Essentially Viral Text is a online source that uses visual and interactive exhibits in order to develop models that aid scholars in analyzing the qualities that make poems, short fiction, and stories “go viral” in newspapers, blogs, and other forms of social media. The creators of this website were trying to answer questions such as what makes a particular piece of work get reprinted and become popular. According to the site, during the first phase of the project (2012-2014) viral texts mainly focused on its “text ruse discovery”, or in other words their programs ability to catch relations between well know pieces. In its next phase (2015-2016) the project shifted to improving its algorithm and developing methods for analyzing reprinting. The goal of this project is to create a site that can be easily accessible to scholars, and could help analyze the commonalities between popular poems, and short stories. I can see this project’s analytical components being very useful for academics fields specializing in literature and even history.
The project was sponsored by Northeastern University for its texts, maps, and networks, and funded by the National Endowment for Humanities. The majority of its sources come from popular poems, and pieces of fiction provided by Northeastern Universities NUlab for texts.
Virtual Texts process involves users clicking on the publications drop down tab to access all of the different pieces analyzed by the site. When clicking on the publication the user will see poems that have links and interactive assets, to which one can gain a better understanding of the overall importance of a word or phrase in relation to the pieces likeability. Most of the site presents its information through texts rather than images and pictures. However, the home page menu has a cover image titled “The Country Editor–Paying the Yearly Subscription” by F.S. Church, from Harper’s Weekly (17 January 1874). This image shows a man paying for the local newspaper. In the background you can see scissors and clippings, which is meant to highlight the importance of the exchange system.
