frijda, 1986). Happiness creates action tendencies to celebrate which further enhance sense of well‐being, while sadness prompts withdrawal of one’s self in order to reevaluate the situation and develop a new course of action toward one’s goals (Lazarus, 1991).”
Borrowed Sources: Baumeister, R. F., & Leary, M. R. ( 1995). The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 117( 3), 497– 529. https://doi-org.remote.baruch.cuny.edu/10.1037/0033-2909.117.3.497
Lazarus, R. S. ( 1991). Emotion and adaptation. New York, USA: Oxford University Press.
Frijda, N. H. ( 1986). The emotions. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press and Editions de la Maison des sciences de l’homme.
Batson, D. C. ( 2005). Similarity and nurturance: Two possible sources of empathy for strangers. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 27( 1), 15– 25.
Source 4: Roller, Emma. “Donald Trump’s Unstoppable Virality.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 29 Dec. 2015, www.nytimes.com/2015/12/29/opinion/campaign-stops/donald-trumps-unstoppable-virality.html.
Keywords: virality, contagion, emotion
Summary: This New York Times article is a pretty biased but true look at Donald Trump’s virality, claiming that it is because of the emotions that he evokes in his posts, he gains virality as a candidate.
Response: This article touches on points made by all sources, if it wasn’t obvious already, my main point as to why things go viral is associated with the emotions that are evoked when reacting to it. This is more brief evidence on Source 2 if anything.
Key Quotes: “Virality can be about sheer news value, but emotion also plays a big role in determining what gets shared. If we think about a given news story as a disease waiting to be passed along, human emotion is its most common vector. And some emotions are more contagious.”
“So when Mr. Trump says that Mexicans are rapists and killers, or that the government should register Muslims in the United States in a mandatory database system, people hit the share button. And as long as stories about Mr. Trump are receiving as many eyeballs as possible, it doesn’t really matter if people are reacting negatively to him. In fact, it probably helps his popularity.”
“Richard L. Rapson, a professor of psychological history at the University of Hawaii, has studied virality through the lens of emotional contagion. He found that the most shareable moments come when a story lights up the deepest recesses of our minds.
“Hate, fear of the other, anger — they come directly from the nonconscious, and that’s why they’re so easy to evoke,” Professor Rapson said.”
Borrowed Sources: Richard L. Rapson,