I’d like to highlight some useful Henry Jenkins research (via whatconsumesme). Rather than tackling tedious definitions of ‘viral’, Henry explains the various motives behind why people spread media:
- They are doing so because the brand expresses something about themselves or their community.
- They are doing so because the brand message serves some valued social function.
- They are doing so because the entertainment content gives expressive form to some deeply held perception or feeling about the world.
- They are doing so because individual responses to such content helps them determine who does or does not belong in their community.
On this it’s also worth talking about emotional currency. We spread media in seconds via Twitter or email and we mustn’t forget that we often do so for the selfish reason of how something makes us immediately feel. Dosh Dosh wrote an interesting article back in July which in some depth discussed the emotional reasons behind spreading media, be it joy, sadness, anger, fear and disgust. The truth is the ‘key’ to spreadable media falls in murky depths, somewhere between combining emotional engagement, an individual’s perceptual/communal reasoning for spreading media and brand messaging. The further we move away from the idea that spreadable media is “dancing kittens on boobies” the better. It comes from a lot of people falsely believing spreadable media cannot operate in niches. It’s growing out of teenage bedrooms and the potential advertising has to be a positive force in the world in enabling worthwhile conversations is being realised.
Another problematic myth is a held perception that meme is integral to viral, so where does it fall into all of this? Debunking the idea that content should be internet memetic, Jenkins adds:
“Talking about memes and viral media places an emphasis on the replication of the original idea, which fails to consider the everyday reality of communication — that ideas get transformed, repurposed, or distorted as they pass from hand to hand, a process which has been accelerated as we move into network culture.”
A very useful addition to existing remix culture discussions.
Jenkins also talks about the “human agency” in cultures, inherently describing them as something we collectively create. Letting people mess with your content builds brand culture, giving people a stake in its spread and ensures its sustainable awesomeness. Ad-vacate to advocate.
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[...] differentiations from the all-encompassing term “mash-up” as they point towards the cultural motivations behind why people share stuff, providing vital thought fuel for us in the ad industry to collectively unpack such motivations [...]