主题：Fact or Opinion: Investigating the Effect of Headlines on News Engagement

主讲：王欣，教授，加拿大西安大略大学毅伟商学院

时间：2021年9月27日 09:30

地点：腾讯会议905541655

摘要：Newspaper headlines play an important role in disseminating information to the public. The persuasive function of news headlines is to cut through the clutter and grab the attention of the readers. The informative function of news headlines is to act as “the summary” of the news report and help the readers grasp the meaning the text. Opinion based headlines has greater persuasive function and fact based headline has greater informative function. In this paper, we empirically investigate the effect of headline on reader engagement and approval under different social contexts, particularly we control for the content of the news articles. We find that in the context of public health crisis, opinion-based headline increases reader engagement by 13.6% of a standard deviation but decreases the reader approval by 7.0% of a standard deviation. In the context of social movement, opinion-based headline increases reader engagement by 15.2% of a standard deviation but decreases the reader approval by 11.8% of a standard deviation. Causal forest model demonstrates the heterogeneity in treatment effect - authors' experience, the age of the post, title length and headline length increase the effect of opinion-based headline on engagement, while article length and negative sentiment in headline decrease the effect of opinion-based headline on engagement. Our paper highlights the trade-off between the persuasive and information roles of news headlines and showcases the importance of headline in attaining engagement and approval.

讲座人简介：王欣教授现任教于加拿大西安大略大学(Western University)毅伟商学院(Ivey Business School)营销系，博士生导师，卡夫集团讲席教授,是统计和精算系的双聘教授。研究领域包括人工智能的商业应用,大数据挖掘和公司战略研究，营销和金融科技，市场结构和品牌关系，社交网络分析，互联网营销，消费者产品选择及行为经济学；研究成果发表在营销科学(Marketing Science),消费者研究(Journal of Consumer Research),管理科学(Management Science),市场营销研究杂志(Journal of Marketing Research),国际市场营销研究(International Journal of Research in Marketing),数学心理(Journal of Mathematical Psychology)等国际顶级学术期刊。王教授目前是市场营销研究杂志(Journal of Marketing Research)，消费者研究杂志(Journal of Consumer Research),和营销科学学会杂志(Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science)的编委会成员,并担任多本经济类，商业类期刊的审稿人。他的科研工作受加拿大国家社会科学和人文研究基金项目资助。