Image memorability predicts social media virality and externally-associated commenting
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Visual content on social media plays a key role in entertainment and information sharing, yet some images gain more engagement than others. We propose that image memorability – the ability to be remembered – may predict viral potential. Using 1,247 Reddit image posts across three timepoints, we assessed memorability with neural network ResMem and correlated the predicted memorability scores with virality metrics. Memorable images were consistently associated with more comments, even after controlling for image categories with ResNet-152. Semantic analysis revealed that memorable images relate to more neutral-affect comments, suggesting a distinct pathway to virality from emotional contents. Additionally, visual consistency analysis showed that memorable posts inspired diverse, externally-associated comments. By analyzing ResMem’s layers, we found semantic distinctiveness was key to both memorability and virality. This study highlights memorability as a unique correlate of social media virality, offering insights into how visual features and human cognitive behavioral interactions are associated with online engagement. • Memorable images are more likely to go viral on social media • Memorability predicts widespread virality on social media independent from image category or emotion • Memorable images may guide people towards externally-related information separates from the image content • Semantic distinctiveness is the key driver for both memorability and virality
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.009 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".