Viral video

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Video views per week of a viral video (Gangnam Style), illustrating viral growth to peak weekly viewership, in this case, in the eleventh week after it was posted. 2012 Gangnam Style weekly views.png
Video views per week of a viral video (Gangnam Style), illustrating viral growth to peak weekly viewership, in this case, in the eleventh week after it was posted.
Cumulative video views, leading to a lower, but relatively stable, long-term growth rate by the end of the first year. 2012 Gangnam Style cumulative views.png
Cumulative video views, leading to a lower, but relatively stable, long-term growth rate by the end of the first year.

A viral video [2] [3] is a video that becomes popular through a viral process of Internet sharing, typically through video sharing websites such as YouTube as well as social media and email. [4] [5] For a video to be shareable or spreadable, it must focus on the social logics and cultural practices that have enabled and popularized these new platforms. [6]

Contents

Viral videos may be serious, and some are deeply emotional, but many more are centered on entertainment and humorous content. Notable early examples include televised comedy sketches, such as The Lonely Island 's "Lazy Sunday" and "Dick in a Box", Numa Numa [7] [8] videos, The Evolution of Dance, [7] Chocolate Rain [9] on YouTube; and web-only productions such as I Got a Crush... on Obama. [10] Some eyewitness events have also been caught on video and have "gone viral" such as the Battle at Kruger. [11]

One commentator called the Kony 2012 video the most viral video in history [12] (about 34,000,000 views in three days [13] and 100,000,000 views in six days [14] ), but "Gangnam Style" (2012) received one billion views in five months [15] [16] [17] and was the most viewed video on YouTube from 2012 until "Despacito" (2017). [18]

History

Videos were shared long before YouTube or even the Internet by word-of-mouth, film festivals, VHS tapes, and even to fill time gaps during the early days of cable. [19] Perhaps the earliest was Reefer Madness , a 1936 "educational" film that circulated under several different titles. It was rediscovered by Keith Stroup, founder of NORML, who circulated prints of the film around college film festivals in the 1970s. The company who produced the prints, New Line Cinema, was so successful they began producing their own films. [19] The most controversial was perhaps a clip from a newscast from Portland, Oregon in November 1970. In the clip, the disposal of a beached whale carcass by dynamite is documented, including the horrific aftermath of falling mist and chunks since the exclusion zone was not big enough. [20] The exploding whale story obtained urban legend status in the Northwest and gained new interest in 1990 after Dave Barry wrote a humorous column about the event, [21] leading to copies being distributed over bulletin board systems around 1994. [22]

The "humorous home movie" genre dates back at least to 1963, when the TV series "Your Funny, Funny Films" [23] debuted. The series showcased amusing film clips, mostly shot on 8mm equipment by amateurs. The idea was revived in 1989 with America's Funniest Home Videos , a series described by an ABC executive as a one-time "reality-based filler special" that was inspired by a segment of a Japanese variety show, Fun With Ken and Kaito Chan, borrowing clips from various Japanese home video shows as well. [24] Now[ timeframe? ] the longest-running primetime entertainment show in the history of ABC, the show's format includes showing clips of home videos sent in to the show's committee, and then the clips are voted on by a live filmed audience, with the winners awarded a monetary prize. [25]

During the internet's public infancy, the 1996 Seinfeld episode "The Little Kicks" addresses the distribution of a viral video through non-online, non-broadcast means. It concludes with the citizens of New York City having individually witnessed Elaine's terrible dancing via a bootleg copy of a feature film, establishing that the dancing footage had effectively gone viral.

Viral videos began circulating as animated GIFs small enough to be uploaded to websites over dial-up Internet access or through email as attachments in the early 1990s. [26] Videos were also spread on message boards, P2P file sharing sites, and even coverage from mainstream news networks on television. [27] Two of the most successful viral videos of the early internet era were "The Spirit of Christmas" and "Dancing Baby". "The Spirit of Christmas" surfaced in 1995, spread through bootleg copies on VHS and on the internet, as well as an AVI file on the PlayStation game disc for Tiger Woods 99, later leading to a recall. [27] [28] The popularity of the videos led to the creation of the television series South Park after it was picked up by Comedy Central. [29] "Dancing Baby", a 3D-rendered dancing baby video made in 1996 by the creators of Character Studio for 3D Studio MAX, became something of a mid-late 1990s cultural icon in part due to its exposure on worldwide commercials, editorials about Character Studio, and the popular television series Ally McBeal . [29] [30] [31] The video may have first spread when Ron Lussier, the animator who cleaned up the raw animation, began passing the video around his workplace, LucasArts. [32]

Later distribution of viral videos on the internet before YouTube, which was created in 2005 and bought by Google in 2006, were mostly through websites dedicated to hosting humorous content, such as Newgrounds and YTMND, although message boards such as eBaum's World and Something Awful were also instrumental. [27] Notably, some content creators hosted their content on their own websites, such as Joel Veitch's site for his band Rather Good, which hosted quirky Flash videos for the band's songs; the most popular was "We Like the Moon", whose viral popularity on the internet prompted Quiznos to parody the song for a commercial. [33] The most famous self-hosted home of viral videos is perhaps Homestar Runner, launched in 2000 and still running. [27] The introduction of social media such as Facebook and Twitter has created even more avenues for videos to go viral. More recently, there has been a surge in viral videos on video sharing sites such as YouTube, partially because of the availability of affordable digital cameras. [34] Beginning in December 2015, YouTube introduced a "trending" tab to alert users to viral videos using an algorithm based on comments, views, "external references", and even location. [35] The feature reportedly does not use viewing history to serve up related content, and the content may be curated by YouTube. [36]

Qualification

There are several ways to gauge whether a video has "gone viral". The statistic perhaps most mentioned is number of views, and as sharing has become easier, the threshold requirement of sheer number of views has increased. YouTube personality Kevin Nalty (known as Nalts) recalls on his blog: "A few years ago, a video could be considered 'viral' if it hit a million views", but says as of 2011, only "if it gets more than 5 million views in a 3–7-day period" can it be considered "viral". [37] [38] To compare, 2004's Numa Numa received two million hits on Newgrounds in its first three months (a figure explained in a 2015 article as "a staggering number for the time"). [27]

Nalts also posits three other considerations: buzz, parody, and longevity, [37] which are more complex ways of judging a viral video's views. Buzz addresses the heart of the issue; the more a video is shared, the more discussion the video creates both online and offline. What he emphasizes is notable is that the more buzz a video gets, the more views it gets. A study on viral videos by Carnegie Mellon University found that the popularity of the uploader affected whether a video would become viral, [39] and having the video shared by a popular source such as a celebrity or a news channel also increases buzz. [37] It is also part of the algorithm YouTube uses to predict popular videos. [35] Parodies, spoofs and spin-offs often indicate a popular video, with long-popular video view counts given with original video view counts as well as additional view counts given for the parodies. Longevity indicates if a video has remained part of the Zeitgeist.

Reasons for popularity

Due to their societal impact and marketability, viral videos attract attention in both advertising and academia, which try to account for the reason viral videos are spread and what will make a video go viral. Several theories exist.

A viral video's longevity often relies on a hook which draws the audience to watch it. The hook, often a memorable phrase or moment, is able to become a part of the viral video culture after being shown repeatedly. The hooks, or key signifiers, are not able to be predicted before the videos become viral. [40] The early view pattern of a viral video can be used to forecast its peak day in future. [5] Notable examples include "All your base are belong to us", based on the poorly translated video game Zero Wing, which was first distributed in 2000 as a GIF animation and became popular for the grammatically incorrect hook of its title, and Don Hertzfeldt's 2000 Academy Awards Best Animated Short Film nomination "Rejected" with the quotable hooks "I am a banana" and "My spoon is too big!" [41] Another early video was the Flash animation "The End of the World", created by Jason Windsor and uploaded to Albino Blacksheep in 2003, with quotable hooks such as "but I'm le tired" and "WTF, mates?" [41] [42]

Rosanna Guadagno, a social psychologist at the University of Texas at Dallas, found in a study that people preferred to share a funny video rather than one of a man treating his own spider bite, and overall they were more likely to share any video that evoked an intense emotional response. [43] Two professors at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania also found that uplifting stories were more likely to be shared on the New York Times' web site than disheartening ones. [43]

Others postulate that sharing is driven by ego in order to build up an online persona for oneself. Chartbeat, a company that measures online traffic, compiled data comparing the amount of time spent reading an article and the number of times it was shared and found that people often post articles on Twitter they haven't even read. [43]

Categories by subject

Band and music promotion

Many independent musicians, as well as large companies such as Universal Music Group, use YouTube to promote videos. Six of the 10 most viral YouTube videos of 2015 were rooted in music. [44]

One such video, the "Free Hugs Campaign" with accompanying music by the Sick Puppies, was one of the winners of the 2006 YouTube Awards. [45] However, the awards received criticism over the voting process and accused of bias. [46] However, the main character of the video, Juan Mann, received positive recognition after being interviewed on Australian news programs and appearing on The Oprah Winfrey Show . [47]

Education

Viral videos continue to increase in popularity as teaching and instructive aids. In March 2007, an elementary school teacher, Jason Smith, created TeacherTube, a website for sharing educational videos with other teachers. The site now features over 54,000 videos. [48] Some college curricula are now using viral videos in the classroom as well. As of 2009, Northwestern University offers a course called "YouTubing 101". The course invites students to produce their own viral videos, focusing on marketing techniques and advertising strategies. [49]

Customer complaints

"United Breaks Guitars", by the Canadian folk rock music group Sons of Maxwell, is an example of how viral videos can be used by consumers to pressure companies to settle complaints. [50] Another example is Brian Finkelstein's video complaint to Comcast, 2006. Finkelstein recorded a video of a Comcast technician sleeping on his couch. The technician had come to repair Brian's modem but had to call Comcast's central office and fell asleep after being placed on hold waiting for Comcast. [51] [52]

Cyberbullying

The Canadian high school student known as Star Wars Kid was subjected to significant harassment and ostracizing after the viral success of his video (first uploaded to the Internet on the evening of 14 April 2003). [53] His family accepted a financial settlement after suing the individuals responsible for posting the video online. [54]

In July 2010, an 11-year-old child with the pseudonym "Jessi Slaughter" was subjected to a campaign of harassment and cyberbullying following the viral nature of videos they had uploaded to Stickam and YouTube. As a result of the case, the potential for cyberbullying as a result of viral videos was widely discussed in the media. [55] [56]

Police misconduct

The Chicago Tribune reported that in 2015, nearly 1,000 civilians in the United States were shot and killed by police officers—whether the officers responsible were justified is now often publicly called into question in the age of viral videos. [57] As more people are uploading videos of their encounters with police, more departments are encouraging their officers to wear body cameras. [58] The procedure for releasing such video is currently evolving and could potentially incriminate more suspects than officers, although current waiting times of several months to release such videos appear to be attempted cover-ups of police mistakes. [59] In October 2015, then-FBI Director James Comey remarked in a speech at the University of Chicago Law School that the increased attention on police in light of recent viral videos showing police involved in fatal shootings has made officers less aggressive and emboldened criminals. Comey has acknowledged that there are no data to back up his assertion; according to him, viral videos are one of many possible factors such as cheaper drugs and more criminals being released from prison. Other top officials at the Justice Department have stated that they do not believe increased scrutiny of officers has increased crime. [60]

Two videos went viral in October 2015 of a white school police officer assaulting an African-American student. The videos, apparently taken with cell phones by other students in the classroom, were picked up by local news outlets and then further spread by social media. [61]

Dash cam videos of the Chicago police murder of Laquan McDonald were released after 14 months of being kept sealed, which went viral and sparked further questions about police actions. Chicago's mayor, Rahm Emanuel, fired Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy and there have also been demands for Emanuel to resign. [62] A similar case, in which Chicago police attempted to suppress a dash cam video of the shooting of Ronald Johnson by an officer, is currently part of an ongoing federal lawsuit against the city. [63]

Political implications

The 2008 United States presidential election showcased the impact of political viral videos. For the first time, YouTube hosted the CNN-YouTube presidential debates, calling on YouTube users to pose questions. In this debate, the opinions of viral video creators and users were taken seriously. There were several memorable viral videos that appeared during the campaign. In June 2007, "I Got a Crush... on Obama", a music video featuring a girl claiming to have a crush on presidential candidate Barack Obama, appeared. Unlike previously popular political videos, it did not feature any celebrities and was purely user-generated. The video garnered many viewers and gained attention in the mainstream media. [64]

YouTube became a powerful source of campaigning for the 2008 Presidential Election. Every major party candidate had their own YouTube channel in order to communicate with the voters, with John McCain posting over 300 videos and Barack Obama posting over 1,800 videos. The music video "Yes We Can" by will.i.am demonstrates user-generated publicity for the 2008 Presidential Campaign. The video depicts many celebrities as well as black and white clips of Barack Obama. This music video inspired many parodies and won an Emmy for Best New Approaches in Daytime Entertainment. [65]

The proliferation of viral videos in the 2008 campaign highlights the fact that people increasingly turn to the internet to receive their news. In a study for the Pew Research Center in 2008, approximately 2% of the participants said that they received their news from non-traditional sources such as MySpace or YouTube. [66] The campaign was widely seen as an example of the growing influence of the internet on United States politics, a point further evidenced by the founding of viral video producers like Brave New Films. [67]

During the 2012 United States presidential election, "Obama Style" and "Mitt Romney Style", the parodies of Gangnam Style, both peaked on Election Day and received approximately 30 million views within one month before Election Day. [5] "Mitt Romney Style", which negatively portrays Mitt as an affluent, extravagant, and arrogant businessman, received an order of magnitude views more than "Obama Style".[ citation needed ]

Financial implications

The web traffic gained by viral videos allows for advertising revenue. The YouTube website is monetized by selling and showing advertising. According to the New York Times, YouTube uses an algorithm called "reference rank" to evaluate the viral potential of videos posted to the site. Using evidence from as few as 10,000 views, it can assess the probability that the video will go viral. Before YouTube implemented wide-scale revenue sharing, if it deemed the video a viable candidate for advertising, it contacted the original poster by e-mail and offered a profit-sharing contract. By this means, such videos as "David After Dentist" have earned more than $100,000 for their owners. [68] One successful YouTube video creator, Andrew Grantham, whose "Ultimate Dog Tease" had been viewed more than 170,000,000 times (as of June 2015), entered an agreement with Paramount Pictures in February 2012 for the development of a feature film. The film was to be written by Alec Berg and David Mandel. [69] Pop stars such as Justin Bieber and Esmée Denters also started their careers via YouTube videos which ultimately went viral. By 2014, pop stars such as Miley Cyrus, Eminem, and Katy Perry were regularly obtaining web traffic in the order of 120 to 150 million hits a month, numbers far in excess of what many viral videos receive.

Companies also use viral videos as a type of marketing strategy. The Dove Campaign for Real Beauty is considered to have been one of the first viral marketing strategies to hit the world when Dove released their Evolution video in 2006. [70] Their online campaign continued to generate viral videos when Real Beauty Sketches was released in 2013 and spread all throughout social media, especially Facebook and Twitter.

Notable sites

See also

Related Research Articles

Viral marketing is a business strategy that uses existing social networks to promote a product mainly on various social media platforms. Its name refers to how consumers spread information about a product with other people, much in the same way that a virus spreads from one person to another. It can be delivered by word of mouth, or enhanced by the network effects of the Internet and mobile networks.

Internet activism involves the use of electronic-communication technologies such as social media, e-mail, and podcasts for various forms of activism to enable faster and more effective communication by citizen movements, the delivery of particular information to large and specific audiences, as well as coordination. Internet technologies are used by activists for cause-related fundraising, community building, lobbying, and organizing. A digital-activism campaign is "an organized public effort, making collective claims on a target authority, in which civic initiators or supporters use digital media." Research has started to address specifically how activist/advocacy groups in the U.S. and in Canada use social media to achieve digital-activism objectives.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Numa Numa (video)</span> Internet meme

"Numa Numa" is an Internet meme based on a video by American vlogger Gary Brolsma made after the song "Dragostea Din Tei" as performed by Moldovan pop group O-Zone. Brolsma's video, entitled "Numa Numa Dance", was released on December 6, 2004, on the website Newgrounds under the username "Gman250" and shows Brolsma lip-syncing the song with lively gesticulations and dance moves. The video title is derived from the Romanian words "nu mă nu mă" that occur in the refrain of O-Zone's song. It was the first Numa Numa-themed video to gain widespread attention.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Slacktivism</span> Pejorative term for "feel-good" activist measures

Slacktivism is the practice of supporting a political or social cause by means such as social media or online petitions, characterized as involving very little effort or commitment. Additional forms of slacktivism include engaging in online activities such as "liking," "sharing," or "tweeting" about a cause on social media, signing an Internet petition, copying and pasting a status or message in support of the cause, sharing specific hashtags associated with the cause, or altering one's profile photo or avatar on social network services to indicate solidarity.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Judson Laipply</span> American internet personality

Judson Laipply is an American internet celebrity from Bucyrus, Ohio. He served as the state president of The Ohio Association of Student Councils from 1993 to 1994. He is best known for his performance in the "Evolution of Dance" viral video clip, which became one of the most famous YouTube videos ever. He has worked as a public speaker since 2000.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chocolate Rain</span> Song by Tay Zonday

"Chocolate Rain" is a song by American singer Tay Zonday. It quickly became popular after the music video for the song was uploaded to YouTube on April 22, 2007, and has since been viewed more than 137 million times. "Chocolate Rain" was ranked as the hottest viral video of summer 2007 by CTV and was awarded the 2008 YouTube Award in the category "Music". Lyrically, the song is a metaphor for racism against African Americans.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yes We Can (will.i.am song)</span> 2008 promotional single by will.i.am featuring various artists

"Yes We Can" is a song produced by The Black Eyed Peas frontman will.i.am, released as promotional single on February 2, 2008.

The American online video sharing and social media platform YouTube has had social impact in many fields, with some individual videos of the site having directly shaped world events. It is the world's largest video hosting website and second most visited website according to both Alexa Internet and Similarweb, and used by 81% of U.S. adults.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tay Zonday</span> American YouTube personality

Adam Nyerere Bahner, better known by the pseudonym Tay Zonday or as "Chocolate Rain Guy", is an American YouTube personality, singer-songwriter, and voice actor. He is known for his bass singing voice.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charlie Bit My Finger</span> 2007 Internet viral video

"Charlie bit my finger - again !", more simply known as "Charlie Bit My Finger" or "Charlie Bit Me", is a 2007 internet viral video famous for being at the time the most viewed YouTube video. As of October 2022, the video received over 897 million views. In May 2021, the video was sold as an NFT at auction for over $700,000.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Invisible Children, Inc.</span> Organization concering the Lords Resistance Army in Africa

Invisible Children, Inc., founded in 2004, is an organization to increase awareness of the activities of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in Central Africa, and its leader, Joseph Kony. Specifically, the group seeks to put an end to the practices of the LRA, which include abductions and abuse of children, and forcing them to serve as soldiers. To this end, Invisible Children urges the United States government to take military action in the central region of Africa. Invisible Children also operates as a charitable organization, soliciting donations and selling merchandise to raise money for its cause. The organization promotes its cause by dispensing films on the internet and presenting in high schools and colleges around the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Why This Kolaveri Di</span> 2011 single by Dhanush

"Why This Kolaveri Di" is a song from the soundtrack of the 2012 Tamil psychological thriller film 3, starring Dhanush and Shruthi Hassan. The song is written and sung by Dhanush, and composed by Anirudh Ravichander.

<i>Kony 2012</i> 2012 film

Kony 2012 is a 2012 American short documentary film produced by Invisible Children, Inc. The film's purpose was to make Ugandan cult leader, war criminal, and ICC fugitive Joseph Kony globally known so as to have him arrested by the end of 2012. The film was released on March 5, 2012, and spread virally, and the campaign was initially supported by various celebrities.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Overly Attached Girlfriend</span> Internet meme

Overly Attached Girlfriend (OAG) is a fictional character and an Internet meme originating in a YouTube video published on June 6, 2012. The character was created by Laina Morris. The video was a submission to a contest held by Justin Bieber who challenged fans to create a "Girlfriend" counterpart to his hit song "Boyfriend". The video, which satirized elements of the Bieber song that have been perceived as clingy, featured Morris staring at the camera with a fixed smile while singing about Facebook-stalking her boyfriend and other themes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">GloZell</span> American YouTube personality (born 1972)

GloZell Lyneette Green, better known mononymously as GloZell, is an American YouTube personality. GloZell established her YouTube channel in 2008, with video interviews, comedy about her life and song parodies. By 2015, the channel had accumulated more than four million subscribers and more than 700 million total views. Her most popular videos include her cinnamon challenge video, which has accumulated more than 53 million views, and "My Push up Bra will help me get my man" video, with more than 25 million views. She gained wide notice when her blog about meeting Elijah Wood was mentioned by the actor during a 2011 interview on Jimmy Kimmel Live!. In 2012, she appeared in the web series Dr. Fubalous.

Viral phenomena or viral sensation are objects or patterns that are able to replicate themselves or convert other objects into copies of themselves when these objects are exposed to them. Analogous to the way in which viruses propagate, the term viral pertains to a video, image, or written content spreading to numerous online users within a short time period. This concept has become a common way to describe how thoughts, information, and trends move into and through a human population.

Hashtag activism refers to the use of Twitter's hashtags for Internet activism. The hashtag has become one of the many ways that social media contributes to civic engagement and social movements. The use of the hashtag on social media provides users with an opportunity to share information and opinions about social issues in a way that others (followers) can interact and engage as part of a larger conversation with the potential to create change. The hashtag itself consists of a word or phrase that is connected to a social or political issue, and fosters a place where discourse can occur. Social media provides an important platform for historically marginalized populations. Through the use of hashtags these groups are able to communicate, mobilize, and advocate for issues less visible to the mainstream.

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