Tabloids in the Era of Social Media? Understanding the Production and Consumption of Clickbaits in Twitter

20 Pages Posted: 12 Sep 2017

See all articles by Abhijnan Chakraborty

Abhijnan Chakraborty

Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur

Rajdeep Sarkar

Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur

Ayushi Mrigen

Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur

Niloy Ganguly

Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur

Date Written: July 10, 2017

Abstract

With the growing shift towards news consumption primarily through social media sites like Twitter, most of the traditional as well as new-age media houses are promoting their news stories by tweeting about them. The competition for user attention in such mediums has led many media houses to use catchy sensational form of tweets to attract more users - a process known as clickbaiting. In this work, using an extensive dataset collected from Twitter, we analyze the social sharing patterns of clickbait and non-clickbait tweets to determine the organic reach of such tweets. We also attempt to study the sections of Twitter users who actively engage themselves in following clickbait and non-clickbait tweets. Comparing the advent of clickbaits with the rise of tabloidization of news, we bring out several important insights regarding the news consumers as well as the media organizations promoting news stories on Twitter.

Keywords: Clickbaits, Online News, News Sharing in Twitter, Clickbait Readership, Tabloids, Public Sphere, Twitter User Demographics

Suggested Citation

Chakraborty, Abhijnan and Sarkar, Rajdeep and Mrigen, Ayushi and Ganguly, Niloy, Tabloids in the Era of Social Media? Understanding the Production and Consumption of Clickbaits in Twitter (July 10, 2017). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3034591 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3034591

Abhijnan Chakraborty (Contact Author)

Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur ( email )

Kharagpur
IIT Khragpur
Kharagpur, IN West Bengal 721302
India

HOME PAGE: http://cse.iitkgp.ac.in/~abhijnan/

Rajdeep Sarkar

Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur ( email )

Kharagpur
IIT Khragpur
Kharagpur, IN West Bengal 721302
India

Ayushi Mrigen

Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur ( email )

Kharagpur
IIT Khragpur
Kharagpur, IN West Bengal 721302
India

Niloy Ganguly

Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur ( email )

Kharagpur
IIT Khragpur
Kharagpur, IN West Bengal 721302
India

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