Tabloids in the Era of Social Media? Understanding the Production and Consumption of Clickbaits in Twitter

TL;DR

This paper investigates how clickbait tweets on Twitter influence news consumption, analyzing sharing patterns and user engagement to understand the rise of sensational news in social media.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of clickbait production and consumption patterns on Twitter, highlighting their role in the tabloidization of online news.

Findings

Clickbait tweets have higher organic reach than non-clickbait tweets.

Engaged users tend to follow and share more clickbait content.

The rise of clickbait correlates with increased tabloidization in social media news.

Abstract

With the growing shift towards news consumption primarily through social media sites like Twitter, most of the traditional as well as new-age media houses are promoting their news stories by tweeting about them. The competition for user attention in such mediums has led many media houses to use catchy sensational form of tweets to attract more users - a process known as clickbaiting. In this work, using an extensive dataset collected from Twitter, we analyze the social sharing patterns of clickbait and non-clickbait tweets to determine the organic reach of such tweets. We also attempt to study the sections of Twitter users who actively engage themselves in following clickbait and non-clickbait tweets. Comparing the advent of clickbaits with the rise of tabloidization of news, we bring out several important insights regarding the news consumers as well as the media organizations promoting news stories on Twitter.