Fake News and Clickbait

September 21, 2021

How many times have you clicked on an online article, only to find it has no relevance to the title it was given? In this extract from Communicate for Change, Genelle Aldred explores the rise of clickbait, and the effect that negative stories can have on our opinions of groups of individuals.

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In the arena of the news, it’s more important than ever to be the first to break stories. It is imperative to help the reader to understand the message quickly, so the pieces have to be easily digestible. This competition for an audience results in what is termed clickbait: misleading headlines designed to make people click on an article. The more sensational the story headline, the greater the number of people who will choose to read that version of events. But – surprise, surprise – not much in the article correlates with the exciting headline. Nevertheless, people are reeled in; they click!

In the chase for an ever-increasing number of readers, I would say that many journalists have found themselves writing headlines that don’t truly reflect their articles. I have done it. I’ve looked for the best angle to increase that audience share because larger numbers usually result in more advertising revenue or greater influence. When you’re immersed in this activity, it doesn’t seem to be as intentional or as sinister as it sounds. Whatever the intent, the cumulative effect of the pattern of repeated clickbaiting is one of the reasons social media have eroded trust in the news. Many people find it difficult to discern what is truth and what is spin.

When the phrase ‘alternative facts’ entered the picture a few years ago, things began to look extremely bleak for objective truth. The very definition of a fact means that there’s no such thing as an alternative one. To the reading and viewing public, the term ‘alternative facts’ just seems to confirm their belief that news is fake and untruths abound. On the one hand, the sensationalizing and simplifying of stories and headlines has come to be an accepted part of the news landscape. On the other, the idea that it might simply be about increasing audience share doesn’t mean that the impact is benign. The sensationalizing happens over and over again, focusing on particular groups of people. If those who receive the news through various media don’t know the true stories, the simplified, sensationalized versions will fill the void of knowledge, and, over time, these versions will be assumed to be true.

Hillary Rodham Clinton, speaking in a documentary called Hillary, highlights how anything that is continually repeated becomes ‘the truth’:
‘Here is what I want people to understand,’ she says. ‘Even when something is disproved, people remember the allegation was made . . . that kind of constant character assault takes a toll. Even people who are supporters [and] friends, they brush it off. They don’t believe it. But it still has a little space in the back of their heads, so if something else happens, that space gets a little bigger. That’s been the story of my public life.’

Hillary calls herself the ‘most investigated innocent person’. I cannot say whether or not she is guilty of the things reported about her, but she’s right on this point, her comment about the ‘little space in the back of ’ of her friends’ heads. If that small gap, which contains a bit of the lie, exists in her friends’ minds, how much bigger is the gap in the minds of strangers? Most of us know Hillary only through the media. What are your views of her?

We might think that we are unaffected by the negative stories but we’re not – not entirely. It wasn’t until one of my sisters had a Muslim friend who spent time with us, including at large family gatherings, that I looked more closely at stories that conflated terrorism with Islam. I began to choose to see Muslims differently: as a group of individuals who do not act in an homogeneous way.

Let’s think about the portrayal of young Black men in the news. We usually see them in relation to stabbings, drugs and gangs. This representation criminalizes all Black men by association. If the news is our primary source of information about Black men, those stories of crime will, over time, become our ‘truth’ about them. The idea that Black men are dangerous is planted deep down in our psyche. These thoughts may not manifest themselves as a visceral reaction until we find ourselves in a situation with a young Black man or men. If we were to meet such people walking down the street (which isn’t a crime), where would our minds go to first? Would we automatically think about safety and that we might have to fight or flee those whom we perceive as dangerous?