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An Australian researcher has claimed to have unravelled the mystery surrounding what it takes to create a "viral video" that has the power to captivate the world.
When analyzing some of the most viewed clips on the internet, Brent Coker from the University of Melbourne distinguished four common elements -- easily shareable, nostalgic attraction, emotional rollercoaster and thrill factor -- present in all videos that eventually went "viral", a modern term that describes the exponential spread of content due to it being watched and shared over a short space of time.
The four generic themes, detailed at length in Coker's new book "Going Viral" which was released on Wednesday.
Based on his research, Coker dismissed random chance, an element often used to explain why viral videos attract worldwide fame as a crucial factor.
He insisted, instead, that it was the viewer's instinctive reaction to compelling, targeted content that whipped people into a frenzy and kickstarted the viral process.
"We understand that people watching a successful, emotive video with these four factors have the same biological response as when someone is faced with a predator and instinctively the body goes into fight or flight mode," Coker said in a statement released on Wednesday.
"My research found that this release of adrenaline and endorphins, when combined with certain memories, makes a viewer far more likely to share a video and therefore make it go viral.
"Shifting people rapidly across certain emotions is a highly successful tactic which also makes people highly likely to share content on their social media channels."
Coker said the techniques, deciphered within his book, offered people a unique insight into popular cultural, and could provide aspiring content producers with the formula needed to launch a career in the surprisingly profitable industry.
"These "ingredients" are helpful pointers to people seeking to create a viral video, whether for an organization's advertising or a home video put on YouTube," Coker said on Wednesday.
Internet sensations have been known to make millions of dollars, mostly in advertising sales, each year by posting original material on global video websites like YouTube.
Last year, Forbes Magazine named Swedish content producer Felix Kjellberg, who runs a successful gaming channel under the alias, PewDiePie, as the highest grossing YouTube star in the world, pulling in a whopping 12 million U.S. dollars in 2015 before tax.
