Culture Digital Behavior

The Psychology of Virality: Why Content Spreads Online

Published by When Notes Fly

https://whennotesfly.com/culture/internet-digital-culture/virality-explained

When Notes Fly article, fact-checked and corrected.

Corrected & verified
1 contributor 1 recorded contribution 1 correction

Who created and checked this page

Correction

Emir BaycanExpert Contributor

Correction history

Every accepted correction to this page is recorded with the exact change, so readers can see how the page improved over time.

  1. 29 July 2026 · corrected by Emir Baycan

    Corrected 3 fabricated academic citations (a fake George Mason University study on Twitter's favorite-to-like button change with an invented '12 percent secondary sharing' statistic, a fake Aalborg University study on YouTube's rating system change, and a fabricated Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health analysis of the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge with invented '3,500 percent increase' and 'viral coefficient of 2.1' figures) and 2 altered details in real, well-known studies (Berger and Milkman's Journal of Marketing Research paper analyzed a three-month period of NYT articles, not six months as stated; Vosoughi, Roy and Aral's Science paper found false political news reached comparable audiences in about a twentieth of the time, not simply '20 times larger' audiences).

    Before

    Article cited specific institutions, researchers, and statistics for claims about platform feature changes and the Ice Bucket Challenge's virality that could not be verified in any real publication, plus two precise but incorrect details in otherwise real, well-documented studies.

    After

    Removed the three fabricated citations, generalizing the underlying plausible mechanism without inventing replacement sources; corrected the Berger/Milkman study period to the real three months; corrected the Vosoughi et al. framing of the audience-reach multiple to match the paper's actual reported metric.

    Why: Real institutions and well-known real studies were used as anchors for invented statistics and one factual alteration, the same fabrication pattern found across this batch of legacy articles.

    View the full record →

Full contribution timeline

  1. Correction 29 July 2026

    Emir Baycan: Corrected 3 fabricated academic citations (a fake George Mason University study on Twitter's favorite-to-like button change with an invented '12 percent secondary sharing' statistic, a fake Aalborg University study on YouTube's rating system change, and a fabricated Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health analysis of the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge with invented '3,500 percent increase' and 'viral coefficient of 2.1' figures) and 2 altered details in real, well-known studies (Berger and Milkman's Journal of Marketing Research paper analyzed a three-month period of NYT articles, not six months as stated; Vosoughi, Roy and Aral's Science paper found false political news reached comparable audiences in about a twentieth of the time, not simply '20 times larger' audiences).

    Proof record →