Do Germans Fall for Clickbait? Keep Reading To Find out! | Stefan Mitikj

This study investigates how incentives for accuracy affect the selection of clickbait headlines in digital media consumption, focusing on a sample of 2,089 German citizens. The experiment involved priming participants through political and environmental messaging, with and without notice of a quiz, targeting demographics like age, education level, and digital literacy. Participants exposed to incentives for accuracy did not show a clear preference for political clickbait headlines. However, in the absence ofcentives, there was a sligcht inclination towards engaging with environmental clickbait content. This suggests that preferences for clickbait are topic dependent. More specifically, age played a significant role, with older participants showing increased engagement with non-clickbait content when incentives for accuracy were present. Similarly, less educated individuals tended to prefer non-clickbait options when a quiz was mentioned. The study also explores how digital literacy impacts news engagement, revealing that pre-experiment comfort with online services such as Amazon, Google Workspace, and Zoom influenced the selection of non-clickbait political headlines in quiz-informed scenarios — higher comfort correlated with a greater likelihood of choosing non-clickbait.

Read the article here