Skip to main content

VIRAL VIDEOS AND SPREDABILITY



By: Joe Zanca

Nowadays it doesn't take much to make a viral video. Just film yourself doing something stupid and you'll most likely gain your 15 minutes of fame on the internet. Sites like YouTube allow anyone the chance to make a viral video. But the creators of viral videos never seem to have the intentions of going viral. For example, the viral video “leave Britney alone”. Chris Crocker (the creator of Leave Britney alone) never intended to go viral when making the video.  Chris was simply expressing his emotions about the way Britney Spears was being treated. Going viral in today's world is easy thanks to video sites like YouTube. The idea of a viral video can be perplexing.  What makes a viral video?  Is it the number of views it has or how fast it spread across all forms of media.  Or is it both of those things?  Viral Videos are described as “the phenomenon in which video clips become highly popular through rapid, user-led distribution via the Internet’’ (Mosebo,2009).  One thing is for sure these videos go viral because of media sites like Youtube.  Videos become viral and popular through sharing.  People can view a video on their phone and then text the link to their friends or group chats.  Technology and media make things very spreadable in today's world.  Music videos are a large category of viral videos.  There are viral videos made by superstars and nobodies. But the videos made by superstars can become viral for different reasons than a video made by a regular person. For example, the music video chocolate rain made by Tay Zonday. The video has received 119,266,469 views to date. The video is low quality and shows the young Tay Zonday (real name Adam Bahner) singing into a microphone, and from time to time pans to his hands playing the keyboard. According to Zonday, he didn't expect the video to go viral. But why did this video become viral? There might not be an exact explanation but there are some reasons. One the beat is very catchy and simple and the lyrics are relatively simple,
Chocolate Rain Raised your neighborhood insurance rates
Chocolate Rain Makes us happy livin‘ in a gate
Chocolate Rain Made me cross the street the other day
Chocolate Rain Made you turn your head the other way
(Chorus) Chocolate Rain History quickly crashing through your veins
Chocolate Rain Using you to fall back down again [Repeat] (Mosebo,2009).
Two there is a certain hilarity of watching the guy almost awkwardly singing into the microphone and moving away from every now and then to take a breath. Three the video was a very popular joke on 4chan. The members of 4chan pushed its popularity on YouTube. This is an example of how powerful media sites can be. What was once a joke is now one of the highest viewed videos on Youtube, and turned Zonday into a celebrity. Youtube is undoubtedly one of the largest sources of videos on the internet. It contains famous and viral videos along with irrelevant videos. Videos like Leave Britney Alone and Chocolate Rain probably have no business being popular or talked about. But because of Youtube and people sharing and talking about the video they are famous and the people who made the videos went from nobodies to somebodies. Youtube makes it easy for videos to go viral.











References Mosebo, T. (2009). Jean Burgess & Joshua Green: YouTube – Online video and participatory culture. MedieKultur: Journal of Media and Communication Research, 25(47), 3. http://eprints.qut.edu.au/18431/1/18431.pdf


Word Count: 603


Labels:

Comments

  1. KHNovember 7, 2018 at 6:32 AM

    Joe,

    Have you looked at this post? How about your collaborators?

    The formatting is a mess. Your title should be ALL CAPS. There's no byline. The font size and style are all wrong. In short, it's unreadable.

    Finally, and most critically, your academic source – a book review not an original research article as required – is written in Danish. Perhaps you're fluent, but my guess is your readers, including yours truly, are not.

    In either event, I have a strong suspicion that you simply plugged in a citation without engaging with this material.

    All told, this fails to meet the basic criteria for this assignment.

    A generous 10 pts.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. KHNovember 7, 2018 at 7:37 AM

      Hi again Joe,

      I simply followed the doi you provided in your reference: 10.7146/mediekultur.v25i47.2132

      In future, be sure to use the proper link in your references.

      KH

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

INFOTAINMENT: A SOURCE OF POLITICAL EFFICACY AND PARTICIPATION

By Georges Azouri Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart, and Trevor Noah. These are all household names of television hosts on shows such as The Daily Show and The Colbert Report . Both shows are infotainment programs that inform their viewers on current news and entertain them in a satirical way. While there is great comedic value provided by these programs, there is even greater value to the political culture of the United States. Infotainment programs are not new, rather the influence they can have on an audience is new. Shows like The Daily Show or The Colbert Report share news stories and often political stories in a satirical manner. In doing so these programs are still educating audiences on politics even if it may be skewed. Political efficacy is the belief that one is able to strongly influence politics and usually is tied to political participation. A study done on adolescents showed that, “nontraditional sources of political information on television (late-night comedy) i...
2 comments
Read more

VLOGGING; MIXED BLESSING

By Stella Ahn Vlogging; video blogging is one of the most common types of user-generated content in social media, especially in YouTube. Increasing attention toward Vlog and Vlogger have made another kind of celebrities. YouTube celebrities make revenue from various sources based on their contents and fame such as advertisement and sponsorship. As they became rich and popular, they have huge impact on their followers. Their contents can encourage social movement and people in minor community. On the other hand, growing trend of Vlogging also can cause negative effect. Therefore, this post will discuss about how Vlogging effect for both producer and consumer.    Vloggers have advantages in terms of communication and interaction, because they can communicate directly with their followers via contents and comments. This characteristic of social media made Vlog celebrities be able to have influence among social movements and communities. Arthurs take an example of...
2 comments
Read more

KAVANAUGH: SEARCHING FOR THE TRUTH

By John Pasch The United States Supreme Court is arguably the most powerful institution of the government  next to only the President. Recently, a spot became vacant on the Court and President Donald Trump appointed judge Brett Kavanaugh to fill the position. The appointment and installment,  however, didn’t go as smoothly as people had hoped or anticipated.                                                After Trump’s nomination of Brett Kavanaugh, there was a swarm of sexual misconduct allegations, worthy of disqualification. As striking as this may seem, cases like this have become all too common today. They either didn’t exist in such a multitude in the earlier years of American politics/society, which is unlikely, or they have simply become more public, which is what I am willing to put my money on. The question then becomes: how do allegation...
3 comments
Read more