Following a video that was quickly republished worldwide, the New York Times raised the question of what ultimately makes a topic popular in the world of the internet.
The story presented in the video concerns the rescue of a small kitten by firefighters. The kitten is rescued by a sensitive firefighter, who provides first aid to the animal. However, the video does not show the end of the story, where the kitten, despite efforts, could not be kept alive, as it had already inhaled a lot of smoke.
The editor-in-chief of the website Gawker, Mr. Zimmerman, published this news item revealing the whole truth. “The video did surprisingly well for everyone who reposted it, except Gawker,” he notes. The addition informing the public that the kitten did not make it plummeted its popularity. Most preferred to republish a heroic, touching story, without tarnishing it.
According to a study by the University of Texas involving 256 participants, users prefer to post a pleasant video on their personal accounts and, more generally, that can trigger strong emotions. "People repost topics that can raise emotionally charged reactions, usually of a positive nature," notes the University's social psychologist, Ms. Guadagno.
However, pressing the share button is determined and directed by the ego. The construction and delineation of an online persona has evolved into a daily preoccupation that ultimately seems to define the Freudian “Ego.”.
According to Chartbeat, the company that measures online "traffic", many Twitter users repost articles on their social media accounts without having read them. This conclusion stems from the mismatch between the size of the text and the time and attention that the user ultimately devotes.
Like the dusty volumes of books that have hardly ever been read, but ornately adorn the living room bookcase, the famous "posts" on Facebook and Twitter profiles are there to create the image that the user desires for themselves.
People build their online identity by sharing the "right" topics, as they want to be thought of and identified with the content they "upload" to their social media profiles.
Source: kathimerini.gr
