How does a public organization promote their work in social media? : A case study of viral communication in a government

Abstract: Viral communication method is shown to be useful for spreading messages in social media. However, only few studies have investigated how public organizations use this method successfully to promote their works in social media. To fill this gap, a qualitative analysis on data from observations and interviews has been conducted. The purpose of this study is to answer a research question: how can a government succeed in promoting their works in social media by using viral communication method? The results found several processes and factors that support the fruitfulness from three perspectives: the messenger, the message and the environment. Moreover, it is pointed out that the most important process is creating memorable messages. Therefore, this study proposes essential characteristics of memorable contents.