Typology of Viral Messages with the Subject of Covid19 in Instagram

Since the beginning of Corona virus pandemic, cyberspaces have become a path for information exchange to a great extent and Instagram has been on top of all. Studying the essence of highly visited messages becomes an important issue because it delivers a behavioral pattern of society when it faces a crisis. The present research is opting to answer the following questions: What is the essence of highly visited messages & which kind of emotions has caused them to become viral? To answer these questions, a survey was done on 600 viral messages inside Instagram. By the methodology of field research the data was collected based on messages about Corona with a high rate of visit; then the experts of psychology scored them according to their content. The next step was to categorize this quantitative data into clusters by analysis method. According to the statistical findings, messages with high rate of visit were divided into 3 groups. These messages are with the content of fun & entertainment, news and information, and the third group has been produced to instruct & advertise. Also, the findings show, although the rate of visit differs in each category, on the contrary the analytical survey on the findings before pandemic, shows that in the Corona’s time, negative surprise, sadness & fear are the most important features which attracts the visitors. During the Corona’s period anger & hatred had no impact on messages to be highly visited.