Click Bait: You Won’t Believe What Happens Next!

Abstract

The goal of this chapter is to investigate Click Bait, one of the strategies most commonly used by online news journalists aiming to make their headlines more attractive to readers. The chapter begins by studying Social Networks and the power they give marketers in spreading information. Next, a historical context to Click Bait is presented through its origins as Yellow Journalism, a 19th century journalism trend focused on hyperbolizing news headlines in order to increase sales. Finally, Click Bait is studied as the online application of techniques like Yellow Journalism. This section analyzes semantics and some of the most popular headline construction formulas. Literature on this matter concluded that the use of certain headline construction formulas yields significant increase in click-through rates. These increases could be beneficial to the publishing organization as they increase advertising impressions, but could also be detrimental, as these hyperbolic headlines may make readers feel manipulated.