How digital media markets amplify news sentiment

Abstract: Capturing attention through appealing headlines is far more important for news companies in digital than in analogue media markets, but it is so far unclear if this changes news content. This paper provides evidence that this shift in incentives enhances the sentimental slant of news headlines. A comparison of online and offline versions of the same newspapers illustrates that headlines online are more often formulated emotionally. An experiment with professional journalists reveals that this difference can be at least partially explained by an increased incentive to generate clicks: If journalists arecompensated relative to the click-rates their headlines receive, they significantly more often put headlines containing emotional words on top of a given article. A second experiment shows that such an amplification of sensationalist framing has economic implications in the short run, as emotional headlines can translate into emotional reactions and distortions in expectations of their readers.