Although clickbait is a ubiquitous tactic in digital media, we challenge the popular belief that clickbait systematically leads to enhanced sharing of online content on social media. Using the Persuasion Knowledge Model, we predict that clickbait tactics may be perceived by some readers as a manipulative attempt, leading to source derogation where the publisher may be perceived as less competent and trustworthy. This, in turn, may reduce some readers’ intention to share content. Using a controlled experiment, we confirm that high-emotional headlines are shared more and show evidence that clickbait often leads to inferences of manipulative intent and source derogation. We then use a well-known secondary data set containing 19,386 articles from 27 leading online publishers. We supplement it with Twitter share data, sentiment analysis, topic modeling, and additional control variables. We confirm that, on average, clickbait articles elicit far fewer shares than non-clickbait articles. Our results are stable, with large effect sizes even after controlling for endogenous selection. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11747-021-00830-x.

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The study assessed 54 advertisements of 145 different drugs, published over one year (from December 2011 to November 2012) in an Indian medical journal, circulated widely mainly among general practitioners (GPs). The ethical guidelines of the World Health Organization (WHO) and Organisation of Pharmaceutical Producers of India (OPPI) for medicinal drug promotion were applied. The brand name was mentioned in all advertisements (100% compliance both with the WHO and OPPI criteria) and the names of the active ingredients were also mentioned in 128 (90.14%) advertisements. However, major adverse drug reactions were mentioned in only two advertisements (1.37%); precautions, contraindications and warnings in only two (1.37%); and major interactions in only one (0.68%). Only three advertisements (2.06%) were well substantiated with references. To ensure the ethical promotionof drugs among GPs, journals must introduce compulsory review and appraisal of promotional advertisements by a dedicated review board, including at least one member trained in pharmacology and one representative from the medical division of a pharmaceutical company.

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