Consumers have jumped to blame media outlets for clickbait without considering their contribution to clickbait culture.
Lucee Laursen
Over the past two decades, news and media have substantially changed. News consumption has moved from radio and print platforms to TV and online platforms. For many this is no surprise. A study done in 2016 by the Pew Research Center revealed that 57 percent of Americans often get their news from TV, 38 percent often get their news from online websites and social media. The survey also found that 49-50 percent of people ages 18-49 prefer to get their news online.
When people get their news online, they are much more likely to be exposed to several different options for them to choose from. Think about it this way: If you were to ask Google a question, Google’s search engine would populate pages of responses. But, if you were to go to a newsstand and ask the same question, there would be far fewer choices to pick from.
The heightened access to news is a wonderful thing that also forces consumers to make more choices on their own.
With a news-smorgasbord at their fingertips, consumers now more than ever are able to dictate what stories they click on.
Subsequently, there has been an uptick in consumers accusing media outlets of producing clickbait. And I completely understand why people think this. It is no secret that media outlets are funded in part by selling ads. The more online clicks, the more a media outlet can charge for ad space. This makes it pretty easy to conclude that media outlets’ biggest motivator is the amount of clicks it can get on articles they produce. Which means media strive to produce clickbait.
What people fail to realize is that consumers still have the ultimate say in what they click. They have become their own editors of the media content they choose to read. Thinking back to a Google search — if I ask Google, “Why didn’t Hillary Clinton win the 2016 election?,” more than 6 million results come up. It is up to me to sift through all of the blog posts, opinions articles, research papers, and news articles to figure out what I want to read. At the end of the day, it is my choice as a consumer to decide what I would like to read.
The question becomes: Do clicks dictate what media outlets produce? Or, do media outlets dictate what consumers click on?
I believe we as consumers dictate what media outlets produce. Americans care a lot about sports, so it is no shock that almost every news publication has a sports section. It’s simple supply and demand. This idea becomes tricky when it is intertwined in what we should, as members of society, care about and what we actually do care about.
We would all like to say we care most about prevalent social issues such as gun violence, rape on campus, immigration, wrongful convictions, water shortages, etc., but data say Americans click on stories about sports and celebrities more often than stories about social issues or political elections. Can the media really be blamed for that?
After working in a newsroom, I know that the number of clicks a story receives is not at the forefront of most writers’ minds. Rather, we strive to provide the reader with true reporting and ideas that will make our readers think. Clickbait has become an issue in the media, but media outlets are not to blame.