Clickbait in Education Positive or Negative? Machine Learning Answers

TL;DR

This paper investigates the role of clickbait in educational videos, revealing that audiences often appreciate such content despite its negative reputation and proposing metrics to measure viewer engagement.

Contribution

It is the first study to analyze clickbait in individual-authored educational videos, showing audience preferences and introducing initial metrics for gauging content appeal.

Findings

Audiences value educational videos regardless of clickbait techniques.

Clickbait in educational content can have a positive or neutral impact on viewer perception.

Proposed metrics can help assess the likability of educational videos.

Abstract

The topic of clickbait has garnered lot of attention since the advent of social media. Meriam-Webster defines Clickbait as something designed to make readers want to click on a hyperlink especially when the link leads to content of dubious value or interest. Clickbait is used synonymously with terms with negative connotations such as yellow journalism, tabloid news etc. Majority of the work in this area has focused on detecting clickbait to stop being presented to the reader. In this work, we look at clickbait in the field of education with emphasis on educational videos that are authored by individual authors without any institutional backing. Such videos can become quite popular with different audiences and are not verified by any expert. We present findings that despite the negative connotation associated with clickbait, audiences value content regardless of the clickbait techniques and have an overall favorable impression. We also establish initial metrics that can be used to gauge the likeness factor for such educational videos/MOOCs.