Examining of clickbaite news in internet journalism: Ensonhaber.com example

Clickbait news consists of big headlines and big photos. These titles and photographs attract the reader's curiosity and interest. It surprises the reader and encourages them to click on the news. Thanks to the titles and photographs used in hypertexts, the reader is enabled to interact more with the text. This study aims to reveal the positive and negative effects of photographs and headlines of hypertexts used in clickbait news on the reader. Semiotic analysis and focus group method were adopted in the study. According to Alexa data, the most clicked news site in 2022 is ensonhaber.com. The data was examined through examples taken from the magazine category of ensonhaber.com, which was the most clicked in 2022. Accordingly, a semiotic analysis was made on the click traps detected in the headlines and photographs of the most clicked magazine news in the magazine category of the internet newspaper ensonhaber.com. This analysis study covers the months of January and April. The 10 most clicked clickbait news links for each month were obtained. These links were sent by the editor of ensonhaber.com. 4 clickbait news were determined for each of the months representing January and April. A total of 16 clickbait news items were detected. Semiotic analysis was examined under the leadership of Barthes' Connotation and Denotation analysis. The findings obtained through this framework were included in the questions prepared for the focus group interview. In the focus group interview method, a semi-structured form with 16 questions was asked to the students. The questions in this form were directed to students who did or did not take the online journalism course at Ondokuz Mayıs Faculty of Communication. The sample number of students is 20. This limitation is based on voluntary participation. According to semiotic analysis, it has been seen that news sites have developed strategies that enable readers to click on the news by using interesting headlines and photographs. According to the focus group interview results, it was concluded that students should develop a critical perspective on clickbait news, apply ethical standards, present original content, bring the issue to the agenda in the media sector and embrace the need to focus on the issue.