We know that negativity, 1 likeminded ideas, 2 and use of puns and metaphors 3 in a headline can increase the chance that a person clicks on a story. Take Twitter, for example, where journalists have only 140 characters to get people to click on a news story. Further, in social media contexts, the headline may be all people see. Many news sites, including major media organizations like USA Today, list little more than a headline on their home pages. In a digital news environment, headlines clearly play a major role in the news that people decide to read. To close our discussion of headlines, we offer two areas of research that need more attention in relation to news headlines: news selection and news credibility. In a digital news environment, however, headlines may prompt new effects. There is no reason to believe that these effects will disappear as news (and the headlines that go with news stories) turns digital.
Nearly all of the research cited examines headlines in traditional – rather than digital – news contexts. Headlines have important effects on readers. Both academic and practical research needs to address headlines both for their ability to draw attention to a story and also for their potential to help people learn from the news. The right headline can help people learn from the news, and the wrong headline might gain clicks but encourage readers to remember incorrect information. Headlines arose out of formatting changes in the twentieth century and continue to hold importance as digital news gains prominence. They summarize news stories, direct readers’ attention to certain facts over others, and help news users decide on which stories to click. Headlines are nearly universal in the news. As the first part of our research efforts, we investigated what we know about the functions and types of headlines, their content and use in news stories, and their effects on audiences as examined in previous research. The Center for Media Engagement has begun conducting research on the content and effects of different types of headlines. Academic researchers, like those overviewed in this paper, tend not to use the specific term “clickbait.” They have, however, studied different types of headlines ranging from traditional to sensationalist and many types in between. Nontraditional headlines that attempt to drive visitors to a news page are called “Clickbait” by industry professionals. In addition to traditional headlines that incorporate the essential elements of a story, more modern headlines also are written so as to instill curiosity, ask interesting questions, or lead to particular conclusions. The New York Times headlines an article as “Climate Change Will Disrupt Half of North America’s Bird Species.” National Geographic frames the same story as “Climate Change May Put Half of North American Birds at Risk of Extinction.” Headlines can distill reality, but with varying degrees of certainty, tone, and outcome.įor many outlets navigating the changes associated with digital journalism, news headlines have changed as well. They encapsulate a portion of the story, presenting a snapshot of reality. These short statements located at the beginning of an article frame the information that is to follow. Headlines are the marquees of news stories.
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