TALK: Viral Design: User Concepts of Virality on the Niche Social Media Site, Dribbble (Jeff Hemsley, D107 Newman, April 9, 10–10:50)

You are cordially invited to the following talk by Professor Jeff Hemsley, Syracuse University.

9 April, 2018
10:00–10:50
D107 Newman

Title: Viral Design: User Concepts of Virality on the Niche Social Media Site, Dribbble

Virality is a much-studied topic on popular social media sites, but has been rarely explored on niche sites. Dribbble is a niche social networking site for artists and designers with over 600,000 users. Using a mixed-method approach, we explore virality from a user-centric perspective. Interviews with informants confirm that viral-like events do exist on Dribbble, though what spreads are different. With the interviews, we identify the measures and possible driving factors of viral-like events. While what spreads is different than on other platforms, our work suggests that the measures and mechanics that drive these events are similar. This similarity reflects the same fundamental human behavior underlying social phenomenon across different platforms. Our results are supported by regression modeling using variables identified by our informants. Our work contributes to social media studies since smaller sites like Dribbble are rarely studied, particularly using mixed methods approaches, as well as to the body of research around information diffusion and viral events.

Jeff Hemsley is an Assistant Professor at the School of Information Studies at Syracuse University. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Washington’s Information School. His research is about understanding information diffusion, particularly in the context of politics, in social media. He is co-author of the book Going Viral (Polity Press, 2013 and winner of ASIS&T Best Science Books of 2014 Information award and selected by Choice magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title for 2014), which explains what virality is, how it works technologically and socially, and draws out the implications of this process for social change.