The dean of the Faculty of Communication Sciences at UIC Barcelona, Alfonso Méndiz, has published an article in El Profesional de la Información, in which he explores the concept of virality as the backbone of current communication methods, in particular those employed across social media networks. 

Co-authored by lecturers José Borja Arjona (University of Granada) and Juan Salvador Victoria (University of Malaga), the article endeavours to establish the theoretical framework of virality.

The piece explains how, “in recent decades, the adjective “viral” has been used to refer to techniques that try to exploit social networks and mobile phones to produce an exponential increase in "brand awareness" through self-replication, analogous to the spread of a virus".

It also points to the four basic requirements with which all viral campaigns should comply: it should be a free message (“because the internet is the world of free things”); click friendly (access to the message should be easy, fast and simple); it should have an obvious reward and be based on previous research. In order to design a viral advertisement campaign, agencies must study what kinds of messages their target audience usually engage with, which ones they like and which ones are more likely to be commented upon and shared.

The authors identified 6,147 reference articles on the subject, and analysed 123 that had contributions supported by more than 50 Google Scholar citations.

Reference:

José Borja Arjona, Alfonso Méndiz, Juan Salvador Victoria-Mas (2020), “Virality as a paradigm of digital communication. Review of the concept and update of the theoretical framework”, El Profesional de la Información, 17 November.

The text can be requested from the author and sent on demand.