What Makes You Want To Click This?
News.com.au Reader Preferences Courtesy University of Bristol A University of Bristol study tells us the biggest rule of clickbait: No one wants to read about finance. It's the holy grail of Internet journalism: The click. How can I persuade you, in a few capitalized words, that this article will be worth the load time? According to a new study from researchers at the University of Bristol's Intelligent Systems Laboratory, the answer lies in using "sentimentally charged language" and skewing toward entertainment and crime. The study looked at which stories were placed in the "Top Stories" and "Most Popular" feeds on 14 different news sites, including the BBC, NPR, The New York Times and Forbes. The researchers created models for the reader preferences of each publication based on an 18 month period, by looking at which stories were published on the home page (the top stories) and comparing that to...