ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the pragmatics of clickbait. Clickbait is enticing, but usually disappointing, content that lures readers to click on links which take them to advertising-heavy websites. More and more users are accessing news via social media sites, and the changing context in which news is encountered is having a direct effect on the linguistic and narrative techniques used in news article headlines. To be successful, clickbait headlines must draw the attention of users as they scroll through social media feeds, and they must entice those users to click on the associated link to read more. A range of techniques and devices that are used by clickbait writers are examined and analysed, drawing on existing findings from the literature and on the results of comparative corpus analysis. Forward referring devices and hyperbolic terms, such as superlatives, are significantly overused in clickbait headlines compared to non-clickbait headlines. Examples are analysed to illustrate how these devices contribute to the creation of an information gap. Knowing that information exists, but not having it, makes users curious, and when users are curious they are more likely to click.
