How Facebook clickbaits you will BLOW your mind…! – Cosmos Magazine

You’re smart. You’re discerning. You consider yourself to be the kind of person who doesn’t get swept up in ridiculous things online. So, why did you do that quiz to learn which Spongebob character represents your personality? And why did you click on that “then and now” article about the actors from Family Ties? Let’s not even get into all the articles about “performance” and “growth”… Let’s face it, clickbait gets us all. But how does it work? And when does it work best? German researchers have published their analysis of thousands of Facebook posts in the PLOS ONE journal. Their findings explore the impact of clickbait and “digital nudging” in news headlines. Read more: A little birdie told me: Twitter by the numbers “Clickbait to make people click on a linked article is commonly used on social media,” they write. “We analyse the impact of clickbait on user interaction on Facebook in the form of liking, sharing and commenting. For this, we use a dataset of more than 4,000 Facebook posts from 10 different news sources to analyse how clickbait in post headlines and in post text influences user engagement. While clickbait is commonly used, digital nudging is still…
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