Bored Panda reached out to Anna-Katharina Jung, a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Computer Science at the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany, and a scientific project manager, to learn more about why some publications resort to bold headlines.
Jung’s research focuses on the moral responsibility of communicators on social media, particularly in the context of misinformation, rumors, and gender in journalism. In one of her papers, she explored the impact of clickbait on user engagement in social media, making her the ideal expert to speak with.
“In today’s media landscape, where anyone can create messages and posts, the most important resource is attention,” Jung explained. “As a media creator, I need to generate attention for my content for it to be consumed and shared. Many journalistic business models still rely on readers visiting homepages and being exposed to advertising that finances the media.”
“Other business models, like subscriptions and paywalls, lessen the pressure of high click-through rates, but attention remains a key goal,” she added. “The need to capture attention is the main reason techniques like clickbait are used, encouraging users to click on posts, whether on social networks or websites.”
