Does clickbait actually attract more clicks? Three clickbait studies you must read

Studies show that users do not reliably click more often on headlines classifed as clickbait by automated classifers. Is this because the linguistic criteria (e.g., use of lists or questions) emphasized by the classifers are not psychologically relevant in attracting interest, or because their classifcations are confounded by other unknown factors associated with assumptions of the classifers? We address these possibilities with three studies-a quasi-experiment using headlines classifed as clickbait by three machine-learning models (Study 1), a controlled experiment varying the headline of an identical news story to contain only one clickbait characteristic (Study 2), and a computational analysis of four classifers using real-world sharing data (Study 3). Studies 1 and 2 revealed that clickbait did not generate more curiosity than non-clickbait. Study 3 revealed that while some headlines generate more engagement, the detectors agreed on a classifcation only 47% of the time, raising fundamental questions about their validity.

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Work Title Does clickbait actually attract more clicks? Three clickbait studies you must read
Access
Open Access
Creators
  1. Maria D. Molina
  2. S. Shyam Sundar
  3. Md Main Uddin Rony
  4. Naeemul Hassan
  5. Thai Le
  6. Dongwon Lee
Keyword
  1. clickbait
  2. engagement
  3. content perception
  4. machine learning
License In Copyright (Rights Reserved)
Work Type Article
Publisher
  1. CHI '21: Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Publication Date May 7, 2021
Publisher Identifier (DOI)
  1. https://doi.org/10.1145/3411764.3445753
Deposited October 14, 2024

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Version 1
published

  • Created
  • Added chi_accessibilityready_2.pdf
  • Added Creator Maria D. Molina
  • Added Creator S. Shyam Sundar
  • Added Creator Md Main Uddin Rony
  • Published
  • Updated
  • Updated Keyword, Publisher, Publication Date Show Changes
    Keyword
    • clickbait, engagement, content perception, machine learning
    Publisher
    • CHI '21: Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
    Publication Date
    • 2021-05-06
    • 2021-05-07
  • Updated Work Title Show Changes
    Work Title
    • Does clickbait actually atract more clicks? three clickbait studies you must read
    • Does clickbait actually attract more clicks? Three clickbait studies you must read
  • Added Creator Naeemul Hassan
  • Added Creator Thai Le
  • Added Creator Dongwon Lee