by As the saying goes, good things don’t go out, bad things spread thousands of miles. Journalists also know that stories with negative colors such as tragedy and crime are more attractive to readers. As more and more people consume news through the Internet, in order to attract readers, online news media are also increasingly using methods such as headline partying to increase click-through rates. Using an analysis of various headline-baiting news stories collected by Upworthy.com, the researchers found that while positive words were slightly more common than negative words in headlines, negative words increased click-through rates. For an average-length headline, each additional negative word increases CTR by 2.3%. The research report was published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour.
