ArticleNature human behaviour2023
Negativity drives online news consumption.
Article in Nature human behaviour, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 55 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
55 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- When curiosity gaps backfire: effects of headline concreteness on information selection decisions.Scientific reports · 2025Pooled it
- A multinational analysis of how emotions relate to economic decisions regarding time or risk.Nature human behaviour · 2024Pooled it
- The Media Bias Detector: A framework for annotating and analyzing the news.Science advances · 2026Article
- Impact of Repeated Exposure to Polarized Health-Related News on Explicit and Implicit Attitudes Toward Dietary Supplements: Online Experimental Study.JMIR infodemiology · 2026Article
- Distinct motivational factors shape news-seeking in young adults.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Using Social Media Listening to Understand the Pressure Injury Experience: A Qualitative Descriptive Study.JMIR nursing · 2026Article
- Health information dynamics and audience responses to avian influenza on YouTube: Implications for digital public health communication.PNAS nexus · 2026Article
- Contraception-Related Posts from Adolescents, Young Adults, and Caregivers on Reddit: A Qualitative Content Analysis.Journal of pediatric and adolescent gynecology · 2026Article
- Concrete language enhances sharing of social media posts on Twitter, Reddit, and experimentally.Quarterly journal of experimental psychology (2006) · 2026Article
- Improving science literacy in the newsroom: Experimental evidence.PNAS nexus · 2026Article
- Entrepreneurs of conflict: A descriptive analysis of when and how political elites use divisive rhetoric.PNAS nexus · 2026Article
- Attention on social media depends more on how you express yourself than on who you are.Nature human behaviour · 2026Article
- Trust dynamics in social media crises: a topic-aspect-sentiment analysis of public evaluations during a school food safety incident.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Article
- Framing resonance and variation in social media: the case of slow food on Instagram.Frontiers in nutrition · 2026Article
- Negative emotions concentrate while positive emotions diffuse in football fan rivalries.PloS one · 2026Article
- Understanding the impact of misinformation on adolescents.Nature human behaviour · 2026Review
- The guarded engagement loop: risk salience and interaction-driven underperformance in generative AI adoption.Frontiers in research metrics and analytics · 2026Article
- Rethinking news framing with large language models.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Social feedback amplifies emotional language in online video live chats.Communications psychology · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Online media is important for society in informing and shaping opinions, hence raising the question of what drives online news consumption. Here we analyse the causal effect of negative and emotional words on news consumption using a large online dataset of viral news stories. Specifically, we conducted our analyses using a series of randomized controlled trials (N = 22,743). Our dataset comprises ~105,000 different variations of news stories from Upworthy.com that generated ∼5.7 million clicks across more than 370 million overall impressions. Although positive words were slightly more prevalent than negative words, we found that negative words in news headlines increased consumption rates (and positive words decreased consumption rates). For a headline of average length, each additional negative word increased the click-through rate by 2.3%. Our results contribute to a better understanding of why users engage with online media.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.