TY - JOUR
T1 - Scratching a Niche
T2 - How Smaller Social Media Players Such as Dribbble Reflect the Viral Phenomenon
AU - Hemsley, Jeff
AU - Kelly, Rebecca D.
N1 - Funding Information:
This work examines the concept of virality in the Dribbble world using semi-structured interviews with the platform’s users to understand the larger context of Dribbble’s design world, giving us a user’s perspective of the site and of how viral-like events work there. Using data from the interviews, we identified some possible driving factors of these viral-like events as well as how we might measure them. We discuss the form that virality appears to take on Dribbble, including the role of top-down and bottom-up forces. Specifically, we suggest the top-down forces are driven by network gatekeepers in the form of site’s algorithms, and bottom-up forces are evidenced by the emergence of an echo chamber, as well as the popular page where the crowd collectively endorses shots that get featured. This work serves as a bridge connecting an extensive body of literature concerning virality in social networks to a significantly smaller body of work looking at niche social media sites, like Dribbble. Our work suggests that the mechanics that drive viral-like events on Dribbble are similar to factors found elsewhere such as number of followers and the practices of network gatekeeping. While this work is not specifically focused on the evolution of design in design worlds, our work does provide some support for the idea that such evolution could be driven by viral-like events. This research also provides a new data point in terms of what virality seems to look like on a niche social media site. In future studies, we intend to do more detailed comparisons across other niche sites, like Research Gate and Musical.ly, to tease out the similarities and differences across multiple platforms in an effort to isolate what is platform specific and what are the fundamental human behaviors that drive viral events. Future research into stock imagery sites and the way in which download numbers may indicate virality could add to the discussion. Stock image sites reach a large cross-section of design professionals, and while shares may not come into play, likes and downloads represent a quantifiable indicator of image usage and dissemination. Our findings contribute to the study of virality by seeking to understand users perceive and think about viral events, instead of doing purely quantitative and data-intensive work. This study also makes a contribution by focusing on a niche site, one where vitality has the potential to affect one’s professional status and income. Declaration of Conflicting Interests The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. Funding The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: We received seed funding for this work from the Center for Computational and Data Sciences at Syracuse University. ORCID iD Jeff Hemsley https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9276-6983 1. See https://www.aiga.org/ 2. See https://dribbble.com/ 3. The site’s ‘About’ page suggests that the site has around 600,000 users. Our profile collection was accomplished through a snowball method where we started with a few active users’ profile IDs, which we manually gathered from URLs to their profile pages. Using these as seeds, we gathered all of their followers and their followers’ followers until no more new names were added. This essentially gave us the websites’ largest network component.
Funding Information:
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: We received seed funding for this work from the Center for Computational and Data Sciences at Syracuse University.
Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2019.
PY - 2019/10
Y1 - 2019/10
N2 - Researchers have been studying the viral flow of information since the late 1990s, but this work has mainly focused on big sites like Twitter and Facebook. However, to comprehensively explore social phenomena such as virality requires us to look beyond the dominant networks. This study addresses this by looking at how users think about virality on Dribbble, a social network site with around 600,000 users that was created in 2009 for designers to showcase and get feedback on their work and to connect clients to design talent. Interviews confirm that viral-like events do exist on Dribbble. Our informants suggest that what spreads on Dribbble are elements of design (e.g., color palettes, line styles, textures), and they identify a number of factors they believe drive these viral-like events, which are the same kinds of factors that drive virality on larger sites. We briefly discuss how Dribbble feeds the gig economy in the creative industry and how virality becomes an important path for designers in a competitive environment. This work makes a contribution to the study of virality by focusing a small niche social media site and by looking at how users perceive and think about viral events.
AB - Researchers have been studying the viral flow of information since the late 1990s, but this work has mainly focused on big sites like Twitter and Facebook. However, to comprehensively explore social phenomena such as virality requires us to look beyond the dominant networks. This study addresses this by looking at how users think about virality on Dribbble, a social network site with around 600,000 users that was created in 2009 for designers to showcase and get feedback on their work and to connect clients to design talent. Interviews confirm that viral-like events do exist on Dribbble. Our informants suggest that what spreads on Dribbble are elements of design (e.g., color palettes, line styles, textures), and they identify a number of factors they believe drive these viral-like events, which are the same kinds of factors that drive virality on larger sites. We briefly discuss how Dribbble feeds the gig economy in the creative industry and how virality becomes an important path for designers in a competitive environment. This work makes a contribution to the study of virality by focusing a small niche social media site and by looking at how users perceive and think about viral events.
KW - communications design
KW - design
KW - dribbble
KW - gig economy
KW - social media
KW - virality
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85076204508&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85076204508&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1177/2056305119890051
DO - 10.1177/2056305119890051
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85076204508
SN - 2056-3051
VL - 5
JO - Social Media and Society
JF - Social Media and Society
IS - 4
ER -