Does Clickbait Actually Attract More Clicks? Three Clickbait Studies You Must Read Maria D
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Does Clickbait Actually Attract More Clicks? Three Clickbait Studies You Must Read Maria D. Molina S. Shyam Sundar Md Main Uddin Rony Department of Advertising and Public Media Effects Research Laboratory College of Information Studies Relations The Pennsylvania State University University of Maryland Michigan State University [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Naeemul Hassan Thai Le Dongwon Lee Philip Merrill College of Journalism College of Information Sciences and College of Information Sciences and College of Information Studies Technology Technology University of Maryland The Pennsylvania State University The Pennsylvania State University [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] ABSTRACT 1 INTRODUCTION Studies show that users do not reliably click more often on head- Click-through is the currency of the modern Internet, with content lines classified as clickbait by automated classifiers. Is this because creators striving to garner clicks by baiting users. As a result, we are the linguistic criteria (e.g., use of lists or questions) emphasized by bombarded daily with a plethora of clickbait, or headlines designed the classifiers are not psychologically relevant in attracting interest, to persuade users to click on them by evoking curiosity and intrigue or because their classifications are confounded by other unknown [1, 2, 6, 36, 40]. Clickbait media used to be associated with low qual- factors associated with assumptions of the classifiers? We address ity and often misleading articles from unreliable sources (e.g., con- these possibilities with three studies—a quasi-experiment using spiracy, junk science, and satire sites) [7, 28, 36], but increasingly, headlines classified as clickbait by three machine-learning models respectable news outlets of established mainstream media have (Study 1), a controlled experiment varying the headline of an iden- resorted to these strategies as well in order to gain user attention tical news story to contain only one clickbait characteristic (Study in a crowded information space [36, 38]. Because clickbait is often 2), and a computational analysis of four classifiers using real-world associated with scams and misinformation, many argue that articles sharing data (Study 3). Studies 1 and 2 revealed that clickbait did utilizing clickbait should be detected and demoted or downranked not generate more curiosity than non-clickbait. Study 3 revealed in news aggregators [1], with extensive efforts in the academic that while some headlines generate more engagement, the detectors community devoted to building algorithms for automatic detection agreed on a classification only 47% of the time, raising fundamental of clickbait. This is exemplified by the 2017 Clickbait Challenge questions about their validity. where teams of scholars worked on clickbait detection solutions to automatically detect this potentially malicious content [34]. But, CCS CONCEPTS are clickbait headlines clickbaity? Do users actually click more on • Human-centered computing ! Interaction design; Empirical clickbait? Literature across different fields show mixed results. On studies in interaction design. the one hand, research reveals a clear user preference toward click- bait content [36, 44]. However, other research reveals that this is not KEYWORDS always the case [29, 30, 37]. There are a few possible reasons for the conflicting findings. First, it is possible that the differences derive clickbait, engagement, content perception, machine learning from the distinct operationalizations of clickbait, with each study ACM Reference Format: utilizing different characteristics of clickbait to study its effects. For Maria D. Molina, S. Shyam Sundar, Md Main Uddin Rony, Naeemul Hassan, example, two studies [29, 37] tested two styles or characteristics of Thai Le, and Dongwon Lee. 2021. Does Clickbait Actually Attract More clickbait—forward-referencing (akin to the “wh” characteristic in Clicks? Three Clickbait Studies You Must Read. In CHI Conference on Human the present study, (i.e., who, what, where, when, why) and questions Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’21), May 08–13, 2021, Yokohama, Japan. (i.e., headlines that ask a question), and compared user engagement ACM, New York, NY, USA, 19 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3411764.3445753 and perceptions between these two styles and non-clickbait head- lines. In Scacco and Muddiman [37], users engaged more with non- Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or clickbait compared to either of the two clickbait styles. In Molyneux classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation and Coddington [29], the question headline was perceived as lower on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM quality than the non-clickbait headline, although the effects were must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, small. On the other hand, Chakraborty [6] and Rony and colleagues to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]. [36] employed several characteristics of clickbait, including ques- CHI ’21, May 08–13, 2021, Yokohama, Japan tions like in Scacco and Muddiman [37] and Molyneux and Cod- © 2021 Association for Computing Machinery. dington [29], but also other characteristics such as listicles, demon- ACM ISBN 978-1-4503-8096-6/21/05...$15.00 https://doi.org/10.1145/3411764.3445753 strative adjectives and hyperboles. Likewise, Venneti and Alam [44] CHI ’21, May 08–13, 2021, Yokohama, Japan Maria Molina et al. utilized several linguistic characteristics in their study, such as the differences in the basic assumptions of computational models might use of exclamation and question marks, length and structure of the be problematic for its classification. headline, as well as entities of the headline such as important events and figures. Contrary to Scacco and Muddiman [37] and Molyneux 2 COGNITIVE PROCESSING OF HEADLINES and Coddington [29], Rony and colleagues [36] and Venneti and The headline serves an important role in a news story because it Alam [44] found that, on average, clickbait received more engage- helps orient readers to the information, summarizing its key ideas, ment than non-clickbait. The difference in the characteristics used and serving as an attention grabber [2, 12]. As Dor [12] explains, a to define clickbait among these studies suggests that the conflicting headline is “a communicative device whose function is to produce findings might be because some characteristics of clickbait might the optimal level of affinity between the content of the story and be more successful than others at generating engagement. Initial the reader’s context of interpretation, in order to render the story evidence of this possibility is revealed in Lockwood’s study [24]. optimally relevant for the reader” (p. 720). Rooted in traditional The author’s analysis of headlines of academic articles revealed print journalism as essentially a tool for improving usability of that while positive framing and arousing framing increased atten- newspapers, the headline has become a critically important feature tion to an academic article, framing the title as a question made no of digital media because a click on it is directly related to revenue. difference, and utilizing wordplay negatively influenced attention. While news organizations acknowledge the importance of a click, A second possibility for the mixed results of the effects of click- they work to accomplish that goal without compromising their bait found in the literature could be the different methodological journalistic standards [40]. This is not the case for other types of approaches to study clickbait engagement. Notably, past studies content that circulate online. Many unreliable websites (e.g., junk conducted using experimental designs and content analysis [29, 37] science and conspiracy theories) utilize strategies such as clickbait find that non-clickbait is more engaging than clickbait. Studies us- to lure audiences into reading their content, but end up not meeting ing automatic detection [36, 44] reveal the opposite pattern. While users’ expectations once they click on the headline [6]. it is possible that the null results from experimental studies is due But, how do clickbaits gain user attention? The way in which to the low external validity of the method, which does not allow headlines are written or framed has powerful effects on how the participants to interact with headlines as they normally would dur- story is perceived. By framing the headline in a particular manner, ing their regular browsing, it is also possible that the engagement the author makes some aspects of the text more salient compared to captured through computational methods do not represent engage- others, in turn promoting a particular definition, interpretation, or ment with clickbait per se, but third variables embedded in the proposition [16]. Making particular pieces of information more no- assumptions of each clickbait detector. For example, while some ticeable and meaningful enhances the likelihood that the reader will computational models are trained with data labeled as clickbait (or perceive them, process them, store them in memory, and engage non-clickbait) by human coders (see [6] for example), other