Examination of Economic News in the Framework of Clickbait Journalism

Journalists employ various methods of communication to make their news captivating and draw in a large audience. An online journalism method, clickbait journalism, uses various click traps to draw the attention of readers, even from the mainstream media. In this study, qualitative content analysis was employed to analyze economic news on the websites which are among the 100 most visited websites in Turkey. As a result, a total of 485 economic news stories were evaluated within the framework of clickbait categories. When examining the overall state of news websites, it was found that 32.5 percent of them are clickbait and 67.4 percent are not. To be more specific, it appears that one in every three stories is done using clickbait journalism. The user comments on clickbait news content are much higher than those on news stories without clickbait. In all three news sites, the most preferred type of click-focused reporting was "ambiguous". Consequently, clickbait journalism is present on all three sites, as these sites strive to get more visitors and interactions with their news stories.