Clickbait Research Paper

The amount of fake information circulating has increased recently. People are finding it progressively more difficult to find consistently truthful information and are succumbing to inaccuracies. Deception by fallacious information can be prevented by having the ability to identify clickbait, not sharing information that may be false, and being a well informed person.

In the world of fake information, “it is style over substance [and] the punchline is everything”; subsequently, clickbait is designed to be alluring and eye catching (Saltzman). Discerning between a catchy title and a real story is becoming increasingly difficult because of things like clickbait. The easiest way to combat this is to actively seek out reliable, current information. When it comes to fake information, “credentials and experience simply do not matter” (Saltzman). Identifying clickbait is the first step to uncovering the truth.

Fake information thrives in social media, driven by bias; thus, “when it connects with a
According to Melissa Bowles-Terry, head of education initiatives for the University of Nevada at Las Vegas's libraries, “it all comes down to finding and using information effectively to be a lifelong learner, a good citizen”, which is a concept referred to as “information literacy”(Najmabadi). Having a basic knowledge over a broad range of topics helps eliminate some means of deception. Ignorance causes more problems than it solves. During the election, there was a protester involved in one of the violent protests holding “a sign reading ‘Trump = Fascist’--except that ‘Fascist’ appears to have been misspelled as ‘Facist’ and has an ‘s’ squeezed in between the ‘a’ and the ‘c’ in a different color” (Bowman). This indicates a lack of enough basic information to make an accurate accusation. Common sense would imply that someone who does not spell a word right probably does not understand the definition of said