November 12, 2025 • 8 mins
A new study analyzed 40 million news headlines across multiple countries and found a significant shift toward longer, more negative, and more sensational headlines resembling clickbait. Driven by algorithms and the pressures of the attention economy, this trend affects public mood, trust in journalism, and the effectiveness of misinformation detection, highlighting the need to rethink online design and prioritize depth and informed readership over simple click-through rates.
Read the full article at https://www.paperleap.com/blog/articles/headline-evolution-how-news-became-clickbait-0cccu4
Read the full article at https://www.paperleap.com/blog/articles/headline-evolution-how-news-became-clickbait-0cccu4
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the paper Leap podcast, where a science takes
the mic. Each episode, we discuss cutting edge research, groundbreaking discoveries,
and the incredible people behind them, across disciplines and across
the world. Whether you're a curious mind, a researcher, or
just love learning, you're in the right place before we start.
(00:21):
Don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an insight.
All the content is also available on paper leap dot com. Okay, ready,
let's start. Open any news site today and you'll likely
see headlines that read less like the clipped summaries of
old newspapers and more like little teasers designed to spark
(00:43):
curiosity or outrage. What happened to the traditional no nonsense
news headline? A study by researchers at the Max Planck
Institute for Human Development in Berlin and their collaborators provides
one of the most sweeping ants yet. Over the past
two decades, headlines around the world have systematically shifted toward
(01:07):
a style that looks a lot like clickbait. The study,
published in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, analyzed forty million
news headlines from outlets across the US, UK, India, Australia,
and beyond. The researchers Pietro Nicol, mox Plank Institute, Humboldt University,
(01:29):
Moxplnk School of Cognition, Mehdi Musa'id Moxplunk Institute and Mohammed
six Polytechnic University in Morocco, and Philip Lorenz Spreen Moxplunk
Institute and Tu Dresden wanted to see how the language
of headlines has adapted to the online world. Their conclusion
is both unsurprising and sobering. As the battle for attention
(01:51):
has intensified, headlines have become longer, more conversational, and increasingly negative.
Think of the Internet as a bustling marketplace. In the
old days, newspapers bundled dozens of stories together in one package.
A dry headline like mayor approves, budget plan might not
(02:12):
grab you, but it sat alongside sports scores, recipes and comics,
so the paper as a whole sold anyway. Online that
bundle is gone. Each article is now a standalone product
competing for a click. If your headline doesn't catch someone's eye,
your story might vanish into the digital void. Add to that,
(02:33):
the rise of algorithms, Facebook's newsfeed, Google News twitter x
trends that constantly reshuffle what people see, and headlines have
become survival tools. This is what economists call the attention economy.
Our clicks are the currency, and headlines are the marketing slogans.
(02:54):
The researchers compared today's headlines with those of the early
two thousands. They found several big shifts. Headlines got longer.
Instead of the terse, telegraphic style of print governor signs,
bill headlines now resemble full sentences or even conversational quips.
Here's why you'll be paying more for groceries this winter.
(03:17):
Over time, headlines grew more likely to emphasize conflict, danger,
or problems. Global warming threatens crops is more common than
new farming methods, boast yields. Also, pronouns and curiosity gaps appeared.
Words like you, this, why, and what. Hollmarks of clickbait
(03:38):
became more common. A headline might say you won't believe
what scientists found under the ice, without telling you what
they actually found. Finally, noun phrases gave way to full sentences.
Older headlines often just listed facts in shorthand, election results
in dispute. Now they're written more like little stories voters
(04:01):
clash as election results spark dispute. In short, the linguistic
fingerprint with clickbait has crept into mainstream news everywhere. Why
negativity wins. One significant finding is that negative headlines consistently
performed better than positive ones in previous experiments, and news
(04:23):
outlets seem to have learned that lesson humans are wired
to pay attention to threats, conflicts, and bad news. Psychologists
call this negativity bias online. That bias gets amplified the
scarier the headline, the more likely it is to grab
a click. That's why you're more likely to see airline
(04:44):
chaos as flights canceled than flights resume smoothly after delay.
The researchers highlight how technology accelerated these changes. Take Upworthy
and now faded American website, famous in the early twenty
tens for headlines like I'm no Supreme Court expert, but
I kind of think you shouldn't be able to pay
(05:06):
for this. Upworthy perfected the art of ab testing, showing
different headline versions to small groups of users to see
which one got the most clicks, then rolling the winner
out to millions. For a while, its formula dominated Facebook feeds.
But when Facebook tweaked its algorithm to prioritize time spent
(05:27):
over click through rate, upworthyse traffic collapsed almost overnight. This
cat and mouse game shows how fragile online success can
be and how much control algorithms exert over journalistic style.
It's not just tabloids. Everyone's doing it. You might assume
(05:47):
these changes are confined to low quality tabloids or partisan outlets.
Not so. The study found the trends across The New
York Times, The Guardian, The Times of India, ABC News
Australia and beyond. The researchers also slice the data by
political leaning. Right leaning outlets showed the steepest rise in negativity,
(06:09):
but the overall patterns held across the spectrum. Now, this
study is extremely relevant because headlines shape how we perceive
the world. They're often the only part of the story
most people ever read. If the default mode of news
is now more negative, more sensational, and more manipulative, that
(06:30):
affects public mood, trust in journalism, and even democracy itself.
There's also a danger for misinformation detection. Many tools that
flag fake news rely on stylistic cues like excessive negativity,
pronouns or unusual punctuation. But if mainstream journalism increasingly uses
(06:51):
the same tricks, those cues may no longer work. So
can we design a better way to do journalism? The
authors say suggest that if we don't like where this
is heading, the answer isn't to blame individual journalists. It's
to rethink the digital environment. Platforms could design metrics that
reward depth instead of just clicks. The Guardian, for example,
(07:14):
now has a deeply read list alongside its most viewed list,
highlighting stories that held reader's attention for longer. What if
algorithms ranked stories not by outrage or curiosity gaps, but
by diversity of readership or by how well they informed people.
The study argues that these choices are not inevitable, they're
(07:35):
design decisions. This research is a rare, large scale look
at how language evolves under technological pressure. Just as telegrams
forced brevity and texting gave rise to emojis, online news
has birthed a new headline style, longer, punchier, more emotional.
The researcher's hope is that by documenting these shifts, society
(07:58):
can make more informed desc decisions about the information environment.
We want to have. Do we want a public sphere
optimized for outrage and quick clicks or one that fosters
understanding and trust. The answer, they argue, is up to
us and the way we design the digital marketplace where
headlines now shout for our attention. That's it for this
(08:22):
episode of the paper Leap podcast. If you found it
thought provoking, fascinating, or just informative, share it with the
fellow science nerd. For more research highlights and full articles,
visit paperleaf dot com. Also make sure to subscribe to
the podcast. We've got plenty more discoveries to unpact. Until
next time, Keep questioning, keep learning,
Welcome to the paper Leap podcast, where a science takes
the mic. Each episode, we discuss cutting edge research, groundbreaking discoveries,
and the incredible people behind them, across disciplines and across
the world. Whether you're a curious mind, a researcher, or
just love learning, you're in the right place before we start.
(00:21):
Don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an insight.
All the content is also available on paper leap dot com. Okay, ready,
let's start. Open any news site today and you'll likely
see headlines that read less like the clipped summaries of
old newspapers and more like little teasers designed to spark
(00:43):
curiosity or outrage. What happened to the traditional no nonsense
news headline? A study by researchers at the Max Planck
Institute for Human Development in Berlin and their collaborators provides
one of the most sweeping ants yet. Over the past
two decades, headlines around the world have systematically shifted toward
(01:07):
a style that looks a lot like clickbait. The study,
published in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, analyzed forty million
news headlines from outlets across the US, UK, India, Australia,
and beyond. The researchers Pietro Nicol, mox Plank Institute, Humboldt University,
(01:29):
Moxplnk School of Cognition, Mehdi Musa'id Moxplunk Institute and Mohammed
six Polytechnic University in Morocco, and Philip Lorenz Spreen Moxplunk
Institute and Tu Dresden wanted to see how the language
of headlines has adapted to the online world. Their conclusion
is both unsurprising and sobering. As the battle for attention
(01:51):
has intensified, headlines have become longer, more conversational, and increasingly negative.
Think of the Internet as a bustling marketplace. In the
old days, newspapers bundled dozens of stories together in one package.
A dry headline like mayor approves, budget plan might not
(02:12):
grab you, but it sat alongside sports scores, recipes and comics,
so the paper as a whole sold anyway. Online that
bundle is gone. Each article is now a standalone product
competing for a click. If your headline doesn't catch someone's eye,
your story might vanish into the digital void. Add to that,
(02:33):
the rise of algorithms, Facebook's newsfeed, Google News twitter x
trends that constantly reshuffle what people see, and headlines have
become survival tools. This is what economists call the attention economy.
Our clicks are the currency, and headlines are the marketing slogans.
(02:54):
The researchers compared today's headlines with those of the early
two thousands. They found several big shifts. Headlines got longer.
Instead of the terse, telegraphic style of print governor signs,
bill headlines now resemble full sentences or even conversational quips.
Here's why you'll be paying more for groceries this winter.
(03:17):
Over time, headlines grew more likely to emphasize conflict, danger,
or problems. Global warming threatens crops is more common than
new farming methods, boast yields. Also, pronouns and curiosity gaps appeared.
Words like you, this, why, and what. Hollmarks of clickbait
(03:38):
became more common. A headline might say you won't believe
what scientists found under the ice, without telling you what
they actually found. Finally, noun phrases gave way to full sentences.
Older headlines often just listed facts in shorthand, election results
in dispute. Now they're written more like little stories voters
(04:01):
clash as election results spark dispute. In short, the linguistic
fingerprint with clickbait has crept into mainstream news everywhere. Why
negativity wins. One significant finding is that negative headlines consistently
performed better than positive ones in previous experiments, and news
(04:23):
outlets seem to have learned that lesson humans are wired
to pay attention to threats, conflicts, and bad news. Psychologists
call this negativity bias online. That bias gets amplified the
scarier the headline, the more likely it is to grab
a click. That's why you're more likely to see airline
(04:44):
chaos as flights canceled than flights resume smoothly after delay.
The researchers highlight how technology accelerated these changes. Take Upworthy
and now faded American website, famous in the early twenty
tens for headlines like I'm no Supreme Court expert, but
I kind of think you shouldn't be able to pay
(05:06):
for this. Upworthy perfected the art of ab testing, showing
different headline versions to small groups of users to see
which one got the most clicks, then rolling the winner
out to millions. For a while, its formula dominated Facebook feeds.
But when Facebook tweaked its algorithm to prioritize time spent
(05:27):
over click through rate, upworthyse traffic collapsed almost overnight. This
cat and mouse game shows how fragile online success can
be and how much control algorithms exert over journalistic style.
It's not just tabloids. Everyone's doing it. You might assume
(05:47):
these changes are confined to low quality tabloids or partisan outlets.
Not so. The study found the trends across The New
York Times, The Guardian, The Times of India, ABC News
Australia and beyond. The researchers also slice the data by
political leaning. Right leaning outlets showed the steepest rise in negativity,
(06:09):
but the overall patterns held across the spectrum. Now, this
study is extremely relevant because headlines shape how we perceive
the world. They're often the only part of the story
most people ever read. If the default mode of news
is now more negative, more sensational, and more manipulative, that
(06:30):
affects public mood, trust in journalism, and even democracy itself.
There's also a danger for misinformation detection. Many tools that
flag fake news rely on stylistic cues like excessive negativity,
pronouns or unusual punctuation. But if mainstream journalism increasingly uses
(06:51):
the same tricks, those cues may no longer work. So
can we design a better way to do journalism? The
authors say suggest that if we don't like where this
is heading, the answer isn't to blame individual journalists. It's
to rethink the digital environment. Platforms could design metrics that
reward depth instead of just clicks. The Guardian, for example,
(07:14):
now has a deeply read list alongside its most viewed list,
highlighting stories that held reader's attention for longer. What if
algorithms ranked stories not by outrage or curiosity gaps, but
by diversity of readership or by how well they informed people.
The study argues that these choices are not inevitable, they're
(07:35):
design decisions. This research is a rare, large scale look
at how language evolves under technological pressure. Just as telegrams
forced brevity and texting gave rise to emojis, online news
has birthed a new headline style, longer, punchier, more emotional.
The researcher's hope is that by documenting these shifts, society
(07:58):
can make more informed desc decisions about the information environment.
We want to have. Do we want a public sphere
optimized for outrage and quick clicks or one that fosters
understanding and trust. The answer, they argue, is up to
us and the way we design the digital marketplace where
headlines now shout for our attention. That's it for this
(08:22):
episode of the paper Leap podcast. If you found it
thought provoking, fascinating, or just informative, share it with the
fellow science nerd. For more research highlights and full articles,
visit paperleaf dot com. Also make sure to subscribe to
the podcast. We've got plenty more discoveries to unpact. Until
next time, Keep questioning, keep learning,
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