Abstract
Clicbait Titles and Click Count Concern in Internet Journalism
The rapid developments in internet technology have forced the change and transformation in media as well as in many areas. Journalism, which is one of the most important branches of the media, has moved to different environments thanks to the internet. In this new environment, the key factor, especially for“good profitability”, is being 'highly preferred'. The indicator of reaching a large number of people in Internet journalism is the number of clicks different from the circulation of newspapers and ratings of television. Internet journalism tries to reach the reader through many different ways and methods in order to prove its competence and to prove that the news being read by many people. However, this effort brings about concessions and violations of ethical rules in terms of news reporting practices. In the news published with the concern of high click count, it is attempted to increase the curiosity of the people using more ambitious headlines, the topics that are not actually worth to be on the news,are examined and expectation of the readers are increased. In addition to the incompatibility and misleading information between the headlines and the content of the news, an extremely exciting language and style are also used. The news produced with this mentality deceives the reader and reduces the trust in internet journalism and internet news. In this study, two of the most followed Internet news sites in Turkey, according to Alexa’s (Top Sites in Turkey) web traffic measurement, were monitored for two weeks (14 days). In these news sites, some sample news were examined and the harmony between the title and (news) texts were analyzed as well as the language and the style used in the news. Various sources related to the topic were also used.
Keywords
Internet journalism, click count concern, clickbait
