Clickbait

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===News===
 
===News===
 
These websites ostensibly serve as general news websites with coverage of both political events and entertainment as well. Often, their headlines are politically slanted depending on the sites' target audiences (which are noted in the following list) and misleading. These websites intend to have their content shared en masse on social media sites; this is how politically biased information spreads rapidly on the Internet while more sober, reality-based information is obscured.
 
These websites ostensibly serve as general news websites with coverage of both political events and entertainment as well. Often, their headlines are politically slanted depending on the sites' target audiences (which are noted in the following list) and misleading. These websites intend to have their content shared en masse on social media sites; this is how politically biased information spreads rapidly on the Internet while more sober, reality-based information is obscured.
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Although the conservative ''Daily Caller'' and liberal ''[[Huffington Post]]'' do have more sober, show-don't-pander headlines for its articles, those sites are guilty of using emotional manipulation to attract traffic. Both websites often post galleries of [[NSFW]] (though not exactly pornographic) photos of women that are filed under the entertainment sections yet often promoted on the front page. Additionally, ''Daily Caller'' has sometimes used explicitly [[racism|racially charged]] headlines. One story was once titled "Black males are viciously beating people at random at the University of Illinois" befoe being retitled to the more neutral "Gang Of Men Is Viciously Beating People At Random At The University Of Illinois".<ref>[https://twitter.com/DailyCaller/status/522977762739777537 Twitter post on Oct. 17], then the [http://web.archive.org/web/20141018062517/http://dailycaller.com/2014/10/17/black-males-are-viciously-beating-people-at-random-at-the-university-of-illinois/ article as of Oct. 18, 2014 via Wayback Machine]</ref>
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*[[The Blaze]] (conservative)
 
*[[The Blaze]] (conservative)
 
*[http://www.buzzfeed.com/ Buzzfeed] (liberal)
 
*[http://www.buzzfeed.com/ Buzzfeed] (liberal)
*[http://dailycaller.com/ Daily Caller] (conservative)
 
 
*[[Daily Mail]] ([[tabloid]])
 
*[[Daily Mail]] ([[tabloid]])
 
*[[Drudge Report]] (conservative)
 
*[[Drudge Report]] (conservative)
*[[Huffington Post]] (liberal)
 
 
*[http://ijreview.com/ Independent Journal Review] (conservative)
 
*[http://ijreview.com/ Independent Journal Review] (conservative)
 
*[http://thepoliticalinsider.com/ The Political Insider] (conservative)
 
*[http://thepoliticalinsider.com/ The Political Insider] (conservative)

Revision as of 01:46, 23 October 2014

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Clickbait or alternatively click-bait or click bait refers to any sort of underhanded tactic used by webpages to garner more page visits, often on social media websites. This can be accomplished a number of different ways, from posting emotionally pleasing but intellectually vacuous material, presenting an incomplete news article or video with a possibly deceptive title, using emotional appeals such as "You won't believe what happens when...", presenting sexually suggestive imagery, posting a quiz to find out "Which _______ character are you?" (or other inane online quizzes whose only purpose is to stroke the quiz taker's ego), or using provocative pseudoscientific or conspiracy theory material (novel ideas are more interesting than non-novel ideas and with argumentum ad populum reinforcing its validity, social media becomes a very effective propagator of these ideas[1]).

Contents

Common examples

The term is used in an adjective and derogatory form to describe websites which participate in clickbaitery.

News

These websites ostensibly serve as general news websites with coverage of both political events and entertainment as well. Often, their headlines are politically slanted depending on the sites' target audiences (which are noted in the following list) and misleading. These websites intend to have their content shared en masse on social media sites; this is how politically biased information spreads rapidly on the Internet while more sober, reality-based information is obscured.

Although the conservative Daily Caller and liberal Huffington Post do have more sober, show-don't-pander headlines for its articles, those sites are guilty of using emotional manipulation to attract traffic. Both websites often post galleries of NSFW (though not exactly pornographic) photos of women that are filed under the entertainment sections yet often promoted on the front page. Additionally, Daily Caller has sometimes used explicitly racially charged headlines. One story was once titled "Black males are viciously beating people at random at the University of Illinois" befoe being retitled to the more neutral "Gang Of Men Is Viciously Beating People At Random At The University Of Illinois".[2]

Humor

Quackery/woo/conspiracy theories

Science (unfortunately)

Footnotes

  1. "Data Mining Reveals How Conspiracy Theories Emerge on Facebook". MIT Technology Review. March 18, 2014. http://www.technologyreview.com/view/525616/data-mining-reveals-how-conspiracy-theories-emerge-on-facebook/. 
  2. Twitter post on Oct. 17, then the article as of Oct. 18, 2014 via Wayback Machine
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