What Makes Online Content Viral?
Jonah Berger and Katherine Milkman asked why some online content spreads more than other content, using every article the New York Times published over a three-month period and tracking which ones readers emailed on. Positive articles were shared more than negative ones, but the authors report that the link between emotion and sharing is not a simple matter of good feelings. Sharing was partly driven by physiological arousal, meaning how much a feeling activates a person. Articles evoking awe, a high-arousal positive emotion, and anger or anxiety, high-arousal negative ones, were more viral. Articles evoking sadness, a low-arousal negative emotion, were less viral. The pattern held when the authors allowed for how surprising, interesting or useful an article was and for how prominently the paper featured it. The paper also reports experiments that the authors read as showing a causal effect of specific emotions, driven by the level of activation they produce. The data come from one newspaper's emailing feature, before ranking algorithms shaped what people see, and the emotions were judged from the articles rather than measured in readers.
Jonah Berger and Katherine Milkman asked why some online content spreads more than other content, using every article the New York Times published over a three-month period and tracking which ones readers emailed on. Positive articles were shared more than negative ones, but the authors report that the link between emotion and sharing is not a simple matter of good feelings. Sharing was partly driven by physiological arousal, meaning how much a feeling activates a person. Articles evoking awe, a high-arousal positive emotion, and anger or anxiety, high-arousal negative ones, were more viral. Articles evoking sadness, a low-arousal negative emotion, were less viral. The pattern held when the authors allowed for how surprising, interesting or useful an article was and for how prominently the paper featured it. The paper also reports experiments that the authors read as showing a causal effect of specific emotions, driven by the level of activation they produce. The data come from one newspaper's emailing feature, before ranking algorithms shaped what people see, and the emotions were judged from the articles rather than measured in readers.
Written from the abstract as retrieved from OpenAlex on 6 October 2026.
What our sources record
Reproduced as it was written when this source was checked, figures and all.
Berger, J., & Milkman, K. L. (2012). 'What makes online content viral?' Journal of Marketing Research, 49(2), 192-205. All New York Times articles published over a three-month period; positive content more viral than negative, but virality partially driven by physiological arousal; high-arousal positive (awe) and negative (anger, anxiety) content more viral; low-arousal deactivating content (sadness) less viral. The abstract reports the results hold when controlling for how surprising, interesting or practically useful content is and how prominently it was featured, and that experimental results demonstrate a causal effect of specific emotions driven by the level of activation induced. Abstract read at OpenAlex 2026-10-06. Verified at the published record 2026-10-06. doi:10.1509/jmr.10.0353
Where we use it
- Why Sad Posts Go Viral Less Often, Why We Engage
Reliability of this reference
The link below was matched against the publisher's record on title, first author and year, and all three agree.
The source
https://doi.org/10.1509/jmr.10.0353
DOI: 10.1509/jmr.10.0353