Take-home: Clickbait techniques you have never seen before

Objective:

At the end of completing the assignment, students will:

• Realise there are myriad ways to entice people
• Spot misleading news headlines by recognizing different tricks.
• Understand the potential dangers and social impact of clickbait headlines.

Steps:

• As a preparation, show some typical clickbait techniques such as:

1. Overly sensational or exaggerated words;
2. Lists and rankings (e.g. ‘five things you didn’t know…’ ‘XX was voted the second best… the first one will surprise you’);
3. Omission of crucial facts or details (see Oreo example);
4. Names of not-directly-related public figures or images

• Ask students to find clickbait headlines and analyse the techniques used.
• Tell them to find at least three distinctively different techniques and write a summary report on each, explaining why they think it works. 

Teacher’s note

• There are indeed many different ways to produce sensational, clickbaity headlines. It may not be a good idea to produce an exhaustive list at the end because many students tend to think the list contains all the techniques.
• There will be lots of overlaps. If time allows, sharing the assignments and re-categorising them as a class can be an interesting follow-up fun activity.
• Another follow-up activity idea can be to discuss (categorise) them in terms of harmfulness.

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