Analyzing narrative contagion through digital storytelling in social media conversations: An AI-powered computational approach

Despite the growing popularity of digital narratives, research on digital storytelling and its spread through social media interactions remains limited. Inspired by the social contagion theory, we introduce the concept of narrative contagion —where a story shared by a person or organization prompts others to share their stories—and investigate its process and outcome in online cancer communities. Utilizing a large dataset of 849 Facebook posts, 47,291 comments, and 14,466 replies, our artificial intelligence (AI)-based computational analysis provides evidence for narrative contagion among individual users in organization-hosted cancer communities on Facebook. It also reveals different organizational message characteristics, such as emotional arousal, post topic, and request for storytelling, that affect user storytelling and emotional support in comments and replies. Our results contribute to a deeper understanding of digital storytelling and its collective dynamics in online communities.