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Journalism & Media vocabulary · Online and Digital Media

Clickbait

Meaning in journalism & media, with examples

/ˈklɪkbeɪt/nounCore term

In journalism & media, clickbait means: Online headlines or content designed mainly to make people click, often by exaggerating, hiding the key fact or promising more than the story gives.

In Turkish: tık tuzağı, tık odaklı başlık, tık avcılığı

How it is used

Used critically by journalists and readers. Typical clickbait says you won't believe what happened next. As an adjective: clickbait headlines, a clickbait site. Platforms and editors try to reduce it because it damages trust.

Example sentences

  1. Our editor banned clickbait headlines like 'Doctors hate this simple trick'.

  2. Clickbait may bring traffic today, but it loses readers in the long run.

Common collocations

  • clickbait headline
  • pure clickbait
  • avoid clickbait
  • clickbait site
  • headlineThe title printed above a news story in large letters, or written at the top of an online article, that tells readers quickly what the story is about.
  • go viralTo spread very quickly and widely on the internet as people share it again and again, usually on social media and messaging apps.
  • sensationalismReporting that exaggerates or dramatises events, or focuses on shocking details, in order to attract attention rather than to inform.
  • fake newsFalse stories made to look like real news reports; the phrase is also used, sometimes unfairly, to attack reporting that someone simply dislikes.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Online and Digital Media

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