TY - JOUR
T1 - Negativity drives online news consumption
AU - Robertson, Claire E.
AU - Pröllochs, Nicolas
AU - Schwarzenegger, Kaoru
AU - Pärnamets, Philip
AU - Van Bavel, Jay J.
AU - Feuerriegel, Stefan
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank John Templeton Foundation Grant No. 61378 and a Russell Sage Foundation grant (G-2110-33990) that funded J.J.V.B. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the paper. We thank Upworthy, as well as J. Nathan Matias, K. Munger, M. Aubin Le Quere and C. Ebersole for making the data available. We also thank W. Brady for helpful feedback.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023, The Author(s).
PY - 2023/5
Y1 - 2023/5
N2 - Online media is important for society in informing and shaping opinions, hence raising the question of what drives online news consumption. Here we analyse the causal effect of negative and emotional words on news consumption using a large online dataset of viral news stories. Specifically, we conducted our analyses using a series of randomized controlled trials (N = 22,743). Our dataset comprises ~105,000 different variations of news stories from Upworthy.com that generated ∼5.7 million clicks across more than 370 million overall impressions. Although positive words were slightly more prevalent than negative words, we found that negative words in news headlines increased consumption rates (and positive words decreased consumption rates). For a headline of average length, each additional negative word increased the click-through rate by 2.3%. Our results contribute to a better understanding of why users engage with online media.
AB - Online media is important for society in informing and shaping opinions, hence raising the question of what drives online news consumption. Here we analyse the causal effect of negative and emotional words on news consumption using a large online dataset of viral news stories. Specifically, we conducted our analyses using a series of randomized controlled trials (N = 22,743). Our dataset comprises ~105,000 different variations of news stories from Upworthy.com that generated ∼5.7 million clicks across more than 370 million overall impressions. Although positive words were slightly more prevalent than negative words, we found that negative words in news headlines increased consumption rates (and positive words decreased consumption rates). For a headline of average length, each additional negative word increased the click-through rate by 2.3%. Our results contribute to a better understanding of why users engage with online media.
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U2 - 10.1038/s41562-023-01538-4
DO - 10.1038/s41562-023-01538-4
M3 - Article
C2 - 36928780
AN - SCOPUS:85148746863
SN - 2397-3374
VL - 7
SP - 812
EP - 822
JO - Nature human behaviour
JF - Nature human behaviour
IS - 5
ER -