Prepared by: Elone Selmani
In 2023, online media in Kosovo were plagued by a wave of articles deemed "clickbait", once again revealing the serious challenge posed by informational distortion.
What are “Clickbait” articles?
Hibrid.info has clearly defined in its work methodology how clickbait articles are evaluated.
"Clickbait" are those texts whose title has no basis in the content of the following text.
Such texts and articles aim to attract the attention of the reader or even the consumer with a sensational title promising content that does not actually exist and are created primarily out of financial interest, that is, due to increased readability.
Analyses of such "clickbait" content are also found in the monthly reports prepared by hibrid.info, starting in January 2023.
The important position that these types of content have in online media is also shown by the six-month report, where from January to June, this category dominated other categories, and clickbait articles for this period were 25%, ranking first as part of information disorder. The main topics that were published as clickbait were those from the social and dark chronicle fields. (see here)
Although during June there was a decline in "clickbait" articles, where they ranked fourth in percentage as the reason for tensions in the northern part of Kosovo, which contributed to the increase in fake news and disinformation, in July these types of articles returned to the scene again, to dominate other misinformation categories with 29%. (see here)
July opened the door for "clickbait" to increase even more in August, where 33% of articles analyzed in Albanian-language online media were rated as "clickbait" articles. (see here)
A similar thing happened in September, where the "clickbait" rating held the lead in the category of ratings with the most articles, a total of 31%. (see here)
And October was the month of "unverified content", thus affecting the decline of "clickbait" articles, where this rating ranked fourth with a noticeable decrease to 17%, bringing a turning point in the growth trend. (see here)
In October, it ranked fourth, only to return strongly to first place in the following month (November), where 32% of the articles analyzed by the hibrid.info team received the "clickbait" rating. (see here)
Just as in the first six-month period, where the leading topics were from the social and crime fields, in the period July - November, the vast majority of articles rated "clickbait" were from the same topics: social and crime. These articles were about tragic cases such as death and murder, but it was not known where the event had occurred, thus implying that it had occurred in Kosovo or other Albanian-speaking countries.
By highlighting topics that arouse the audience's curiosity and interest in reading them, these media outlets have created "clickbait" content to generate a greater number of readers on their pages, with the percentages shown showing that this is a faster way to increase the readability of a medium.