A new sensation? An international exploration of sensationalism and social media recommendations in online news publications

Abstract

The well-known phrase ‘if it bleeds, it leads’ describes the sensational approach that has penetrated the history of news. Sensationalism is a term without complete consensus among scholars, and its meaning and implications have not been considered in a digital environment. This study analyzes 400 articles from online-native news organizations across the Americas, evaluating the sensational treatment of news categories and news values, and their associated social media interaction numbers on Facebook and Twitter. Findings suggest that ‘hard’ news topics like government affairs and science/technology were treated sensationally just as often as traditionally sensationalized categories like crime or lifestyle and society. In addition, audiences are not necessarily more likely to respond to sensational treatments. This study also finds that online-native news organizations use sensationalism differently, and there is significant variation in publications from the United States, Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico.

Redes sociales en Iberoamérica. Artículo de revisión

“…Otros temas tratados por la bibliografía sobre redes sociales en Iberoamérica incluyen el consumo incidental de noticias (Boczkowski; Mitchelstein; Matassi, 2018), la conformación de repertorios de medios tradicionales y de redes (Serrano-Puche; Fernández; Rodríguez-Virgili, 2018), el sensacionalismo en el periodismo tradicional y de redes sociales (Kilgo et al, 2018), y la capacidad de agenda-setting de los medios tradicionales y las redes (Valenzuela; Puente; Flores, 2017). Por ejemplo, Mitchelstein et al, (2018) estudian la capacidad de engagement de los contenidos publicados por ocho diarios argentinos en Facebook y Twitter.…”

Incongruent Headlines: Yet Another Way to Mislead Your Readers

“…Sensationalist news is generally considered negatively in the journalism literature (see e.g. Wang and Cohen, 2009), as content which "triggers emotion for the reader (Vettehen et al, 2008) and treats an issue in a predominantly tabloid-like way" (Kilgo et al, 2016). Although traditionally associated with certain topics e.g.…”

“…Although traditionally associated with certain topics e.g. sex, scandal, crime and disaster (Grabe et al, 2001;Vettehen et al, 2008), recent work suggests that it is now just as likely with political stories (Kilgo et al, 2016). Examples (13) Molek-Kozakowska (2013) views sensationalism as a discourse strategy used to repackage information in a more exciting, extraordinary or interesting way, via the presence of several discourse illocutions (e.g.…”

Proceedings of the 2017 EMNLP Workshop: Natural Language Processing meets Journalism

“…Sensationalist news is generally considered negatively in the journalism literature (see e.g. Wang and Cohen, 2009), as content which "triggers emotion for the reader (Vettehen et al, 2008) and treats an issue in a predominantly tabloid-like way" (Kilgo et al, 2016). Although traditionally associated with certain topics e.g.…”

“…Although traditionally associated with certain topics e.g. sex, scandal, crime and disaster (Grabe et al, 2001;Vettehen et al, 2008), recent work suggests that it is now just as likely with political stories (Kilgo et al, 2016). Examples (13) Molek-Kozakowska (2013) views sensationalism as a discourse strategy used to repackage information in a more exciting, extraordinary or interesting way, via the presence of several discourse illocutions (e.g.…”