TY - GEN
T1 - Does clickbait actually atract more clicks? three clickbait studies you must read
AU - Molina, Maria D.
AU - Sundar, S. Shyam
AU - Rony, Md Main Uddin
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 ACM.
PY - 2021/5/6
Y1 - 2021/5/6
N2 - 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.
AB - 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.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85106752194&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85106752194&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1145/3411764.3445753
DO - 10.1145/3411764.3445753
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85106752194
T3 - Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings
BT - CHI 2021 - Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
PB - Association for Computing Machinery
T2 - 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems: Making Waves, Combining Strengths, CHI 2021
Y2 - 8 May 2021 through 13 May 2021
ER -