TOW #19: "The Six Things That Make Stories Go Viral"

Could Aristotle have been the key to finding the next trends on twitter?

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2014/01/the-six-things-that-make-stories-go-viral-will-amaze-and-maybe-infuriate-you.html

     Undeniably, the internet is one of the most significant ways to share information. That said, certain content is shared more than other content. What exactly distinguishes how much content will be shared? According to Maria Konnikova, there are several specific ways to achieve "shareability". Maria Konnikova is a writer and journalist who focuses primarily on psychology and literature. She is currently writing her first book. She graduated from Harvard University and studied the science of self-control at Columbia University in 2013.
     As a consumer and a daily user of the internet and its contents, it is important to understand what becomes popular and why, so as to avoid being an uneducated consumer. Konnikova wrote "The Six Things That Make Stories Go Viral Will Amaze, And Maybe Infuriate, You" is both to educate internet users and explain the science behind how content becomes popular. This article is applicable to all internet users.
     By appealing to ethos early in her essay, Konnikova follows the classical oration model, effectively establishing the credentials of the various sources she uses (which she later uses extensively). She writes, "When Jonah Berger was a graduate student at Stanford," then describes his interest in the five most-shared articles of each day from the Wall Street Journal. In providing this credible account, Konnikova gives readers a reason to care about her topic. If a Stanford graduate is interested in her topic, why shouldn't the average reader be interested as well?
     Konnikova uses rhetorical questions to transition from her introduction to the narration, once again following the classical oration model. She asks the reader, "What is it about a piece of content– an article, a picture, a video– that took it from simply interesting to interesting and shareable?" If the reader was not enticed by her appeal to ethos in her introduction, surely their drive for curiosity provoked by her use of rhetorical questions would entice he or she.
     Her second paragraph, which serves as the narration, provides the reader with an analogy relating Aristotle's philosophies to twitter. Such starkly contrasted ideas proves the relevance of shareability. She compares Aristotle's beliefs about rhetoric to the shareability of, say, a tweet or a Facebook post. This strategy adds another appeal to ethos to reestablish the universal presence and relevance of "shareability". Several times in her essay, Konnikova references several of Aristotle's beliefs previously described to strengthen her argument. Since she isn't an expert on the topic she writes about, this strategy is very effective.
     To end her essay, Konnikova addresses a possible counterargument. "We may be changing what will become popular even as we're studying it." With this point, Konnikova brings her topic into the real, dynamic world. Although she essentially undermines most of her essay by including this point, she understands that to not write it would prove her lack of understanding of the study as a whole. Had she ended her essay on this point, it would have been considerably weaker. However, she instead ends with a trending title to disprove the counterargument presented and regain her idea's strength. She writes that at the time she was writing the article, the top trending story on a popular website is titled, "Her Little Boy Has No Idea His Mother Is About To Die. What She's Doing About That Is Amazing." This example hits almost all of the points she mentions that make for a trending title: it appeals to pathos, it is positive, it is inspirational, and it is sensational. The fact that it is current at the time she wrote this article makes the reader realize although her ideas may be irrelevant in the future, they are certainly relevant as of now.