Abstract
In the proliferated age of technologies, the field of journalism has been faced with several challenges that have inevitably pushed journalism practice to unpreceded heights. Overtly, journalists have resorted to various strategies to compete with various media platforms such as social media and other citizen journalistic strategies. Journalists have also resorted to the use of advertising/strategic communication methods to spice up their news stories and attract a large following. Particularly, journalists now use clickbait styles to draw more readership of their own stories. While this has been perceived as a pitfall for journalism, others have argued in favor of these strategies suggesting that they have no effect on the credibility of the media and journalism at large. This experimental study, therefore, set out to understand how the audience perceives clickbait-style headlines in relations to media credibility. Particularly, the study examined whether the Zambian and Tanzanian online news consumers observe the same distinction in the credibility of news content alleged to exist between clickbait and traditional news reporting, and whether perceptions of clickbait headlines lead to lower credibility for news articles. The findings suggest strong statistical evidence that clickbait headlines pose negatives effects on the perceptions of journalistic credibility in Zambia and Tanzania. Key words: Journalism credibility, clickbait, news wire-copying, online news consumers, Zambia, Tanzania.
Highlights
The media in most sub-Saharan Africa is often accused of mediocracy, sensationalism, and many other unethical practices (Mfumbusa, 2008) that continue to impede professionalism
Little or no research exists in sub-Saharan Africa, leaving gaps in literature on the role that „clickbait-styled‟ headlines play in reshaping and allowing the technologically infused field of journalism adapts to the changes. It is for this reason that this experimental study sets out to examine whether the Zambian and Tanzanian online news consumers observe the same distinction in the quality and credibility of news content alleged to exist between clickbait and traditional news reporting, and whether the credibility of a news story is affected by how the audience perceive clickbait headlines in the news story
The results tend to suggest clickbait headlines may still have the ability to lower perception level of credibility and quality. This experimental study was conducted to examine whether the Zambian and Tanzanian online news consumers observe the same distinction in the quality and credibility of news content alleged to exist between clickbait and traditional news reporting, and whether perceptions of „clickbait-styled‟ headlines lead to lower credibility for news articles
Summary
The media in most sub-Saharan Africa is often accused of mediocracy, sensationalism, and many other unethical practices (Mfumbusa, 2008) that continue to impede professionalism. In an effort to improve their practices and reach out to a larger audience, the neoliberal media, mostly driven by market models (Gondwe, 2014), has exorbitantly resorted to fully adapting to advanced technologies including news „clickbait‟-style headlines. These practices, designed to drive web traffic and attention (Molyneux and Coddington, 2020), center their discussions on the reformulation and republishing of news based on the use of clickbait headlines. Some strains of worries have wondered whether such an adaptation is making journalistic practices worse Questions of whether such practices cheapen the field of journalism and drive away the audience continue to underscore the debates
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