Headline Curiosity
Apr 27, Wednesday, 11:30 am - 12:30 pm, on Zoom. The Zoom link is circulated separately via the BEE email list. Please fill the registration form to join our mailing list.
Presenter
Ph.D. Student, UMSI
Abstract
We analyze how curiosity drives news consumption. We apply natural language processing (NLP) methods and test predictions of the information-gap theory of curiosity in the context of news consumption on WeChat. As predicted, we find that people are more likely to consume news when: 1) the headline raises a salient question; 2) it appears more important, e.g., because the headline was displayed in a higher position on the webpage; 3) the topics mentioned in the headline are more surprising, as measured by the KL-divergence of the distribution over topics referenced in the headline; and 4) the headline has lower valence.