Viral Malay Postings on Facebook: An Analysis of Content and Linguistic Attributes
(Hantaran Bahasa Melayu yang Tular di Facebook: Analisis dari Aspek Kandungan dan Atribut Linguistik)
Abstract
The increasing use of Facebook among users from different walks of life has made it one of the main sources of information on social media. The extra attention given by users to Facebook posts has created a phenomenon known as "virality" in which a post can be shared with hundreds of thousands of users within a short time and much faster than the mainstream media. While previous studies have investigated viral postings from the perspective of business and mostly in the English language, this study aims to linguistically analyze Malay language postings on Facebook that cause them to go viral in terms of content and linguistic attributes. Through textual analysis of 100 Facebook postings of various topics that went viral and with a corpus size of about 10,000 words, this study captured the content and language attributes of each post and tabulate them accordingly. The results showed that the main theme of the content of viral postings is largely related to family-related advice, while the most common linguistic feature is the use of personal pronouns. In terms of writing style, it was found that argumentative and anecdotal styles are the most popular. The findings from this study have provided valuable input to content producers in creating content that would reach out to more users.
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Taecharungroj, V., & Nueangjamnong, P. (2015). Humour 2.0: Styles and types of humour and virality of memes on Facebook. Jouurnal of Creative Communications, 10(3), 288-302.
Tausczik, Y. R., & Pennebaker, J. W. (2010). The psychological meaning of words: LIWC and computerized text analysis methods. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 29(1), 24-54.
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Weng, L., Menczer, F., & Ahn, Y. Y. (2013). Virality prediction and community structure in social networks. Scientific Reports, 3, 2522.
Andersen, J., & Søe, S. O. (2020). Communicative actions we live by: The problem with fact-checking, tagging or flagging fake news-the case of Facebook. European Journal of Communication, 35(2), 126-139.
Anthony, L. (2006). Concordancing with AntConc: An introduction to tools and techniques in corpus linguistics. JACET Newsletter, 155.
Asmah Haji Omar. (1987) The National language and commmunication in multilingual societies. Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka dan Kementerian Pendidikan Malaysia.
Asmah Haji Omar. (2009). Nahu Melayu mutakhir (Edisi Kelima). Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka.
Aswani, R., Kar, A. K., Aggarwal, S., & Ilavarsan, P. V. (2017). Exploring content virality in Facebook: A semantic based approach. In the Conference on e-Business, e-Services and e-Society (pp. 209-220). Springer, Cham.
Aziyah Abu Bakar, A. (2015). Komunikasi keluarga dan pengurusan konflik: Dari persepektif remaja Melayu (Family communication and conflict management: From the perspective of Malay youth). Jurnal Pengajian Media Malaysia, 17(1), 11-28.
Azlinda Abdul Rahman. (2013). Bahasa Melayu: Antara peluasan, penyempitan dan kecelaruan. Journal of Techno Social, 5(1).
Bennett, R. (2017). Relevance of fundraising charities' content-marketing objectives: perceptions of donors, fundraisers, and their consultants. Jurnal of Nonprofit & Public Sector Marketing, 29(1), 39-63.
Beeler, A. (2000). Virus without a cure. Advertising Age, 71(17), 54–60.
Borges-Tiago, M. T., Tiago, F., & Cosme, C. (2019). Exploring users' motivations to participate in tular communication on social media. Journal of Business Research, 101, 574-582.
Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2012). Thematic analysis. In H. Cooper, P. M. Camic, D. L. Long, A. T. Panter, D. Rindskopf, & K. J. Sher (Eds.), APA handbook of research methods in psychology, Vol. 2. Research designs: Quantitative, qualitative, neuropsychological, and biological (pp. 57-71). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/13620-004
Camarero, C., Garrido, M. J., & San Jose, R. (2018). What works in Facebook content versus relational communication: a study of their effectiveness in the context of museums. International Journal of Human-
Computer Interaction, 34(12), 1119-1134.
Chu, S. C. (2011). Viral advertising in social media: Participation in Facebook groups and responses among college-aged users. Journal of Interactive Advertising, 12(1), 30-43.
Chuah, K. M. (2013). Aplikasi media sosial dalam pembelajaran Bahasa Inggeris: Persepsi pelajar universiti. Issues in Language Studies, 2(1). https://doi.org/10.33736/ils. 1680.2013
Chuah, K. M., Kahar, Y. M., & Ch'ng, L. C. (2020). We "Meme" Business: Exploring Malaysian youths' interpretation of internet memes in social media marketing. International Journal of Business and Society, 21(2), 931-944. https://doi.org/10.33736/ijbs.3303.2020
Dale, K. R., Raney, A. A., Janicke, S. H., Sanders, M. S., & Oliver, M. B. (2017). YouTube for good: A content analysis and examination of elicitors of self-transcendent media. Journal of Communication, 67(6), 897-919.
Devitt, A. J. (2004). Writing genres. SIU Press.
Hall, C. M., Breeden, N. C., & Giacobe, N. (2019). Gone tular: Content characteristics and relative quality of highly shared school psychology-related content on Pinterest. Psychology in the Schools, 56(6), 959-976.
Han, Y., Lappas, T., & Sabnis, G. (2020). The importance of interactions between content characteristics and creator characteristics for studying virality in social media. Information Systems Research, 31(2), 576-588.
Harlow, S., Kilgo, D. K., Salaverría, R., & García-Perdomo, V. (2020). Is the whole world watching? Building a typology of protest coverage on social media from around the world. Journalism Studies, 21(11), 1590-1608.
Karim Harun & Maslida Yusof. (2015). Komunikasi bahasa Melayu-Jawa dalam media sosial. Jurnal Komunikasi: Malaysian Journal of Communication, 31(2), 617-629.
Kwon, S., Abbar, S., & Jansen, B. J. (2016). Identifying virality attributes of Arabic Language news articles. In Qatar Foundation Annual Research Conference Proceedings (Vol. 2016, No. 1). HBKU Press.
Maslida Yusof. (2018). Trend ganti nama diri bahasa Melayu dalam konteks media sosial. Jurnal Komunikasi: Malaysian Journal of Communication, 34(2).
Mills, A. J. (2012). Virality in social media: The SPIN framework. Journal of Public Affairs, 12(2), 162-16.
Mills, A. J., Pitt, C., & Ferguson, S. L. (2019). The relationship between fake news and advertising: Brand management in the era of programmatic advertising and prolific falsehood. Journal of Advertising Research, 59(1), 3-8. http://doi.org/10.2501/JAR-2019-007
Nasiroh Omar, Ahmad Farhan Hamsani, Nur Atiqa Sia Abdullah & Siti Zaleha Zainal Abidin. (2017). Construction of Malay abbreviation corpus based on social media data. Journal of Engineering and Applied Sciences, 12(3), 468-474.
Nurul Azyan Zunaidi & Mardina Mahadi, M. (2021). Analisis kata pikat dalam media sosial: Satu kajian semantik. Jurnal Bahasa, 21(1), 129-162. http://doi.org. 10.37052/jb21(1)no7
Piskorski, J., Sydow, M., & Weiss, D. (2008, April). Exploring linguistic features for web spam detection: a preliminary study. In Proceedings of the 4th international workshop on Adversarial information retrieval on the web (pp. 25-28).
Rahayu, R. N. (2020). Analisis berita hoax Covid-19 di media sosial di Indonesia. Jurnal Ekonomi, Sosial & Humaniora, 1(9), 60-73.
Rasmussen, T. (2018) Social theory and communication technology. Routledge.
Strapparava, C., Guerini, M., & Özbal, G. (2011, October). Persuasive language and virality in social networks. In International Conference on Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction (pp. 357-366). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.
Sung, E. C. (2021). The effects of augmented reality mobile app advertising: Tular marketing via shared social experience. Journal of Business Research, 122, 75-87.
Taecharungroj, V., & Nueangjamnong, P. (2015). Humour 2.0: Styles and types of humour and virality of memes on Facebook. Jouurnal of Creative Communications, 10(3), 288-302.
Tausczik, Y. R., & Pennebaker, J. W. (2010). The psychological meaning of words: LIWC and computerized text analysis methods. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 29(1), 24-54.
Ting, S. H., & Chai, A. S. (2013). Textual and language features of students' written discussion texts. Issues in Language Studies, 2(2), 67-81.
Wan Robiah Osman & Wan Sofiah Osman. (2021). Dinamik bahasa media dalam talian: Sumbangan terhadap perkamusan Melayu di Malaysis. Issues in Language Studies, 10(1), 37-58. https://doi.org/10.33736/ils.2546.2021
Weng, L., Menczer, F., & Ahn, Y. Y. (2013). Virality prediction and community structure in social networks. Scientific Reports, 3, 2522.
Published
2021-12-05
How to Cite
CHUAH, Kee-Man; ISWANDI, Niniefadzillea.
Viral Malay Postings on Facebook: An Analysis of Content and Linguistic Attributes.
Jurnal Bahasa, [S.l.], v. 21, n. 2, p. 217-240, dec. 2021.
ISSN 2462-1889.
Available at: <http://jurnal.dbp.my/index.php/jurnalbahasa/article/view/8197>. Date accessed: 24 jan. 2026.
doi: https://doi.org/10.37052/jb21(2)no3.
Section
Articles
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