Recent studies have shown that the majority of people are more likely to share an article without ever reading it. This is in part because, 140 characters later, you should get the point and move on to the next tweet. This is also in part because of the overwhelming amount of information being produced and shared on a daily basis, and honestly, who has time to read it all.
Lucky for us, we model our business around the ADD generation and process the information for you to make it easier to digest. Here’s what you need to know about #sharebait.
Here’s what you need to know about #Sharebait:
- satirical news site the Science Post published a block of “lorem ipsum” text under a frightening headline: “Study: 70% of Facebook users only read the headline of science stories before commenting.”
- Nearly 46,000 people shared the post
- According to a new study by computer scientists at Columbia University and the French National Institute, 59 percent of links shared on social media have never actually been clicked
- the study finds that these sort of blind peer-to-peer shares are really important in determining what news gets circulated and what just fades off the public radar.
- “People are more willing to share an article than read it,” study co-author Arnaud Legout said in a statement.
- “This is typical of modern information consumption. People form an opinion based on a summary, or a summary of summaries, without making the effort to go deeper.”
- “viral” news is widely shared — but not necessarily read.
- most interesting, for our purposes, is this habit of sharing without clicking
- the rise of sharebait (nee clickbait) and the general BuzzFeedification of traditional media; the Internet hoax-industrial complex, which only seems to be growing stronger; and the utter lack of intelligent online discourse around any remotely complicated, controversial topic.
- tired of seeing the sheer number of misunderstood, misrepresented or straight-up fictitious bunk that people gleefully signal-boost across the Internet.
Learn more @ The Washington Post
