Persuasion and Social Contagion

We address the relation between persuasion and virality in social networks and provide preliminary findings based on a Digg dataset. In particular we want to understand whether a content categorized as persuasive (according to various metrics) can be categorized as viral as well. Results show that the persuasive properties of a content are related to its virality in different ways. These findings suggest that planning the persuasive effect of a content is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for virality.