THE CLICKBAIT DEBATE: MYTHS AND REALITIES

HOW quaintly nostalgic to see this page from FIVE YEARS ago to illustrate a piece on how clickbait is “killing journalism”.

Also included in the case for the prosecution were other well-thumbed pieces of evidence that have previously amused the anonymous posters of the mediarati.

But what is the truth about clickbait and listicles in the regional press in 2016? This original research may surprise, irritate or even disappoint the doom-mongers of journalism as we knew it.

It is a chapter from the same book as the original piece above. Save up for your copy now. Lost for Words: Can journalism survive the slow death of print? published by Abramis Academic Publishing in January 2017.

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JOURNALISM'S newest dirty word is clickbait, now shorthand for anything that isn’t traditional, ‘proper’ journalism, especially but not totally confined to online media. But what is really going on deep inside regional newspaper websites? ALAN GEERE gets his hands dirty

THE HEADLINES TELL THEIR OWN STORY

Departing Northern Echo editor Peter Barron warns that future of local journalism cannot be built on 'clickbait'

Spiked column by star writer on Leicester Mercury railed against 'risible' standard of clickbait online journalism

Online journalists' survey: 'Public will soon live off attention-seeking, fact-free, gossipy clickbait'

Once we had comment. Now we have clickbait

WHAT IS CLICKBAIT?

The academic community is surprisingly united in its definition of clickbait and its desired effects. “Clickbaits are articles with misleading titles, exaggerating the content on the landing page. Their goal is to entice users to click on the title in order to monetize the landing page. The content on the landing page is usually of low quality,” say Biyani, Tsioutsiouliklis and Blackmer (2016) in their research paper "8 Amazing Secrets for Getting More Clicks: Detecting Clickbaits in News Streams Using Article Informality”.

Similarly Chen, Conroy and Rubin (2015) assert that “Clickbait refers to content whose main purpose is to attract attention and encourage visitors to click on a link to a particular web page and has been implicated in the rapid spread of rumor and misinformation online”.

Chakraborty et al (2016) maintain that Clickbaits exploit the cognitive phenomenon known as Curiosity Gap.  “Headlines provide forward referencing cues to generate enough curiosity among the readers such that they become compelled to click on the link to fill the knowledge gap.”

WHAT ARE THEY SAYING?

Peter Barron left the Northern Echo after 17 years as editor with a valedictory editorial. In it he reflected on his successes but cautioned readers as follows: “The future of local journalism cannot just be built on 'click-bait' – stories which attract the biggest number of hits online.

“There will be those who call me a dinosaur but if I see another 'stomach-churning compilation of the best spot-squeezing videos' on a 'news' website, I may well take a hammer to my computer. Exploding spots may get lots of hits, and that may attract digital advertising revenue, but it isn’t news.”

In the Midlands Lee Marlow, the writer behind the hard-hitting Fred Leicester column, also wrote a piece when he was made redundant, but the editor at the Leicester Mercury chose note to run it.

Edited highlights of that column are as follows: “We have a website which is updated all day, every day, constantly. Yet it’s a website festooned with so many ads that you try to access it on your phone and it’s barely readable.
“And on that website there will be not just all of the news from the paper, but other ‘news’, too. Stories about Apple iPhone batteries. Product recalls. Some stuff about how people are comparing Leicester City to Donald Trump. (No, really. Apparently, they are.)

“This is ‘internet only’ news. Clickbait. You may have heard of it. It doesn’t have a good reputation and its reputation is deserved, if you’re asking me.

“But you can also see how these stories have been shared. This one had been shared more than 8,000 times on Facebook and Twitter. Click, click, click, click. In this brave new world of digital journalism, this is what counts. The click is always King. It doesn’t matter that your readers are laughing at you when they click. It just matters that they click.”

In South London, reporter Gareth Davies took to Twitter after accepting his redundancy cheque from the Croydon Advertiser to bemoan the direction his old paper was going. “A paper with a proud 147-year history reduced to being a thrown together collection of clickbait written for the web,” he tweeted.

He added: “What do readers get? A website focused on live blogging everything, with reporters told to ‘write like they speak down the pub’. Well, it breaks my heart. I couldn’t stick around to watch the paper be destroyed & I would not help them do it.”

THE NEW NUMBERS

Online audience, not unsurprisingly, continues to grow while print sales fall.

The latest figures for  daily average unique browsers in regional publications (Jan-June 2016) show Newsquest with the biggest group-wide jump over the six months to the end of June, with a 24 per cent rise year-on-year to 1.575m daily uniques, 23 per cent up on the last half of 2015.

Johnston Press was up by 22 per cent year-on-year while Trinity Mirror, which boasted the biggest number of daily uniques at 2.471m, was up 19 per cent year-on-year. The Local World Network, owned by Trinity Mirror, was up 13 per cent year-on-year to 1.393m daily uniques.

THE RESEARCH

For the purposes of this chapter we returned to scene of the crimes above to examine the websites and determine just what sort of job they are doing. They are by definition a snapshot and concentrate on the ‘splash’ page or opening page of the site where by definition any clickbait would reside. Each site was monitored for quantity and quality with a verdict delivered at the end.

NORTHERN ECHO

Newsquest

http://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/

Accessed Friday September 9 2016 at 09.12

Opening page has 25 news stories, four videos, 20 in the Most Popular column.

Sport – 17 stories

National sport – four stories

Four ‘others’ inc the infamous Headline Challenge started by Peter Barron, who lives on it its blurb [see illustration]

Ents (that’s what it’s called) - seven stories

Echo memories – seven

Business news - seven

Trending across the UK – seven stories from other Newsquest titles

National news – seven, although the most recent was 9 hours ago

Most popular (again) – top 18

Social media

Twitter: 41.4k followers, 29.6k tweets, Followers Per Tweet (FPT) ratio 1.4

Very handy Twitter directory of all staff, plus their number of followers, including the ex-editor Peter Barron leading the way with 13.9k followers. The current editor Andy Richardson is still listed as Business Editor with 0 followers, probably because the Twitter name given @bizecho links to a baby supply store in Indonesia.

23k Facebook likes

Verdict: Lots to look at and lots to read, a la DailyMail.co.uk, with a big landing page that takes quite a bit of scrolling through.

Clickbait score 0/10

LEICESTER MERCURY

Trinity Mirror/Local World

Accessed on Friday September 9 2016 at 09.50

http://www.leicestermercury.co.uk/

The top of the opening page has three stories, which are not labelled, one Latest News and two Editor’s Choices.

The lead is a timeline of a fatal crash on the MI, which happened that morning, lively updates with pix and maps.

Sport – seven stories (all Leicester City)

News – seven stories

Entertainments: Features - seven, events - five

Social media

Twitter: 72.7k followers from 75.3k tweets with a FPT ratio of 1.03

Facebook: 45k likes (although link takes away from website)

In common with all Trinity Mirror/Local World sites readers have to “Answer a survey question to continue reading this content”. However, the advice on getting around the survey is neatly provided by the paper on its Facebook page.

Verdict: Practical, purposeful and if anything, a little understated. Plenty going on, but nothing that jumps out at you. The ads are there but aren’t intrusive.

Clickbait rating 0/10

CROYDON ADVERTISER

Trinity Mirror/Local World

http://www.croydonadvertiser.co.uk/

Accessed Friday September 9, 2016 at 08.40

Splash page has three stories plus another headlined Worth The Money?

The lead is a court story with picture taken by reporter

Sport – seven stories, all Crystal Palace

Editor’s Picks – two

More news – six local stories inc ‘The insane giant milkshakes you can now buy in Croydon’ with one comment, which was spam

Most read – five stories (three Crystal Palace)

What’s On - seven features, five events

‘9 things you'll know if you were a regular at London nightclub Fabric’ was more than 1,200 lovingly crafted words by written by a staff member and actually deserved better than the lame listicle headline. Not local though.

Social media

Twitter: 11.8k followers. 15.7k tweets FPT ratio .75

Facebook 19k likes

Verdict: Plenty to read, well written and from a visit later in the day updated regularly. Sponsored content (Staples back to school), some ads but nothing obtrusive.

Clickbait score: 1/10 just for that ‘9 things’ headline

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In the interests of fairness, we also looked at titles from the other two big groups, Johnston Press and Archant – this time selected at random from a numbered list using random.org number generator.

NORWICH EVENING NEWS

Archant

http://www.eveningnews24.co.uk/home

Accessed Tuesday September 6 2016, 12.34

Under ‘Latest’ 10 items – crime, news, views, education, motoring, all time stamped

Mustard tv promo

‘More’ – five items, one sport

Photo galleries – six items

More ‘more’

Most read – top five

Revealed: The number of parents fined at every Norfolk school for taking children out of class was a super FOI story with comments, facts and figs

Social media, reached by big, bold links not the usual tiny symbols

Twitter: 39.7k followers, 59.6k tweets FPT ratio .66

Facebook: 13k likes

Verdict: Bright, accessible page. Interesting to see sport mixed in with other content, although readers can click through to a dedicated page.

Clickbait score: 0/10

NORTHAMPTONSHIRE TELEGRAPH

Johnston Press

http://www.northantstelegraph.co.uk/

Accessed Tuesday September 6 2016 at 14.36

Hot Topics – seven items

Followed by Sky promotion and ‘Supermarket price war’ credited to Offbeat

Sport – eight stories

What’s on – three stories

Essential daily briefing from inews – five stories which open in new window

Lifestyle three stories (two local)

Trending now nine stories (all local)

Promoted stories (nine) ‘Promoted link by Taboola’

Social media

Twitter: 12.1k followers, 39.2k tweets FPT ratio .31

Facebook 25k likes

Verdict: Register to leave a comment clearly is a put-off with just four comments on whole of news page. A neat story on organ donation surrounded by ‘sponsored links’. Felt far more commercial that the other sites looked at.

Clickbait score: 2/10

SO, WHERE ARE WE WITH ‘CLICKBAIT’ AND THE REGIONAL PRESS?

As this research shows claims for the pervasive influence of clickbait appear to be exaggerated. All the sites visited showed an honest commitment to providing local news, sport, information, comment and entertainment to the highest standard.

If anything, they were somewhat prosaic, lacking the, er, buzz of buzzfeed.com, the sheer breadth and depth of dailymail.co.uk or the clickbait heaven (or hell) of cosmopolitan.co.uk.

Perhaps because of the eternal ‘time constraints’ or the effect of job cuts throughout the industry engagement with the audience via website interactivity or through social media was low. Perhaps it’s time for the regional press to get off its high horse and start to realise the full potential of the ‘new media’ at its disposal.

Note on the contributor: Alan Geere is a journalist, academic and international editorial consultant. He was editorial director of Northcliffe Newspapers South-East and, as editor, led the Essex Chronicle to two successive Weekly Newspaper of the Year awards.
As an editorial executive he worked in the UK, Canada, United States and the Caribbean and his consulting career has taken him into 200 newsrooms worldwide.
He was head of the Media, Communications and Journalism undergraduate degree course at Victoria University in Kampala, Uganda and taught journalism at City, Westminster and Worcester Universities. Alan was also a member of the board of the National Council for the Training of Journalists (NCTJ).

REFERENCES

Biyani , Tsioutsiouliklis and Blackmer (2016) 8 Amazing Secrets for Getting More Clicks": Detecting Clickbaits in News Streams Using Article Informality. Proceedings of the Thirtieth AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-16) pp 94-100

Chen, Conroy, and Rubin (2015) Misleading online content: Recognizing clickbait as false news. Proceedings of the 78th American Society for Information Science Annual Meeting: Information Science with Impact: Research in and for the Community pp 15-19

Chakraborty, Paranjape, Kakarla and Ganguly (2016) Stop Clickbait: Detecting and Preventing Clickbaits in Online News Media IEEE/ACM International Conference on Advances in Social Networks Analysis and Mining (ASONAM)

• This piece is a chapter from Lost for Words: Can journalism survive the slow death of print? to be published by Abramis Academic Publishing in January 2017.