ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the growing knowledge of media users’ motivations to share content online in an effort to better understand the phenomenon of content virality or spreadability. Successful online publishers like BuzzFeed and the Huffington Post have mastered the art of making news go viral. In order for this to happen, it needs to be shared by a large number of online media users. The question of which content is more likely to go viral has been addressed mainly from a psychological point of view, looking at people’s emotional connection with a story. The work of Lee and Ma already considers socio-demographic indicators next to individual gratifications to explain variance in people’s online sharing activity. The difference is that in a media system characterized by connected media, where this kind of news can easily be shared, practices that facilitate social belonging transcend the domain of user experience and influence the actual distribution of news.
