This piece first appeared on Mores and was written by Rianne Pieffers in November 2023.
If you ever take public transport or find yourself eavesdropping in a café, it is almost guaranteed that you have heard people discuss current affairs. It may appear that they know what they are talking about. However, it will not take long for you to realise that they repeat broad arguments instead of going deep into the topic to bring up new points of view that may surprise their conversation partner. You might even think that you have read those statements before. Why? Well, people tend to only read the headlines.
No matter how academically gifted or politically involved you are, we are all guilty of it. The fast media culture fed by social media and the 24/7 news cycle confronts us with unlimited information to consume. It is possible that the topic does not interest you that much, but you want to have some idea of what your colleague will talk about the next morning. Maybe you have not had your morning coffee yet or maybe you simply do not have the time to read every article on the news. The consequences of empty claims found in one-sided headlines are felt within democracies. Considering democracy relies heavily on discourse, poor information may undermine the very foundations of our democratic systems.
The psychology behind headlines
The influence of online media on the way we consume news is undeniable. Academic studies since the early 80s have researched the correlation between headlines and the perceived comprehension of the topic. The concern is not new at all, however, social media shed a new light on how we interact with news articles.
I asked Google ‘what makes a good headline?’. Most of the results that question generated were the socially acceptable answers like: be clear and concise; tell the reader what the text is about; and make it interesting to continue reading. However, there was one article that provided an answer that tells a more pertinent, yet harder to hear, answer. It said “educate the masses”. Given that on average 70–80% of people only read the headlines and only 20% of people read beyond, the text benefits from an informative headline. Writers of news articles, whether in papers or on online media sources use these statistics to generate traction for their writing. To get people’s attention, short and punchy headlines are required. They need to be informative enough to give people the satisfaction of being informed without too much complexity.
Studies show that people get confidence from being informed. Reading on a lot of topics, even if it is just the headlines, causes overconfidence. The level of overconfidence is determined by an individual’s ‘need for affect’ which influences how confident one is in their knowledge. Scholars distinguish between being uninformed yet aware of one’s ignorance and being misinformed. Research on how confident someone is based on the information that they draw from the headlines focusses on the question: are people who read headlines misinformed? This study shows that headlines are generating knowledge. People are able to answer basic questions on the topic of the article after reading the headline and, if available, preview. However, people overestimate the knowledge they gain from this source of information.
The repercussions for politics
The Western standard of democracy is founded on interchanging information and having fruitful debates to arrive at decisions that suit the majority. This system benefits from argumentation that represents multiple voices on a topic. It requires citizens to spend time into understanding multiple sides of a debate and form their own opinion based on this information. Informed decision-making is a cornerstone of traditional deliberative theories of democracy. In contrast, one could defend skimming headlines by taking an epistemic democratic stance. They would say that politics should be left to experts. From this point of view, a minimally-informed society could be beneficial. However, I do not defend keeping people dumb to avoid the risk of insufficiently informed decision-making.
The main concerns for democracy are confirmation bias and misinformation. The risk with confirmation bias is that people’s attention is drawn to the headlines stating something they already know or an argument that they are already convinced by. When the headline states their believe they are also more likely to share the article without knowing what the body of the text says. Therefore, people hardly hear arguments from another perspective. People are not faced with the consequences of the views that they are mindlessly share. Their own convictions are no longer challenged and their decisions are made based on a shallow, one-sided understanding on a topic.
The other danger is misinformation. As mentioned before, the study did find that headlines generate general knowledge on the topic. People were able to answer factual questions correctly. This is a desired effect because news should generate knowledge that people use in their political participation. One could conclude that there is no risk to skimming headlines. However, headlines might still be misunderstood or the information is false or harmful. Again, it is no longer the norm to have your views challenged and to gain a deeper understanding of topics. This impedes on the ability to recognise false information and leads to political debate that gets stuck on unchallenged opinions and empty claims.
All in all, headlines are unable to paint the whole picture of a topic that people would ideally consider upon making political decisions. The effect? Democratic debate is failing which, ultimately, puts the legitimacy of political society at stake. The risk is that politicians use empty claims to their benefit. They know that people are not likely to read more on a topic. Right-wing claims, like losing their jobs or the safety of their neighbourhoods due to immigration for example, create a one-sided view on immigration. Without more context or discourse this style of news consumption could have serious effects on political decision-making.
Conclusion
We want people to consume the news about politics and current affairs and not look away from everything that is going on in the world, yet the reality proves that long articles and in-depth information do not get the clicks anymore. A solution could be to adapt the information if we want to get the information to the masses (to refer back to the advice on writing good headlines consumer. However, this does not initiate the level of discussion we would ideally have in a democratic system that is founded on informed decision-making. Ideally, we would steer away from offering a constant steam of information through social media and 24hr news to avoid a headline-reading culture. Instead, it should be promoted to reading the news more in depth. Perhaps that implies that people read about fewer topics, yet be more informed on the topics that interest them.
This leads to a final thought. Nevertheless, it appears that stopping the influence of this prevalent form of media consumption is like attempting to stop a running train. How can we change something that a whole new generation is growing up with without adapting to it in some capacity? For the sake of democracy we should focus again on discourse, argumentation and understanding, but in order to do that we need to capture the attention first.
If you read this, you made it to the end of the article, which makes you part of the 20% of people who actually will read beyond the headline. Do with that what you will. Cheers!
