During the Lunar New Year holiday, many people were likely staring at their smartphones, trying to avoid being roped into an awkward conversation with relatives they do not really know.
Spending too much time browsing news on social media platforms or in instant messaging groups opens people of all generations up to “clickbait headlines.”
Clickbait articles often take advantage of human weaknesses by using sensational headlines that do not match news content to attract people to access their site, boosting network traffic.
Most of the time, the headlines and the content beneath them bear little resemblance to each other.
The most extreme cases are headlines that have almost nothing to do with the text; other headlines might describe an event in exaggerated terms.
There are also clickbait articles that appeal to human nature, with headlines designed to elicit fear or curiosity. Writers of such headlines employ a variety of tricks:
The first is to deliberately omit where the events in the report took place. This plays on a reader’s assumption that the story is about their own country. This might lure Taiwanese into a story about events that might be commonplace overseas, but would be interesting here due to cultural differences.
The second trick is to use sensationalist or violent words. The headline might use “slap” or “cyberriot,” but the article describes events that were far from a slap, while a cyberriot might just mean that people commented on the subject online, while the subject of the report is of little significance.
The third trick is to allude to the supernatural in headlines with the intention to evoke fear in the reader.
While prophecies are mostly unverifiable, they can prompt fear.
However, such articles are typically an insult to the intelligence of readers.
The fourth trick is to use a third-person pronoun instead of a name in headlines — for example: “He hit the nail on the head” — to arouse curiosity. A headline that replaces names with “he” or “she” is likely not a good source of information. A writer with a good reputation and high credibility would never produce such a headline. A similar trick is to substitute a noun with “this” or “these.”
If people need to avoid socializing with relatives, they would be better served by downloading an electronic book. Clickbait articles waste time and phone battery.
Chang Yueh-han is an assistant professor in Shih Hsin University’s Department of Journalism.
Translated by Eddy Chang
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