Abstract
Abstract“Clickbait” media has long been espoused as an unfortunate consequence of the rise of digital journalism. But little is known about why readers choose to read clickbait stories. Is it merely curiosity, or might voters think such stories are more likely to provide useful information? We conduct a survey experiment in Italy, where a major political party enthusiastically embraced the esthetics of new media and encouraged their supporters to distrust legacy outlets in favor of online news. We offer respondents a monetary incentive for correct answers to manipulate the relative salience of the motivation for accurate information. This incentive increases differences in the preference for clickbait; older and less educated subjects become even more likely to opt to read a story with a clickbait headline when the incentive to produce a factually correct answer is higher. Our model suggests that a politically relevant subset of the population prefers Clickbait Media because they trust it more.
Highlights
Utility and media choice A central parameter in the study of political media is the process by which the public selects media to consume
Faced with either a blank search bar or a “feed” of articles on a social media platform (e.g., Facebook) or general interest web portal (e.g., MSN News), the citizen must take some action. She can “scroll” through the feed – a prominent form of online behavior akin to browsing newspaper headlines but far more extensive in terms of content (Settle 2018) – but the central act of media consumption only takes place after she makes a selection or “clicks.” fewer and fewer people navigate directly to media companies’ homepages, and even they have to select an article to read or video to watch (Guess 2018). This shift in the location of media choice has changed the economics of the media industry to what Munger (2019) describes as “Clickbait Media.”
Is a useful case study because it has in many ways been ahead of the rest of the West in terms of disillusionment with the media establishment, and the ensuing rise to power of anti-establishment politicians who embrace the credibility-throughvirality that clickbait entails
Summary
Utility and media choice A central parameter in the study of political media is the process by which the public selects media to consume. Faced with either a blank search bar or a “feed” of articles on a social media platform (e.g., Facebook) or general interest web portal (e.g., MSN News), the citizen must take some action She can “scroll” through the feed – a prominent form of online behavior akin to browsing newspaper headlines but far more extensive in terms of content (Settle 2018) – but the central act of media consumption only takes place after she makes a selection or “clicks.” fewer and fewer people navigate directly to media companies’ homepages, and even they have to select an article to read or video to watch (Guess 2018). Is a useful case study because it has in many ways been ahead of the rest of the West in terms of disillusionment with the media establishment, and the ensuing rise to power of anti-establishment politicians who embrace the credibility-throughvirality that clickbait entails.
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