You Won't Believe this Clickbait Problem! It's Serious

Devon Stephen- ds708914@ohio.edu

          In the last 15 years alone, technology has given us platforms, like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, which changed the way we create and absorb content every day. While the advancement has made some of us savvier in online content consumption, others seem to lag behind in the era of Fake News and “clickbait.” Clickbait is a form of false advertising that lures viewers into clicking on a video or article that isn’t at all what its title or headline teased. Sometimes clickbait can be humorous, like when YouTuber Nikita Dragun titles a video totally unrelated to current YouTube controversy “What Really Happened.” Nikita’s subscribers expect to see clickbait in her video titles and view it as a joke. Unfortunately, clickbait isn’t always harmless.

Channeling Hate and Fear
A Washington Post article with the headline, “For the ‘new yellow journalists,’ opportunity comes in clicks and bucks” explains how anyone with a laptop and an opinion can use clickbait to spread dangerous “news,” regardless of truth or credentials. The motivating factor behind doing such a thing? That’s easy: cold, hard, Facebook cash. Paris Wade said he gets paid more than he feels comfortable discussing to run a website and Facebook page with false headlines and opinions.

Screenshot of content from Wade's Liberty News website

Unfortunately, most of the articles Wade and his partner, Ben Goldman, post incite anger and even violent comments. According to the article, one of Wade’s posts read, “BREAKING: Top Official Set to Testify Against Hillary Clinton Found DEAD!” Another article headline meant to incite fear read, “Terrorists Have Infiltrated the US Government! Look Who They Want To ASSASSINATE!” Wade and Goldman know their headlines are clickbait and their “articles” are fiction, but they don’t seem to care.

“Violence and chaos and aggressive wording are what people are attracted to,” Wade told the Washington Post. Regardless of whether he agrees with the content he posts, or whether the people who share the articles on Facebook actually read them, Wade gets paid based on engagements. If he is morally unbothered, why would he pursue any other career?

A Share’s a Share

The Colombia Journalism Review has an article from 2014 which talks about clickbait that’s slightly less terrifying and political. The article cites headlines from publications like the Washington Post and Time that are clickbait without the fear. Instead, they play on readers’ disinterests or annoyances to aggregate engagements. For example, the article says Washington Post published an article with the headline, “Video games could make kids better, healthier people.” While the article doesn’t incite fear or violence like the ones from Wade, it does play on readers’ emotions. A mom with sons whose eyes are glued to their screens might read the headline and disagree so strongly that she shares it with a post about how false it is. The Colombia Journalism Review calls that a “hate-share.” Regardless of how people feel about it, a share puts dollars in a content creators' pockets.

What Can We Do?

So, what can we do to end the clickbait madness? Is there even a solution? Of course, we can educate our friends in family in detecting clickbait headlines. For example, the International Conference on Advances in Social Networks Analysis and Mining published an article in 2016 that said the length of words in clickbait headlines is, on average, shorter than the length of words in non-clickbait headlines. Clickbait articles also use more hyperboles and contractions than real news articles. Another way to decipher clickbait headlines from real news headlines is by familiarizing yourself with common bait phrases that exploit the “curiosity gap,” such as “Will blow your mind” or “You Won’t Believe,” according to the article.

Chart from the International Conference on Advances in Social Networks
Analysis and Mining that shows the difference between words in clickbait articles
and words in news articles

News articles from reputable sources do not exploit the curiosity gap with headlines that make readers want to click. Aside from providing our friends and family with as much knowledge as possible, there may not be much we can do. The success of clickbait articles depends largely on the algorithms of platforms like Facebook. Although Facebook has spam filters that temporarily block rapidly shared articles, many of the clickbait articles slip through the filters. Until platforms change algorithms that reward creators of fake news like Wade and Goldman, clickbait headlines will continue to pop up on people’s timelines.

Truth and Technology

Andrew Selhorst
as330215@ohio.edu

One important thing to consider when publishing news is the truth that the title holds to viewers or readers. In recent years, something that has been growing in popularity is the concept of "clickbait." Clickbait is a form of false advertising that draws the attention of viewers to your article or video, something that baits clicks. For example, videos on YouTube may either leave out or exaggerate details of the video in order to draw more attention to the video. This is a way to make a story or video seem more interesting than it may actually be. Clickbaiting is something that has grown in popularity and has become something that is almost unbelievable. In fact, it has become such a big thing that it is recognized as an official word in Merriam-Webster dictionary, defined as "something (such as a headline) designed to make readers want to click on a hyperlink especially when the link leads to content of dubious value or interest."

 Clickbaiting has grown from making headlines more enticing to viewers, into simply lying to them instead. This article from the Columbia Journalism Review calls this "trolling your readers." This article discusses how websites will use headlines that barely even relate to the story behind the link at all. The reason behind this is that those who share these articles on Facebook or Twitter or whatever other social media platforms they use rarely even read the actual article that they are sharing. They see the headline and share it without ever bothering to learn more about the "news." The article states that the sites that use this tactic do not really care whether their links are being shared in a positive or negative manner, so long as they are continuing to get interactions. This is similar to the thought process in marketing of "any publicity is good publicity."

This idea of truth in titles and whether or not the content of your article matches what your headline says relates back to something that we have talked about in class and wrote about in blogs so many times this semester: telling the whole truth. We as journalists have the moral responsibility of being entirely truthful to our audience. Being entirely truthful means telling a story for exactly what it is - no leaving out details, no exaggerating details, no changing parts of the story to fit any certain ideologies. And if we are using clickbait, or trolling our readers as Columbia Journalism Review would call it, are we being entirely truthful with our audience? We must keep in mind that we need to make ethical decisions, regardless of whether or not an unethical decision will provide us with any kind of personal gain. Even if using clickbait titles gives us more impressions online, is it worth it to make that kind of unethical decision? We could be risking our reputation, we could be risking losing our existing audience, and it goes against what we agree to as journalists when we accept our moral responsibilities.

The Media and the Military

Max Meyerson
mm603815@ohio.edu

One of the key aspects of being in the press is being able to cover our country's biggest issues no matter how difficult. One of the biggest issues that a journalist might have to cover is the military. The military itself poses so many ethical issues when it comes to reporting and it is no surprise it has been the fall of many reporters of the years. The most recent and most notable example of this was the Brian Williams scandal. What this scandal can show us is how important it is to be transparent in your work, especially when covering such a delicate story.

Employers should let it be known that covering the military should be the most respected job in journalism and it should be taken very seriously. There can not be people who make as big of blunders as Brian Williams. Situations like this give real reporters covering the military a bad name and it jeopardizes the credibility of the media reporting on the military. The relationship between the military isn't just an important one, it is a necessary one. If the relationship between the media and the military is fractured, we could lose vital information about our actions over seas. The citizens of America have the right to understand the issues that are going on in the middle east or any other war ridden areas of the world. These issues need to be handled by the best reporters in the world and it is up to the media companies to put the right people in the position and not make a mistake like Brian Williams.

One of the other biggest issues in covering the military is understanding what information should be released to the public and what information is best kept under wraps. In class we were screened a video of a horrific shooting in the middle east and a reporter and camera crew on scene witnessing the entire atrocity. We were asked whether or not that video should have been released and I had to ponder that question in my mind for a really long time. On one hand it is a disturbing video that casts are poor view of the United States military and all of its veterans and members. On the other hand we deserve to know exactly what our military operations are doing over seas so we can properly judge our elected officials for the next upcoming elections. The overall damage that it could do does not outweigh the importance of having full transparency with the public and not keeping them in the dark on those scary situations. That takes a great amount of understanding of what it means to make an ethical decision because I am still unsure if one choice is actually more moral than the other. Of course there are situations where it would be totally impossible for someone to release some information about the military, but at the same time transparency is the key to making ethical decisions.

How Hate Spreads like a Wildfire

Meghan Titterington
mt227615@ohio.edu

Toxic Hate in America 

It's no secret that hate crimes and hate speech are rising concerns in America. However, I find most media outlets' inability to handle such an increase in disinformation even more alarming because their social forums tend to be the hub for this widespread animosity. Extremists have the power to spread their message with a velocity no one has ever seen, where clicking 'post' can result in large scale readership and eventually hit mainstream media coverage.

The Genie is Out of the Bottle 

Now you might be thinking, "Well, what measures are social media platforms taking to censor and remove such content?" The answer to this is tricky because each news station, social media outlet or even person in America most likely has a slightly different answer if they were asked to define hate speech. Refining what constitutes hate speech in social media content is extremely difficult, which is why action needs to be taken across all channels to reach a conclusion on how to identify such heinous propaganda. An article published by The New York Times discussed how hate 'thrives' on social media, calling special attention to the hashtag #jewsdid911 and its popularity following the devastating shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue. When the word "Jews" was searched on Instagram, 11,696 posts popped up with that hashtag. This is just one example of how hate spreads like wildfire.

A man stops at each Star of David with the names of the 11 people killed during a mass shooting at The Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Courtesy of time.com  

In reality, it's a global epidemic. Social media outlets grew tremendously in the last several years, but that also meant that their user base and influence reached record highs. These companies never understood the ramifications of their influence that provokes "free speech," whether it be positive or negative, and now the genie is out of the bottle. Instagram said they were actively reviewing any hashtags or content related to the Pittsburgh shooting and were taking down content that violated their policy. But is this response adequate enough to diminish the extremity of this toxic outbreak? If social media has this much influence, they need policies in place to remove hateful speech before it escalates to further detriment. Facebook, YouTube and Twitter reported that they were investing in artificial intelligence designed to locate and extract any unwanted content on their forums. Facebook and YouTube have hired thousands of employees to handle security, taking note that safety is prioritized over their notorious principle of free expression.

Moving Forward 

Completely eliminating hate speech and hate crime from our world is a far fetched ideology, but it's definitely something to strive for. I think one of the biggest problems with how hate speech/ crime escalates is in the way journalists write about it and how news stations prioritize the coverage. An article posted in Poynter discusses the challenges journalists faced when they reported on the racial violence that took place in Charlottesville, Virginia during a white nationalist rally. The article articulates the proper ways journalists should handle stories that deal with race and violence. First, be precise with your language and avoid any subjective adjectives or labels that may need clarification. Second, be specific when discussing politics and the names of political groups because sometimes journalists' descriptions are too broad. Third, make sure any video or image you include has context and accurately reflects the events that took place. Finally, avoid any use of shorthand or codes in your writing because many of your readers may not know what you know. 

"Balancing" Coverage of Hate

by Noah Wolf | nw597116@ohio.edu

White supremacists rally at the now-infamous 2017 "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottsville, Va. courtesy the New Yorker

With the increase of hate speech and hate crimes in our country in recent years, especially white supremacist terrorism, comes an increase in coverage of these events, and the people involved with them.

While this is something no journalist wants to cover, it's important that reporters recognize the gravity of these events, and cover them in such a way to match that gravity.

It's something on which many publications have fallen short, in a few different ways.

An Emphasis on Humanization

It's normal and understandable, in situations of hate crimes and similar events, to write feature stories about the people behind them. It serves multiple purposes: to humanize those behind the hate (they are human after all) and to show people that these hateful humans exist, probably in your neighborhood.

But that desire to humanize can make a story's tone seem sympathetic.

That's exactly what happened for the New York Times, when they wrote a profile on Tony Hovater, a white supremacist from New Carlisle, Ohio. They called it "A Voice of Hate in America's Heartland," and it drew sharp criticism from all corners of the internet.

Some took issue with the story's tone of humanizing this man, talking about his love for public radio or his cat. Others took issue with the story's existence in the first place, or at least the lack of explanation for why the story exists in the first place.

The story's writer, Richard Fausset, said he wanted to uncover why Hovater had shifted toward white supremacism so sharply from a different political past. But that question wasn't answered in the story. A lack of an answer isn't an answer, and it doesn't justify the story's existence.

(The story also included a link to a website which sells swastika armbands, which should be pretty clearly unethical in and of itself, and the Times removed the link later. They justified its inclusion in the first place by saying it "was intended to show the darker reality beyond the anodyne language of the website.")

A Hole of Justice

On the other end of the spectrum, some journalists lack in their coverage of white supremacist terrorism by not covering it wholly enough, as in failing to report or talk about all the facts.

The facts I'm talking about were brought to light by ProPublica in a brilliant piece, "What We Discovered in a Year of Covering Hate," which took a wholistic, data-centered approach to the big picture problem of white supremacism.

Important things they uncovered:

• Over half of hate crime victims don't file a police report
• Almost 90 percent of local law enforcement reported no hate crimes in their communities
• Federal agencies don't often send their statistics to the FBI

These facts make it so reporters have to do more than just crawl their local police blotter to report on hate crimes in their community. It's not just what shows up on the final statistics at the end of the year; there are hate crimes happening all over the country that aren't reported to the justice system, which makes that system an unreliable source in the reporting of those events.

Hate Speech in America

Alex Vella
av130415@ohio.edu

Free speech versus hate speech has been a controversial topic for quite some time now. This past year there have been unfortunate cases of hate speech occurring across the country. With social media being as popular as it is today, it is a target for hate speech. While hate speech is not a new topic, since it has been around for decades, social media has made it more prevalent today and has allowed more and more people to read these sexist, hurtful and homophobic comments.

Photo by: https://images.app.goo.gl/QUCeRG97rMwBkk6w6

In wake of the synagogue shooting that occurred in Pittsburgh, a search for the word "Jews" on Instagram displayed thousands of posts along with the hashtag "#jewsdid911." As I stated earlier, hate speech is an issue that has been around for years, but as you can see from thousands of posts created on Instagram after this incident it is more common to see today. For anyone, sitting behind a computer, phone, or tablet makes it simple to post whatever is on your mind onto social media. This reason of comfort is exactly why I believe we are seeing more and more hate speech on social media. This leads into the argument of being able to post as you wish because of free speech. According to an article by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, "The U.S Constitution guarantees that in America you are free to hate - and say so - as long as you don't threaten anyone." A question that lingers among this topic is, will new speech laws be created to distinguish the difference between free speech and hate speech?

On the other side of violent, hateful crimes are journalists that report on these incidents. Journalists faced many challenges when covering the racial violence that occurred in Charlottesville, Virginia. As journalists, precision is key. Using Charlottesville as an example, journalists should refrain from calling the marchers White nationalists. Instead, the journalist should report what the marchers were saying instead of specifying them to a particular racist group. If the journalist has factual evidence that these marchers were a part of this racist group, then it would only be accurate to say so. Not only do journalists need to think about the words they are using, but also images and videos that they are posting. It is important that journalists select images that truthfully portray the incidents that occurred. Also, when implementing videos into stories, captions or narration should be used the clarify anything that may be considered confusing. Poynter lists more advice for the journalists reporting on the Charlottesville event or any similar event.

At the end of the day with social media being used by millions of people daily, hate speech will not go away. However, things can be done to try and stop the spreading of hate speech. For example, any discussion post, chat room or blog should be taken down if it is clearly publishing hate speech and threatening those of any sexual orientation, race, etc. In addition, it is journalist's duty to report on hate speech that is occurring and remain unbiased. It is the journalist's ultimate duty to report information that is accurate, truthful and fully transparent.

A Journalist's Approach to Hate Speech

Joe Weiner
jw441915@ohio.edu

Hate Speech on The Rise

The advancement of technology has made it easy for people from around the world to share their ideas and opinions through social media. These internet pathways of communication have many advantages like timeliness or mass outreach. Which means that harmful ideas of hatred can spread like wildfire on these platforms. Hate speech has become a major issue in society and in journalism following the 2016 election.

ProPublica did some research into hate crimes and how they are handled following the 2016 election and the results are telling. The research found that almost half of the victims of hate crimes never report the crime. They also mention a rise in hearing the phrase “go back to your country.”

connectsafely.org

How it spreads

Platforms like Twitter and Instagram have allowed us to connect to our friends and strangers on the internet more than ever. These platforms also allow for the rapid spread of hate. The New York Times found eleven thousand posts with the hashtag #jewsdid9/11. These websites have all made different pledges as to how they will stop the spread of hate speech. They all plan to use artificial intelligence to vet posts the platforms. Youtube said specifically that they are adding over 10,000 employees just to review content posted to the site.

How to Cover Hate Speech

The rise of hate speech in our discourse means the rise of news stories involving hate speech. How can a journalist tactfully cover a story regarding hate speech? There are a few hints that Poynter gives us. One way is to be precise in your reporting by not using far-reaching labels in your coverage. Specifically point out who the group is and what they were doing. The reporter must also be precise in the language they use to describe events like protests or riots. Another thing that journalists can do when it comes to covering hate speech is give full context of video or images. The world we live in is very reactionary. It’s too easy for someone to see a photo that impacts them emotionally and share it. It’s important for these heavy images to have the proper context so that the truth can come out. You have to avoid propping up certain groups. The KKK would love to be legitimized through your coverage of them. They want a picture with their flag portrayed front and center of your newspaper. One final thing you can do combat hate speech through your reporting is avoiding shorthand. We need to be extremely precise in reporting of these occurrences. It’s pertinent to explain each detail in stories involving hate speech. The reporter can never assume that the audience knows what they do. Like its important to note how Charlottesville started. The violent and scary protest that left a couple people dead and many others scared started because a confederate statue was being removed. A detail like that can give an entire other layer of context to an already hard to digest story.

Covering Hate

Maire Simpson | ms316416@ohio.edu 

Hate speech. It has been a topic that has gained popularity, especially over the past several years as politics infiltrate social media and the political climate has become more and more intense. Everyone has a different definition of hate speech, but the consequences of hate speech are the same: there are no consequences because the U.S. Supreme Court has consistently and repeatedly ruled that hate speech is legally protected under the First Amendment. People are allowed to freely spew hatred because it is their right as an American citizen who has freedom of speech. This has created issues for journalists who are also protected under the First Amendment but must ethically cover these topics of hate speech and hate crimes across the U.S. 

Hate Speech and Social Media 
Over the years, the prevalence of hate speech has spiked due to the rise of social media platforms that provide a place for people to produce content that is often anti-Semitic, racist, sexist, homophobic, or islamophobic. Not only are these platforms providing a place, but they are also maintaining and sustaining these areas of hate. According to USA TODAY, "The research showed that hate groups collected more 'likes' to tweets and comments in 2016 than in any other year since 2008. From 2014 and 2015, the number of 'likes' on hate group tweets and comments tripled, and from 2015 to 2016 they tripled again." Due to this protection of hate speech, these organizations have been able to connect and share ideologies without any repercussions for the violence that has been incited because these groups are allowed to thrive on social media. It was when social media sites and platforms started to look directly at the power of these hate groups and hate speech on their platforms after the attack that happened in Charlottesville. 

Illustration by Mars Dorian 

Covering Hate Crimes and Hate Speech Ethically
Charlottesville had an immense impact on how journalists should similar cover events and how social media platforms go about censorship. According to the New York Times: "Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube have all announced plans to invest heavily in artificial intelligence and other technology aimed at finding and removing unwanted content from their sites." Which is great right? Well, throwing money and resources towards banning content will help to mitigate the ability that extremists will have to connect and share ideas, but this will not help the way that the country understands and covers hate crimes. Thankfully, companies and news organizations like ProPublica, who wish to cover these stories ethically have created a space for other organizations to learn about covering hate crimes after doing research about the past coverage of such events. ProPublica has discovered that hate crimes were just not being covered therefore the impact of hate speech online was going unnoticed. They have created a coalition of over 130 newsrooms to cover the hate crimes that are happening every day on college campuses and in most public spaces. Since then, they have seen an increase in not only coverage of hate crimes, but also the procedural policies for police when they report hate crimes. with I can tell we are moving in the right direction slowly but surely thanks to organizations who are pushing to create a safer future.

How Much Freedom of Expression Do You Have On Social Media?

Gabrielle Zita
gz628315@ohio.edu

In today's society, social media is taking on all new forms of communication. Many people use their social media platforms to share their opinions, both the good and the bad. Everyone knows that the First Amendment allows Americans to have freedom of speech, but how much protection does one have when posting on certain social media platforms?


Most Freedom
According to an article called "Free Expression on Social Media," written by Lata Nott from the First Amendment Center, Reddit, Snapchat and Twitter users have the most freedom when it comes to hate speech. Reddit permits hate speech unless it "encourages or incites violence, threatens, harasses, or bullies, or encourages others to do so." According to Snapchat's Terms of Service, one may not use the service in a manner that "violates or infringes someone else's rights of publicity, privacy, copyright, trademark, or other intellectual property rights," " bullies, harasses, or intimidates," "defames," "spams or solicits our users." Lastly, Twitter has similar policies that include not posting anything that promotes violence against or threatens a specific race, ethnicity, gender, religious officiation, etc.

Some Freedom
According to Nott's article, Facebook and Instagram have some freedom when it comes to expression, but not a lot. Like the other social media platforms above, Facebook forbids posts that are harmful or threatening. In 2013, Facebook wrote a statement stating that they had received several complaints of hate speech towards many different ethnicities and genders. In the statement, they explained their philosophy and policies when it comes to harmful and threatening content. They said that they define harmful content as "anything organizing real-world violence, theft, or property destruction, or that directly inflicts emotional distress on a specific private individual." They shared that they have the ability to remove anything that violates their policy. They do, however, allow humor and satire of such topics. Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, prohibits the use of hate speech unless it is shared to challenge it or raise awareness to it, and one must show clear proof of that.

Little Freedom
Out of all of the social media platforms, YouTube has the least amount of freedom when it comes to expression. According to YouTube's Hate Speech Policy, hate speech is not allowed. They will remove any content that they believe shows violence or hatred against individuals or groups based on the attributes of age, disability, ethnicity, gender identity and expression, nationality, race, religion, sexual orientation, sex/gender, etc. They encourage those that find anything that violates this policy to report it. After several counts of hate speech, YouTube will terminate one's account.

https://www.businessinsider.com/youtube-bans-soph-far-right-channel-hate-speech-threatens-headquarters-2019-8

How We Can Stop It
If you are a social media user, it is important to know how you can stop hate speech from occurring. According to an article titled "5 Ways to Counter Hate Speech in the Media through Ethics and Self-regulation," by Poni Alice JameKolok, there are a few things you can do. The first is to be educated on media ethics. Realizing your First Amendment rights is important, but knowing how to use it in a way that isn't harmful or threatening to others is even more important. If you are educated in media ethics, it can help you to become aware of the issues and how to stop them. The second way one can counter hate speech is to encourage journalists to write conflict- sensitive reporting and multicultural awareness campaigns. This will help to show audiences that journalists are on the same team as them when it comes to the diversity of cultures.