Recent studies have documented the type of content that is most likely to spread widely, or go "viral," on social media, yet little is known about people's perceptions of what goes viral or what should go viral. This is critical to understand because there is widespread debate about how to improve or regulate social media algorithms. We recruited a sample of participants that is nationally representative of the U.S. population (according to age, gender, and race/ethnicity) and surveyed them about their perceptions of social media virality (n = 511). In line with prior research, people believe that divisive content, moral outrage, negative content, high-arousal content, and misinformation are all likely to go viral online. However, they reported that this type of content should not go viral on social media. Instead, people reported that many forms of positive content-such as accurate content, nuanced content, and educational content-are not likely to go viral even though they think this content should go viral. These perceptions were shared among most participants and were only weakly related to political orientation, social media usage, and demographic variables. In sum, there is broad consensus around the type of content people think social media platforms should and should not amplify, which can help inform solutions for improving social media.

中文翻译：

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人们认为社交媒体平台确实（但不应该）放大分裂内容。


最近的研究记录了最有可能在社交媒体上广泛传播或“病毒式传播”的内容类型，但人们对什么会病毒式传播或什么应该病毒式传播的看法却知之甚少。理解这一点至关重要，因为关于如何改进或监管社交媒体算法存在广泛的争论。我们招募了代表美国人口的参与者样本（根据年龄、性别和种族/民族），并对他们对社交媒体病毒式传播的看法进行了调查（n = 511）。根据之前的研究，人们认为分裂内容、道德愤怒、负面内容、高唤醒内容和错误信息都可能在网上病毒式传播。然而，他们报告说，此类内容不应在社交媒体上传播。相反，人们报告说，许多形式的积极内容——例如准确的内容、细致入微的内容和教育内容——不太可能像病毒一样传播，尽管他们认为这些内容应该像病毒一样传播。大多数参与者都认同这些看法，并且与政治倾向、社交媒体使用和人口变量的关系微弱。总之，人们认为社交媒体平台应该和不应该放大的内容类型存在广泛共识，这有助于为改进社交媒体提供解决方案。