Henry Jenkins theory of spreadability

What is spreadability:

The theory of spreadabilty, developed by Henry Jenkins, is essentially a theory that involves the circulation of information or media products on different media platforms, and how well it circulates. If something reaches loads of people, then its level of spreadability is high. His famous phrase is "If it doesn't spread, it's dead". The reason I am researching into this is to see what something has to be to become spreadable, so I can see how the theory of spreadabilty might effect a music campaign like the one me and the group are creating for our band. 

I found a video of Henry Jenkins talking about this theory from his perspective, the perspective of the prosumer and the consumer, and it is a very eye opening video on this interesting theory that now encompasses most of our lives, with social media being so popular and vastly used.  

A great example of spreadability is Hotmail (who is now owned by Outlook). Hotmail did lots of viral messages when they started, and within a year of starting, they had over 11 million users. 

This kind of viral is more than just sharing, it is meant to infect and contaminate every person and spread from one person to the next. 

The criteria that most people subconsciously go by in regards to whether they think something is spreadable or not are as follows:

- Values

- Agendas

- Opinions

- Sense of humour

- Taste

And so through the use of technology, you can connect to a huge audience, and if your message is spreadable, it can reach literally billions of people, but "if it doesn't spread, it is dead". Here is a video showing the process and explaining spreadability.  

I have also found some examples of videos or content that has become viral and has become extremely widely viewed through it's clear abundance of spreadability. 

Examples of spreadability:

Firstly, here is a video of an TikTok and Youtuber called "That Vegan Teacher", who has become spreadable through her very extremist ways of trying to convince people to become Vegan. Many of her videos have gone viral and she has had disputes with other YouTubers and Tiktokers in the past that have been very public, but this video in particular has recently become very popular, and has even lead to other prosumers making content using it.            

This 6 second video was only posted by her on Tiktok once, and here it is on YouTube with over 800,000 views, and it's had millions of reposts on TikTok and on Instagram and other social media platforms as well. Since this was such a hugely spreadable video, other prosumers and TikTok users have remixed it and have made "memes" out of it which have also reached massive audiences of well over a million. This is the original meme from this, and it actually remixes the sound into a song by "$uicide Boy$" called "and to those I love, thanks for sticking around"  

This meme was made famous on TikTok, just like the original, and was reposted onto YouTube by different prosumer. The person who reposted this has only roughly 6k subscribers on YouTube, but the video that the reposted of this meme has reached a whopping 4.1 million views. This just shows how spreadable this one 6 second video by "That Vegan Teacher" was, as clearly people were even searching for it on YouTube. Also, to show you how spreadable this meme was, the song that was remixed into this by the $uicide Boy$ became resurfaced and very well listened to, and the duo made double what they made in the pervious year in the year that this meme was created, despite not releasing anything more than they did in 2020. 

Another example of something being spreadable is this video of a little young boy saying that if Santa keeps him on the naughty list, he will "do an upper cut to him". As opposed to the previous viral video we looked at, this one first became famous on Instagram, and I remember first seeing it on a very famous Instagram account called "The Lad Bible" which has 11.5 million followers, and many other linked accounts, as well as accounts with a similar following on different media platforms such as twitter and YouTube.

   

Again, I found that this video has been reposted to YouTube through an account that is linked with the LadBible, and it has received almost 30 million views on this repost alone. I also found other reposts with 64k views and 154k views on YouTube as well. In addition to this, I also found that the famous DJ and influencer Charlie Sloth reposted this to his instagram account which has 1 million followers. 

This shows that this is certainly a spreadable video, as it has reached an audience of many millions.  

Finally, the third example that we are going to look at is a slightly different video that has gone viral on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and many other media platforms as well. This is a video of a very old man in court explaining to a Judge why he was accidentally speeding in a school zone, and how he was trying to take his son to the hospital since his son is handicapped. I first saw this video on Instagram, on an account called moneytips.uk, and it was on my suggested reels. This shows how spreadable this video was if it was reposted by a finance account, despite the fact that it had nothing to do with money or finance. 

I found that the video had been reposted to YouTube as well, and the account that reposted it only has 35k subscribers, but the video has over 26 million views.  

This shows how spreadable this video really was, when people were remixing it with sad music on TikTok, and then people were reposting it on Instagram, and then on YouTube and no doubt on other media platforms as well. It was even a story covered by a news channel in Rhode Island, and their video on YouTube got half a million views, as well as it being aired on National television in the USA.  

These 3 different examples show that something can be spreadable for many different reasons, which goes back to the criteria that we listed earlier. Something has to click with at least one of those things, or it wont spread, for example, the last spreadable video that I just analysed isn't funny like the first two, and so it won't spread due to a sense of humour, but it agrees with peoples values, agendas and opinions and so people spread it due to that. 

How can we incorporate this for our band:

Now that I have analysed some examples of spreadable content, and researched into what makes something spreadable, I need to figure out some ways in which our band could become more spreadable, and therefor make sure our band doesn't "die". 

There are certain things that our band cannot do to become spreadable due to a clash with the genre. For example, the band can't go doing TikTok dances all together as it wont fit the rocky part of their genre and identity as a band. They also can't be doing heart felt and emotional videos, as again it probably won't go with the genre of the band. 

One thing that the band could do to create some spreadable content is start a trend that does in fact go with the genre of their music and the style of the band. For example, they could do something similar to the ice bucket challenge, or something like the "fire in the hole" take away challenge.  

This challenge would suit the band well, as it shows that they are reckless and that they don't care about making a mess or doing something naughty, without them actually breaking the law, or without them doing something so radical that it turns people off their music. We do have to consider that the target audience for the genre of the bands music is younger teenage girls who like rebellious bands, but the band cannot be too rebellious, otherwise parents won't want the children listening to the music, and then our key demographic for the band could be compromised, and so we have to find some form of middle ground. 

Another way to make spreadable content is just by tweeting about funny stuff, or just by tweeting about relevant stuff. Depending on the topic of the tweet, this shouldn't clash with the genre too much, but could also put the band on the map. Here are some examples of just simple and relatable tweets that have gone viral, but didn't have to be particularly meaningful or topical to be spreadable. 

This shows that our band doesn't have to do anything that relevant to create some spreadable content other than the music video, but just has to do something relatable, that doesn't take away from the genre and style of the band and music. 

Having now learnt a bit about spreadability I think that it will help greatly with mainly the post production social media side of the campaign, but could also help with the shoot day, as we could see the band doing something as a group and find that it could be spreadable. All in all I think that the learning about the theory of spreadability will vastly help our music campaign.