Abstract
ABSTRACT Thumbnails and link previews play an outsized role in determining which online content is shared, seen, and engaged with. But conventions for these vary depending on the platform and the content creator. Journalists and non-journalists alike use and sometimes design these thumbnails with often striking differences. On some news aggregators, like Apple News or Google News, the bulk of the thumbnails are photographs related in some way to the linked content. Yet, on other platforms, such as YouTube, the thumbnails are often bespoke designs that allow for more storytelling freedom and potentially more ethical risk compared to camera-based images. This study, informed by visual news values, uses the context of the 2022 stabbing homicide of four University of Idaho students to systematically examine all YouTube thumbnails related to the murder suspect in the first four days after he was publicly identified. In doing so, this study is able to contribute to our understanding of the visual presentation of a crime-related topic with limited source material and is also able to shed much-needed light on how journalistic practices and conventions compare to those of non-journalists in the selection and design of image thumbnails on YouTube.
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