# Tabloids in the Era of Social Media? Understanding the Production and Consumption of Clickbaits in Twitter

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1709.02957 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1709.02957/

## Key facts

- Cited by 5 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 9 Sep 2017.

## Built on by (most cited first, 5 of 5)

- [Misinfo Reaction Frames: Reasoning about Readers' Reactions to News Headlines](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.08790/) (2021)
- [Bike Frames: Understanding the Implicit Portrayal of Cyclists in the News](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.06178/) (2023)
- [Is it a click bait? Let's predict using Machine Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.07348/) (2021)
- [Te Ahorr'e Un Click: A Revised Definition of Clickbait and Detection in Spanish News](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.09777/) (2025)
- [What Makes You CLIC: Detection of Croatian Clickbait Headlines](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.14314/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

With the growing shift towards news consumption primarily through social media sites like Twitter, most of the traditional as well as new-age media houses are promoting their news stories by tweeting about them. The competition for user attention in such mediums has led many media houses to use catchy sensational form of tweets to attract more users - a process known as clickbaiting. In this work, using an extensive dataset collected from Twitter, we analyze the social sharing patterns of clickbait and non-clickbait tweets to determine the organic reach of such tweets. We also attempt to study the sections of Twitter users who actively engage themselves in following clickbait and non-clickbait tweets. Comparing the advent of clickbaits with the rise of tabloidization of news, we bring out several important insights regarding the news consumers as well as the media organizations promoting news stories on Twitter.