Concept in Definition ABC

The call clickbait (and that in Spanish we could translate as "bait to get clicks") is a consistent practice in make up the headline of a news item in a way that induces whoever reads it to enter the content to read it everything. It comprises, together with fake news, one of the two phenomena strongly related to information and current affairs in what, paradoxically, is called the “information age”.

It would be, broadly speaking, like a transliteration of journalistic yellowishness (saving the distances) to Internet.

Among the techniques used by the websites that use this method manipulation, we find exaggeration, playing with the reader's morbidness (in various areas and not only in the sexual, which also), the mystery that allows the headline to glimpse, as if only by reading the content we could access privileged information, and certain fears atavistic.

Generally, after having read the "news" (which many times is not such) that has been accessed after clicking on the "bait", the reader feels disappointed.

In this technique to get visits, a good headline that is powerful and attractive and induces a click to access the content, is what matters most. In the end, what is sought is to "sell" irrelevant content at a price of gold, to give it a more prominent pre-eminence than it should be.

It works due to several factors, both due to the techniques of writing headlines, as well as the low educational level to be a consumer of content that many Internet users have.

The truth is that many of us (and whoever writes these lines is not an exception for having fallen into it sometime, although I try to be selective with what that I read) we have not been educated to select what we want to consume today, easily falling into the networks of trash TV and clickbait.

Because, after all, if before I have compared this practice with journalistic yellowishness, the transposition of this Amarillismo from the written media to the audiovisual leads to trash TV, of which clickbait is often direct heir.

And it is not because necessarily a click on a headline leads us to a totally and absolutely irrelevant news, but its real relevance in comparison with what the owner sells us is very different.

A widely used resource consists of resorting to the phrase “what happened next will surprise you to complete the headline.

This phrase is like a compendium of the philosophy clickbait: generate in the reader a reaction of need to access the content.

Because, let's imagine any minimally spectacular headline with this tagline; For example, let's imagine that one rainy day, someone records with his smartphone a video of a woman being dragged due to water flowing down a street as a result of a clogged drain, which ends up running into a car parked. There is nothing curious here beyond the remarkable, right?

In fact, if I were a journalist and they passed me a note recounting this event, I very much doubt that I would publish it. Now, however, let's do a clickbait exercise and write a headline to make this “news” attractive to the easy click:

She Almost Killed Herself! a woman is pushed by the rain, and what happened next, you will be surprised!

Well, honestly: reading the headline, wouldn't you have been curious to know what happened to this poor woman?

Surely, when reading the "news" you would wonder how I justify the headline. Well, maybe, by ending it by saying that she was lucky the car was parked and not in movement, I have it solved.

Annoying right? You have been sold a headline that does not correspond to the body of the news. Well, of course, it corresponds to the essence of what happened (a woman is dragged by the rain; if you're not surprised what happened next... well, not everyone is surprised by the same thing).

Justified? Not at all, but the media using clickbait will certainly see it as justified.

Clickbait often uses grotesque or humorous events, simple anecdotes that would only give for a funny video posted on YouTube, and that for the one who writes it becomes something pseudo-newsworthy.

In fact, in many cases, what we are reading is based precisely on these videos posted on YouTube, or on real anecdotes of which the scope of the headline is oversized.

Another technique commonly used in clickbait is to make lists that include, for example, a photo for each item, placing each photo on a different page, linked to each other.

In this way, and although the Internet user does not go through the entire list, the medium gets more page views.

An example would be The before and after of the 10 Hollywood actors and actresses who have undergone cosmetic surgery. Here the content does not deceive, it is what it sells and, in fact, this list may contain more than a dozen examples, it is something that does not matter or that even benefits.

In this case, attaching the most striking photo to the headline, which will only be presented as the last item on the list, is a common tactic to gain even more page views.

The reader begins the visit to the list thinking that he will soon see that content that the headline seemed to promise him, but after 20 or 30 pages of looking at other photographs, he realizes that the content that seems to be promised is very hidden, and that it will be difficult to reach it.

What is the end goal of clickbait? Get visits, but what for? To get advertising revenue in turn.

The higher the number of page views, a medium can better sell its advertising space by simply showing its numbers, plus it can get more income by clicks on advertising as it increases the chances that a reader clicks on one of the ads that he exposes on his pages.

It is also intended that readers share this content on social networks, so in some cases even trick them into clicking on an element that shares them, even if Facebook it has put an end to these practices.

To promote these clickbait content, the lower parts of web pages are often used, which link to a few content of this type.

Fotolia photos: Faithie / Duris Guillaume

Clickbait topics