What is clickbait?

The term click­bait­ing refers to the use of sug­gest­ive and enticing headlines and de­scrip­tions to convince people to click on an online article. These headlines and de­scrip­tions, known as clickbait, are most commonly used on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. There are certain stylistic devices used here, like an­noun­cing in­cred­ible or un­ex­pec­ted new dis­cov­er­ies or de­vel­op­ments. The idea is to make the article ir­res­ist­ible by ex­ploit­ing the reader through shock, ex­cite­ment, humour, or curiosity. The most common use of this online journ­al­ism is on blogs, news pages, or online magazines, as these pages are measured by click rate and need traffic to be as high as possible in order to sell ad space.

Clickbait is usually created by using an ex­ag­ger­ated title and/or a sen­sa­tion­al de­scrip­tion. This is designed to spark what’s known as the ‘curiosity gap’: a tan­tal­ising pause when the reader simply has to find out more to satisfy their thirst for knowledge. In order to fully achieve this, pub­lish­ers give the reader little snippets of in­form­a­tion to arouse their curiosity. The only way for a reader to bridge the curiosity or ‘knowledge gap’ is to click on the link and read the full story. In the world of TV and theatre, a similar technique is used: this is known as creating a ‘cliff­hanger’. This term is com­mon­place across many art forms and comes as expected from the literal ex­per­i­ence of cliff­hanging, with the idea being to leave the viewer or reader clinging on to find out what happens in the end. The only way to beat this is to keep reading or watching.

Click­bait­ing is present in prac­tic­ally all forms of online journ­al­ism and even in printed news, too. Some of the most famous sources include sites like the Huff­ing­ton Post and Buzzfeed, but there are also many spam sites that utilise this strategy, often by peddling false in­form­a­tion about health, nutrition, and medical break­throughs. Typically, the content reached by clicking on this clickbait includes listicles (articles com­pris­ing lists like ‘the top 10 ways to lose weight fast’), image galleries, and videos. But clickbait has proven so suc­cess­ful that even re­spect­able news outlets like the BBC have resorted to using language like ‘you’ll never believe what’s happened in…’ etc. on their social media pages to entice readers to visit their homepage. Topics that tend to work best are usually ones with an emotional at­tach­ment, like heartfelt stories about children or animals, medical in­form­a­tion and miracle cures, or even sexually sug­gest­ive images. Usually, the reality waiting in the article isn’t quite as spec­tac­u­lar or in­ter­est­ing as the reader expected or the clickbait promised.

Click­bait­ing is often heavily cri­ti­cised in the media world, with serious and respected journ­al­ists generally trying to distance them­selves from the tactics involved. The typical cri­ti­cisms of clickbait are that online journ­al­ists who use click­bait­ing as a technique only want to arouse interest and curiosity for their read­er­ship in order to generate clicks and improve ad revenue. As such, their articles are often poorly re­searched, offer no real value to readers, don’t offer any helpful in­form­a­tion, and in some cases are actually entirely made up. But un­for­tu­nately, readers don’t realise this until it’s too late. Critics of click­bait­ing point to the ma­nip­u­lat­ive approach, taking issue with the fact that the number of clicks is clearly more important than the in­form­at­ive content.

Most internet users can recognise clickbait at first glance nowadays, because the same keywords and ex­pres­sions tend to crop up. Every element – from structure, to tone, to choice of language – is carefully con­struc­ted to achieve the maximum emotional reaction from the user. Some discuss con­ten­tious topics, par­tic­u­larly groups of people or celebrit­ies who polarise opinion, while others tackle general topics that almost everyone has an opinion on. Every message is made ex­cess­ively emotional, with similar buzzwords being used across all forms. Strong ad­ject­ives or even su­per­lat­ives, cliff­hangers, internet slang like ‘wow’ or ‘lol’, and of course lots of call-to-action for­mu­la­tions dominate social media channels that employ click­bait­ing strategies.

Typical, concrete examples of clickbait tend to look a little like this:

• [Insert title] is something you simply can’t miss out on!
• The 10 best XY. Number 6 will make you cry…
• This story is un­be­liev­able!
• You’ll never guess what happens next!
• The biggest/best/most un­be­liev­able...
• This woman went for a walk, when suddenly this happened
• OMG! This video is crazy!
• SHOCK! What this man has dis­covered will make you scream!
• She was just your everyday teacher, until this happened …
• Doctors don’t want you to know this 1 miracle tip to weight loss

The topic of click­bait­ing is being discussed more and more. Un­for­tu­nately, this is usually because certain spam sites and portals con­sist­ently overstep the mark, reaping severe criticism from the world of online media. An­nounce­ments about miracle cures have led to elderly people being tricked into buying incorrect medicine, while falsified in­form­a­tion about celebrit­ies that include a name and a photo are con­sidered invasions of privacy and public slander. In some cases, readers have even been presented with images of a handful of celebrit­ies with taglines like ‘one of these celebrit­ies has died’ or ‘guess which of these four celebrit­ies has cancer’. It’s for these reasons that click­bait­ing is so frowned upon – it toys with the emotions of users and warps the truth in order to trick the general public for the sake of in­creas­ing personal gain. Other com­plaints are that it’s annoying, dis­tract­ing, un­ne­ces­sary, and that it’s a bad influence for children. But there are of course some positive aspects to click­bait­ing that have made it such a phe­nomen­on of modern online com­mu­nic­a­tion. From a marketing per­spect­ive, clickbait is certainly an in­ter­est­ing topic, par­tic­u­larly since it’s focused on the mon­et­isa­tion of websites on the whole. For readers who run online blogs and wish to earn money from them, the most important thing is to generate clicks. The more clicks and therefore website traffic that you can generate, the higher price you can put on ad space featured on your blog. And it’s been proven that sites using clickbait tactics tend to have very high click rates, so the technique clearly does work. It’s the lack of real quality on the site at the end that is so heavily cri­ti­cised, so if you can ensure that you provide quality content on your blog and try to avoid lies and rumours in your clickbait titles, you may be able to avoid criticism, too.