Le succès sur Internet repose-t-il sur la contagion ? Une analyse des recherches sur la viralité

Abstract

This article presents a survey of recent studies that combine modeling and statistical analysis to describe the phenomena of viral diffusion on the Web. A first approach consists in studying the temporal dynamics of audiences ; content is viral if there is temporal concentration of attention on it. A second approach seeks to identify the mechanisms of diffusion of content, distinguishing what is a matter of social contagion in the strict sense and what is a matter of editorial features. A third approach examines how social networks influence the dissemination of content, and seeks to clarify the mechanisms of contagion from one individual to another. For each of these approaches, we identify the definition of « virality » and its main results. Finally we sketch the possible future directions for this research field.

Keywords

• Internet
• Web 2.0
• word-of-mouth
• viral marketing
• audience