[Paper Review] Viral spread with or without emotions in online community

Andrzej Jarynowski, Jarosław Jankowski+1 more|arXiv (Cornell University)|Feb 13, 2013

Opinion Dynamics and Social Influence21 references3 citations

TL;DR

This study models online viral spread in a closed virtual community as an epidemic process, comparing artificial campaigns with and without incentives against a real-world emotional campaign against the ACTA treaty. It finds that emotional content increases secondary infection probabilities by fourfold, demonstrating emotions significantly amplify viral propagation beyond mere incentives.

ABSTRACT

Diffusion of information and viral content, social contagion and influence are still topics of broad evaluation. We have studied the information epidemic in a social networking platform in order compare different campaign setups. The goal of this work is to present the new knowledge obtained from studying two artificial (experimental) and one natural (where people act emotionally) viral spread that took place in a closed virtual world. We propose an approach to modeling the behavior of online community exposed on external impulses as an epidemic process. The presented results base on online multilayer system observation, and show characteristic difference between setups, moreover, some important aspects of branching processes are presented. We run experiments, where we introduced viral to system and agents were able to propagate it. There were two modes of experiment: with or without award. Dynamic of spreading both of virals were described by epidemiological model and diffusion. Results of experiments were compared with real propagation process - spontaneous organization against ACTA. During general-national protest against new antypiracy multinational agreement - ACTA, criticized for its adverse effect on e.g. freedom of expression and privacy of communication, members of chosen community could send a viral such as Stop-ACTA transparent. In this scenario, we are able to capture behavior of society, when real emotions play a role, and compare results with artificiality conditioned experiments. Moreover, we could measure effect of emotions in viral propagation. As theory explaining the role of emotions in spreading behaviour as an factor of message targeting and individuals spread emotional-oriented content in a more carefully and more influential way, the experiments show that probabilities of secondary infections are four times bigger if emotions play a role.

Motivation & Objective

• To understand how emotions influence viral content propagation in online communities.
• To compare artificial viral campaigns (with/without incentives) against a real emotional campaign during the ACTA protest.
• To model online community behavior as an epidemic process and analyze branching dynamics.
• To quantify the impact of emotional content on the probability of secondary infections.

Proposed method

• Conducted controlled experiments in a closed virtual world with two artificial viral campaigns: one with incentives (awards), one without.
• Monitored and recorded propagation dynamics of viral content across agents in the network.
• Applied epidemiological models to describe the spread, treating information diffusion as a branching process.
• Collected real-world data from a spontaneous online protest against ACTA, where users shared 'Stop-ACTA' messages driven by emotional motivation.
• Compared the spreading patterns of artificial and emotional campaigns using statistical and network-based analysis.
• Used the branching process framework to estimate secondary infection probabilities in each condition.

Experimental results

Research questions

• RQ1 How does the presence of emotions affect the rate and extent of viral content spread in online communities?
• RQ2 What is the relative impact of financial incentives versus emotional motivation on information diffusion?
• RQ3 How do artificial viral campaigns compare to real-world emotionally driven campaigns in terms of propagation dynamics?
• RQ4 To what extent can epidemic models accurately describe online information diffusion in social networks?
• RQ5 What is the quantitative difference in secondary infection probability when emotions are involved in content sharing?

Key findings

• Emotional content increased the probability of secondary infections by a factor of four compared to non-emotional or incentive-driven content.
• The real-world ACTA protest campaign, driven by emotional motivation, exhibited significantly higher propagation rates than artificial campaigns.
• Incentivized campaigns showed measurable but substantially lower spread compared to emotionally driven campaigns.
• The epidemic model accurately captured the dynamics of information spread, especially when emotional factors were included.
• The branching process model effectively described the observed propagation patterns, with clear differences in transmission probabilities between conditions.
• Emotions emerged as a stronger driver of viral spread than material incentives in the observed experimental setting.