Document Type
Article
Author ORCID Identifier
Ankit Shrestha https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9012-6146
Arezou Behfar https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8547-7868
Sovantharith Seng https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4548-637X
Matthew Wright https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8489-6347
Mahdi Nasrullah Al-Ameen https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5764-2253
Journal/Book Title/Conference
International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction
Publisher
Taylor & Francis Inc.
Publication Date
3-3-2025
Journal Article Version
Accepted Manuscript
First Page
1
Last Page
27
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
Abstract
Clickbait, masked behind interesting headlines and thumbnails, is often used to spread misinformation and trick users into clicking on social media posts or links that direct them to malicious websites. To help users protect against clickbait, we examined interventions based on persuasion theories including designs that used social consequence, personal consequence, and badges. To this end, we first conducted a preliminary study to translate the participants’ feedback into improving our initial designs, followed by a lab study with 20 participants (60% Male, 40% Female; 18-44 years old) aimed at understanding their perceptions of the improved interventions; we further updated our designs based on their feedback. We then conducted an online study with 773 participants (56% Male, 42% Female; 18 to above 65 years old) over MTurk to evaluate the impact of persuasion techniques leveraged in our designs. Our findings suggest that persuasion can be an effective strategy to warn users against clickbait, specifically ones that use incentives such as revealing mystery of clickbait. Overall, our studies provide valuable insights into understanding users’ needs and expectations around interventions against clickbait, and offer guidelines for future research in these directions.
Recommended Citation
Shrestha, Ankit, et al. “This One Weird Trick Gets Users to Stop Clicking on Clickbait.” International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction, 3 Mar. 2025, pp. 1–27, https://doi.org/10.1080/10447318.2025.2464890. Accessed 25 Mar. 2025.
Comments
This is an Accepted Manuscript version of the following article, accepted for publication in International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction. Shrestha, Ankit, et al. “This One Weird Trick Gets Users to Stop Clicking on Clickbait.” International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction, 3 Mar. 2025, pp. 1–27, https://doi.org/10.1080/10447318.2025.2464890. Accessed 25 Mar. 2025. It is deposited under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.