Opportunities, challenges, and risks of clickbait in the scientific communication

Abstract

This paper analyzes the effects of the communication that produce in the field of science with the use of the Clickbait. For some experts, it is a technique used as a new communication strategy in the generation of contents for the dissemination of the science in the digital press. The study is based on detecting which linguistic resources of Clickbait generate more success and which media incorporates them in its science section, to obtain greater notoriety with the aim of attracting readers and encouraging them to click on the link on a page. The sample covers the analysis of headlines published in the science section of the main Spanish newspapers during a week in July 2021. The general results of the study show that, of the 117 headlines analyzed in the science section of the selected digital newspapers, 64 of them used the clickbait technique and as can be seen in the 10 digital newspapers, the most used clickbait resource was incomplete information (51%), 18% higher than exaggeration (33%). Morphosyntax and appellative expressions have been used to a lesser extent in the digital editions of the newspapers selected in the analysis sample of this research, reaching an equal percentage of, respectively, 8%.