In our social media age, being able to make content spread virally is something that motivates content creators and marketers alike, but doing so is notoriously unpredictable. It seems intuitive that having higher levels of knowledge about the kind of content with which we’re working will give us greater insight as to which content might go viral, but a recent study suggests that the reverse may actually be the case, with news content at least.
The research, which was conducted by the University of Pennsylvania, saw the neurological responses of 40 volunteers monitored as they read a number of articles from the New York Times Health. They were then asked to predict which of the stories would have greater viral success.
Whilst we might expect those who regularly read the news and have a grasp on what is popular, and what isn’t, the results revealed the opposite was in fact the case – those who don’t regularly read the news performed significantly better. The neurological analysis focused specifically on the ventromedial prefrontal cortext (vmPFC) of the brain, which is believed to support how we judge the value of something. The researchers believe that high activity levels in this part of the brain was an accurate reflection of not only their individual appreciation for the article, but how viral they thought it would be.
“The problem with the brains of the frequent news readers is that they showed a high value signal to all of the articles. In other words, they responded positively to all the New York Times stories,” the authors say. “It was the infrequent news readers whose brains were differentiating between the heavily shared articles and the less popular ones. Their brains were able to diagnose which articles would go viral.”
Frequent readers
The study also revealed another fascinating difference between frequent and infrequent readers, with frequent news readers seeing high brain activity in the vmPFC region of the brain, whilst also triggering activity in the part of the brain associated with our ability to exert deliberate control over our thoughts and actions. The authors believe this suggests that frequent news readers were actively weighing up the value of each story in relation to their own goals and motivations.
“Frequent news readers may be bringing to mind idiosyncratic information that’s more unique to them,” they explain. “Infrequent news readers, on the other hand, responded in a way that was more reflective of how people in general respond.”
So why does this make infrequent news readers better judges of the virality of news content? Perhaps the key is to appreciate that viral content has to appeal not only to those who would regularly read stories on a particular topic, but also to those who would infrequently read it.
“If we’re trying to predict the behavior of all people – everyone who could read a New York Times article but typically doesn’t – we should find people who are representative of that population,” the authors explain.
This is especially so as we rely increasingly on social media to streamline the kind of content we access online. It can create powerful echo chambers that diminish our ability to appreciate what other people might find valuable, and with this lack of appreciation goes our ability to appreciate what content will ‘cross that chasm’ and go viral.
