Photography and clickbait headlines: online media tools in the process of readers manipulation

Online media no longer play only an informative role. One of the goals in the fight for profit is to be visited as much as possible. However, the rush to publish the news before competitors can also manipulate readers. Interestingly, photography is a powerful media tool. As a reminder, one of the first forms of photo manipulation was during the Crimean War. Photographer Roger Fenton was assigned the task of depicting the conflict more beautifully, confirming Queen Victoria's manipulation and inspiring the nation to fight. For online media in the 21st century, it is not enough to suggest content with a photo, which is why clickbait headlines play a role in the whole process. In this paper, I conducted research with 200 respondents to prove the thesis that clickbait headlines and photography are tools in the manipulation process, even using sports news examples. Participants indicated their agreement or disagreement with the statements using a Likert scale. They were also manipulated by the photos and clickbait headlines, according to the results.