Persuasion and virality : a systematic literature review of Cialdini's principles of persuasion and contents that go viral on social media

Abstract

Nowadays, using social media has become an important part of people's social life. Through a large number of views, the contents on social media can go viral even form virality. Virality has a strong persuasion to change people's behaviour. There are many ways to make different social media contents go viral. Using Cialdini’s principles of persuasion from social psychology can cause virality. Prior research has only indicated that a particular social media viral content reflects the principles of persuasion, but not identified which is the most persuasive principle. It’s necessary to summarize Cialdini’s principles of persuasion that can be reflected in different viral contents on social media. This thesis combines theories from information system and social psychology disciplines, and uses the systematic literature review method based on PRISMA guideline to collect articles about viral contents on social media reflecting Cialdini's principles of persuasion. Through analysis of studies and descriptive statistics analysis of data, the research obtained results related to research questions. The research results indicate that Cialdini’s principles of persuasion are reflected in various viral contents on social media and usually got combined, and social proof is the most frequently reflected principle of persuasion. This thesis provides inspiration for future cross-disciplinary research between social psychology and information communication. The research in this thesis not only validates the applicability of classical persuasion theories in the new media environment, but also provides a concrete psychological dimension for understanding the virality of different contents in social media, and has practical guidance value for content creation, platform design and information management.