Clickbait for climate change: comparing emotions in headlines and full-texts and their engagement

IF 4.2 1区文学 Q1 COMMUNICATION

Information Communication & Society Pub Date : 2022-03-13 DOI:10.1080/1369118X.2022.2050416

Zhan Xu, Mary Laffidy, L. Ellis

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引用次数: 1

Abstract

ABSTRACT Anthropogenic climate change remains a polarizing topic. As most social media users share articles solely relying on the headline, this raises the question of how emerging digital media reporting – especially in the headlines – shapes the perception of climate change issues and engages audiences. Guided by the dual-systems emotion model and discrete-emotions model, this study compared emotion words used in headlines versus full text among climate change articles – and their social media engagement, using computational methods. Findings suggested that climate change support headlines were more likely to use fear words while denial headlines were significantly more likely to contain emotion words, negatively-valenced words, as well as words for anger, anticipation, disgust, sadness, and surprise. Regarding the full text, denial articles were more likely to contain emotion words, negatively-valenced words, and many discrete emotions related words than support articles. A denial article’s engagement was predicted by the total number of emotion words contained in its headline, whereas a support article’s engagement was predicted by negatively-valenced words and words for fear used in its headline. Emotions contained in the full text did not predict support and -denial articles’ engagement. Findings provide practical guidance on how to increase the engagement level of climate change articles.

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气候变化的标题党:比较标题和全文中的情绪及其参与度

人为气候变化仍然是一个两极分化的话题。由于大多数社交媒体用户仅依靠标题分享文章，这就提出了一个问题，即新兴的数字媒体报道——尤其是标题中的报道——如何塑造对气候变化问题的看法并吸引观众。在双系统情绪模型和离散情绪模型的指导下，本研究使用计算方法比较了气候变化文章中标题和全文中使用的情绪词，以及它们在社交媒体上的参与度。研究结果表明，支持气候变化的头条新闻更有可能使用恐惧词，而否认的头条新闻则更有可能包含情绪词、负价词，以及愤怒、期待、厌恶、悲伤和惊讶的词。关于全文，否认文章比支持文章更有可能包含情绪词、负价词和许多离散的情绪相关词。否认文章的参与度是通过其标题中包含的情感词的总数来预测的，而支持文章的参与程度是通过标题中使用的负价词和恐惧词来预测的。全文中包含的情感并不能预测支持和否认文章的参与度。研究结果为如何提高气候变化文章的参与程度提供了实际指导。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Information Communication & Society Multiple-

CiteScore

10.20

自引率

4.80%

发文量

110

期刊介绍： Drawing together the most current work upon the social, economic, and cultural impact of the emerging properties of the new information and communications technologies, this journal positions itself at the centre of contemporary debates about the information age. Information, Communication & Society (iCS) transcends cultural and geographical boundaries as it explores a diverse range of issues relating to the development and application of information and communications technologies (ICTs), asking such questions as: -What are the new and evolving forms of social software? What direction will these forms take? -ICTs facilitating globalization and how might this affect conceptions of local identity, ethnic differences, and regional sub-cultures? -Are ICTs leading to an age of electronic surveillance and social control? What are the implications for policing criminal activity, citizen privacy and public expression? -How are ICTs affecting daily life and social structures such as the family, work and organization, commerce and business, education, health care, and leisure activities? -To what extent do the virtual worlds constructed using ICTs impact on the construction of objects, spaces, and entities in the material world? iCS analyses such questions from a global, interdisciplinary perspective in contributions of the very highest quality from scholars and practitioners in the social sciences, gender and cultural studies, communication and media studies, as well as in the information and computer sciences.