Skip to main content
About HEC About HEC
Summer School Summer School
Faculty & Research Faculty & Research
Master’s programs Master’s programs
Bachelor Programs Bachelor Programs
MBA Programs MBA Programs
PhD Program PhD Program
Executive Education Executive Education
HEC Online HEC Online
About HEC
Overview Overview
Who
We Are
Who
We Are
Egalité des chances Egalité des chances
HEC Talents HEC Talents
International International
Sustainability Sustainability
Diversity
& Inclusion
Diversity
& Inclusion
The HEC
Foundation
The HEC
Foundation
Campus life Campus life
Activity Reports Activity Reports
Summer School
Youth Programs Youth Programs
Summer programs Summer programs
Online Programs Online Programs
Faculty & Research
Overview Overview
Faculty Directory Faculty Directory
Departments Departments
Centers Centers
Chairs Chairs
Grants Grants
Knowledge@HEC Knowledge@HEC
Master’s programs
Master in
Management
Master in
Management
Master's
Programs
Master's
Programs
Double Degree
Programs
Double Degree
Programs
Bachelor
Programs
Bachelor
Programs
Summer
Programs
Summer
Programs
Exchange
students
Exchange
students
Student
Life
Student
Life
Our
Difference
Our
Difference
Bachelor Programs
Overview Overview
Course content Course content
Admissions Admissions
Fees and Financing Fees and Financing
MBA Programs
MBA MBA
Executive MBA Executive MBA
TRIUM EMBA TRIUM EMBA
PhD Program
Overview Overview
HEC Difference HEC Difference
Program details Program details
Research areas Research areas
HEC Community HEC Community
Placement Placement
Job Market Job Market
Admissions Admissions
Financing Financing
FAQ FAQ
Executive Education
Home Home
About us About us
Management topics Management topics
Open Programs Open Programs
Custom Programs Custom Programs
Events/News Events/News
Contacts Contacts
HEC Online
Overview Overview
Executive programs Executive programs
MOOCs MOOCs
Summer Programs Summer Programs
Youth programs Youth programs
Article

When Videos Become Viral: Why, How and What Consequences?

Information Systems
Published on:
6 minutes

Although popular wisdom assumes that virality is a random and thus unmanageable process, research by Haris Krijestorac (HEC Paris), Rajiv Garg (Goizueta Business School, Emory University) and Vijay Mahajan (University of Texas) finds several ways for marketers and content creators to design and promote their digital media in ways that significantly increase the likelihood of these media achieving virality and sustaining it. Interview with Haris Krijestorac, Assistant Professor of Information Systems.

viral videos - sodawhiskey-AdobeStock - cover - Editorial_Use_Only

©sodawhiskey on Adobe Stock

What can marketers do to make their media more viral?

In our research published in Information Systems Research, we find that posting videos to multiple online platforms make them more viral

As an example, if a video you post on YouTube goes viral, posting it to another platform, such as Vimeo, later on, such as 10 days later, will help the video grow on the focal platform of YouTube. Thus, rather than the attention being cannibalized across these various platforms, posting to the audience of a new platform will stimulate novel word of mouth that may travel back to the focal platform. For instance, the Vimeo audience may communicate with YouTube users and get them to view or share the article. 

 

Rather than being a necessarily ephemeral and unmanageable phenomenon, marketers and content creators can actually stimulate virality by establishing an omni-channel strategy.

 

Based on the aforementioned findings, we can conclude that rather than being a necessarily ephemeral and unmanageable phenomenon, marketers and content creators can actually stimulate virality by establishing an omni-channel strategy. This may apply to channels such as Facebook, Instagram, or Snapchat as well – that is, posting the same content across channels will likely stimulate engagement with this content on each individual channel, rather than having a saturation point that must be divided across channels. 

In addition to offering strategies to promote media once it is viral, your research also examines how to design effective content. How does it work?

While increasing the popularity of media often focuses on its promotion after it is created, with which the insights from the prior study may help, the media promotion process truly begins with its creation. Presently, the content creation process is seen as purely intuitive and creative, and immune to empirical insight. My research introduces an approach to augmenting the aforementioned creativity using a process we call ‘content engineering’ that incorporates empirical insights into content development. 

 

My current research aims to help content creators produce more viral media by extracting empirical insights to complement the creativity, art, and intuition involved in content creation.

 

Content engineering involves a non-linear, data-driven machine learning inductive approach to identify whether, and which content features increase the consumption of digital media. In addition to identifying these features, we extract prescriptive insights that can be used to improve the design of content. This complements the findings from our prior study on how to best promote media once it is created.

 

viral videos - panuwat-AdobeStock

©panuwat on Adobe Stock

"We leverage Natural Language Processing (NLP) to identify the personalities of speech-driven videos along what are known as the “Big Five” traits."

 

We focus on the personality of speech-driven videos such as TED Talks, Big Think, and Fortune 500 channels such as those of IBM, Wells Fargo, and Apple. First, we leverage Natural Language Processing (NLP) to identify these personalities along what are known as the “Big Five” traits – namely, openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism - which are widely studied in psychology literature. Every individual, or entity created using human input, exhibits each of these traits to various extents, which constitutes its overall personality. 

 

We find that using just the personality of speech-driven videos, we can predict with 72% accuracy whether they will perform better than comparable media.

 

Next, we employ our content engineering framework to identify whether, and which personalities increase video consumption. Our analysis uncovers new predictive, economic, and prescriptive insights. We find that by knowing just the degree to which videos exhibit the aforementioned five personality traits, we can predict with 72% accuracy whether videos will perform better than comparable media. Furthermore, videos associated with high-performing personalities can expect a 15% increase in cumulative consumption relative to those with low-performing personalities. 

Overall, our findings suggest that empirical analysis can indeed be leveraged to complement more popular content, but also predict and develop it. Hence, the content creation process, often assumed to be purely intuitive and artistic, can be aided by ‘content engineering’, or empirical analysis aided by machine learning methods. 

 

The content creation process, often assumed to be purely intuitive and artistic, can be aided by ‘content engineering’, or empirical analysis aided by machine learning methods.

 

So, what type of content makes videos viral?

The best combination seems to be a mix of low agreeableness and high neuroticism. This is surprising, as the opposite, meaning both high agreeableness and low neuroticism, as individual traits would appear to be positive. However, we find that the confrontational nature of disagreeable videos, which challenge viewers’ viewpoints, and neuroticism, which is associated with being passionate about a topic, will be more effective. Meanwhile, being disagreeable without this passion as well as being passionate while being non-challenging and agreeable appear to be less effective than the aforementioned combination. 

To illustrate the aforementioned phenomenon, we can consider two TED Talks. One talk is entitled “3 myths about the future of work (and why they're not true)”, and the second is titled “How to inspire every child to be a lifelong reader”. While these videos are similar in that they both benefit from the TED audience and start off with similar view counts for the first few days, in the long run the former video performs far better. While both speakers are fairly neurotic and filled with emotion, the first video is more disagreeable, as might be suggested by its more provocative title. Hence, being more confrontational may be more effective, if coupled with the emotion associated with neuroticism. 

 

TED Talk: “3 myths about the future of work (and why they're not true)”.

 

TED Talk: “How to inspire every child to be a lifelong reader”.

"Both videos are similar in that they both benefit from the TED audience, start off with similar view counts, and both speakers are filled with emotion. Yet the first video performs far better because more disagreeable and confrontational."

 

With this current research, you help understand how people react to viral videos. How should these insights be seen in light of their potential use for the spread of false information?

Although my findings suggest ways to promote digital content more effectively, it is true that this promotion may not always correspond to content that is accurate or socially just. Moving forward, these insights on how to create and promote content more effectively should be synthesized with the insights about fake news to generate content that is both highly consumed and is of high integrity. Beyond leaving this to the goodwill of content creators themselves, platforms such as YouTube or Facebook may want to strategically examine content exhibiting high-performing features (e.g., low agreeableness couples with high neuroticism, presence on alternative platforms) and be sure to authenticate the veracity of such content in particular.

Interview of Haris Krijestorac based on his academic articles, "Cross-Platform Spillover Effects in Consumption of Viral Content", published in Information Systems Research (May 2020) and "Personality-Based Content Engineering" (ongoing research). Learn more about Haris Krijestorac’s research on his SSRN page.

Related content on Information Systems

Information Systems

How We Can Support the Digital Transformation of Microbusiness Owners

By Shirish Srivastava

Artificial Intelligence

How AI Can Help Figure Out When Hospital Patients Need Intensive Care

By Julien Grand-Clément

man chating with a chatbot on his cell phone - thumbnail
Information Systems

How Should We Design the Next Generation of AI-Powered Chatbots?

By Shirish Srivastava

Information Technology

Using Innovations on Social Media for More Engagement? Be Aware of The Cultural Differences

By Reza Alibakhshi, Shirish Srivastava

Information Systems

Digitalization as an Enabler of Business Transformation: The Orange Case

By Shirish Srivastava, Joseph Nehme

surgeon diagnosis with AI - vignette

Photo Credits: Have a nice day on Adobe Stock

Information Systems

To What Extent Do People Follow Algorithms’ Advice More Than Human Advice?

By Liu Cathy Yang, Xitong Li, Sangseok You