Shocking secret you won’t believe! Emotional arousal in clickbait headlines. An eye-tracking analysis
| Date | 11 November 2019 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/OIR-05-2018-0172 |
| Published date | 11 November 2019 |
| Pages | 1136-1150 |
| Author | Supavich (Fone) Pengnate |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science |
Shocking secret you won’t
believe! Emotional arousal in
clickbait headlines
An eye-tracking analysis
Supavich (Fone) Pengnate
Department of Accounting and Information Systems,
North Dakota State University, Fargo, North Dakota, USA
Abstract
Purpose –Clickbait has become a popular strategy for attracting online users by enticing themto follow the
link to a particular website to read further. The purpose of this paper is to fill a gap in the literature by
providing empirical evidence of how clickbait headlines affect online users’emotional and behavioral
responses, specifically emotional arousal and intention to read news. In addition, it is an early attempt to
examine pupillary dilation response as an indicator of emotional arousal in the online news context.
Design/methodology/approach –An experiment was conducted primarily to examine the levels of
emotional arousal evoked by two treatment groups of online news headlines, news and clickbait, compared to
a neutral control group. Emotional arousal was assessed using two approaches –pupillary dilation response
recorded by an eye-tracking device and the Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM) –and the results were compared.
The influence of emotional arousal on intention to read news was hypothesized and tested.
Findings –The level of emotional arousal evoked by the headlines varies. In general, clickbait headlines generate
a higher level of emotional arousal than do the neutral headlines but a lower level than the news headlines. The
results also indicate that the level of emotional arousal measured by pupillary dilation response and by SAM
are somewhat consistent. Emotional arousal appears to be a significant predictor of intention to read news.
Originality/value –This study is an initial attempt to investigate how clickbait headlines influence online
users’perceptions and responses, which will be of interest to researchers and news media publishers. The
current study also provides evidence for adopting pupillary dilation response, an unobtrusive measure of
emotional response, as an alternative methodology for future studies that investigate emotional arousal
related to textual information in the online news context.
Keywords Eye-tracking, Online news, Arousal, Clickbait headlines, Pupillary dilation response
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
In the third quarter of 2018, internet advertising revenues in the USA increased to a record-
setting of $75.8bn (IAB, 2018). This strong growth was driven partly by newly developed
website strategies to attract online users to visit their websites (e.g. Kim and Kim, 2018).
One of the most popular strategies that websites, especially news media publishers, have
employed recently to capture online users’attention is “clickbait.”We define clickbait as an
overly exaggerated news headline hyperlink that entices users to follow the link to read
further. In general, clickbait headlines rely on a forward-reference technique (Yang, 2011),
which is a narrative strategy that provides just enough information to create curiosity and
entice users to satisfy their curiosity by clicking on the headline link. However, instead of
providing verifiable information, the true goal of clickbait headlines is to entice online users
to visit a website that collects view statistics in order to generate revenue from the website’s
advertising (Chakraborty et al., 2016). The forward-referencing technique generally relies on
sensational words to generate headlines, for example, “What Happens to this Man INSIDE a
Online Information Review
Vol. 43 No. 7, 2019
pp. 1136-1150
© Emerald PublishingLimited
1468-4527
DOI 10.1108/OIR-05-2018-0172
Received 14 May 2018
Revised 24 December 2018
20 April 2019
7 August 2019
Accepted 20 September 2019
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/1468-4527.htm
The author appreciates the constructive comments from the editor, associate editor and anonymous
reviewers throughout the review process. The author also thanks Chanchai Tangpong for the
insightful inputs during the revision process of the manuscript.
1136
OIR
43,7
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