How do headlines affect online news reading?

Posted by Bertrand Pecquerie on May 12, 2004 at 2:00 PM

Thanks to cyberjournalist.net for writing this useful piece on the way in which people read online news headlines. According to the article preliminary findings from an eyetrack study from Poynter, the Estlow Center for Journalism and New Media and Eyetools Inc, show that “the readers on home pages with larger headlines appear to do more skimming or spot-checking, rather than 'reading.' Larger headlines seem to implicitly allow permission to skip blurbs and easily scan down the page. This raises the key point as to the purpose of Web page headlines. "Small-headline viewers tended to 'hover' over each headline/blurb combo on the page. The extra concentration it took to absorb the smaller headline type seemed to draw them more into reading the accompanying blurbs. And these readers tended to move further down the page."

Source: cyberjournalist.net

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