{"title":"Curiosity in news consumption","authors":"Jingyi Qiu, Russell Golman","doi":"10.1002/acp.4195","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p>We analyze how curiosity drives news consumption. We test predictions of the information-gap theory of curiosity using over 100,000 WeChat news articles, applying NLP methods to construct measures of salience, importance, and surprisingness associated with news headlines, experimentally validating these measures, and using them to predict clicks. Our findings confirm that people tend to consume news when: the headline sparks a salient question; the content appears more important (e.g., emphasized by the headline's position on the webpage or an exclamation mark); the headline refers to more surprising topics (measured as the KL-divergence from a baseline topic distribution); and the headline has lower valence. Information-gap theory helps predict aggregate news consumption. Yet our data also reveal a small negative correlation between the number of clicks and the ratio of likes to clicks, suggesting that while inducing curiosity can drive short-term news consumption, it doesn't necessarily enhance long-term reader engagement.</p>","PeriodicalId":48281,"journal":{"name":"Applied Cognitive Psychology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.1000,"publicationDate":"2024-04-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/acp.4195","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Applied Cognitive Psychology","FirstCategoryId":"102","ListUrlMain":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/acp.4195","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"PSYCHOLOGY, EXPERIMENTAL","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
We analyze how curiosity drives news consumption. We test predictions of the information-gap theory of curiosity using over 100,000 WeChat news articles, applying NLP methods to construct measures of salience, importance, and surprisingness associated with news headlines, experimentally validating these measures, and using them to predict clicks. Our findings confirm that people tend to consume news when: the headline sparks a salient question; the content appears more important (e.g., emphasized by the headline's position on the webpage or an exclamation mark); the headline refers to more surprising topics (measured as the KL-divergence from a baseline topic distribution); and the headline has lower valence. Information-gap theory helps predict aggregate news consumption. Yet our data also reveal a small negative correlation between the number of clicks and the ratio of likes to clicks, suggesting that while inducing curiosity can drive short-term news consumption, it doesn't necessarily enhance long-term reader engagement.
期刊介绍：
Applied Cognitive Psychology seeks to publish the best papers dealing with psychological analyses of memory, learning, thinking, problem solving, language, and consciousness as they occur in the real world. Applied Cognitive Psychology will publish papers on a wide variety of issues and from diverse theoretical perspectives. The journal focuses on studies of human performance and basic cognitive skills in everyday environments including, but not restricted to, studies of eyewitness memory, autobiographical memory, spatial cognition, skill training, expertise and skilled behaviour. Articles will normally combine realistic investigations of real world events with appropriate theoretical analyses and proper appraisal of practical implications.
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