What Makes Vews Viral? A Study on Al Jazeera, BBC and CNN

Abstract

Viral is a buzzword. Viral news describe any news or content that becomes widely shared through social networks and online in a much faster and wider manner than other news stories. It is difficult to comprehend why some songs, movies, video clips, or news pieces gain global popularity quickly while others of comparable quality, content, and presentation do not. According to some experts, viral content is simply another form of word-of-mouth marketing. (Phelps et al., 2004).This study explores the news value elements behind the viral news. We can identify viral news based on its views, but we have no idea why it goes viral, and the news value elements are still undetermined. There are numerous research of this type, but the number of studies on viral news on YouTube is minuscule. Despite the fact that a research using "news" was conducted, it only worked on four YouTube channels in the United Kingdom and the United States. In that study, 50 news stories were chosen based on the most popular videos from the Guardian, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal's YouTube channels.(Al-Rawi, 2019). On the other hand, Al Jazeera, BBC, and CNN are the three most popular YouTube news channels have been selected according to this report .These are quite popular not only in the United States and the United Kingdom, but all throughout the world. As a result, study has provided insight into viral news value elements across Asia, Europe, and the United States. The aim of this study is to fill a gap in the literature on viral news especially on YouTube.