Our study investigates clickbait – ambiguous misleading headlines, aimed at exploiting readers’ curiosity gap. Clickbait has two unequally conspicuous interpretations, where the first interpretation is false with respect to the article content, while the second interpretation is correct content-wise, but considerably less obvious. We aim at identifying linguistic structures and pragmatic mechanisms employed in creating Russian clickbait, as well as testing the effectiveness of clickbait headlines experimentally. To answer our research questions, we compiled, annotated and analyzed a corpus of Russian clickbait headlines, as well as designed and ran an online experiment. We demonstrate that the main device employed in creating clickbait is a false generalized conversational implicature (GCI), created by flouting Gricean maxims of Quantity, Manner, or Relevance, which is subsequently canceled by the content of the article. We identify language-specific contexts conducive to their occurrence, and show how journalists explore semantic, syntactic, and referential peculiarities of the Russian language to create GCIs inherent in clickbait. Finally, we demonstrate that not all clickbait headlines are effective: in order to attract clicks, clickbait must not be obviously false and must increase the potential appeal and importance of insufficiently engaging news pieces on topics that do not require specialized knowledge.

我们的研究调查了点击诱饵——模棱两可的误导性标题，旨在利用读者的好奇心差距。Clickbait 有两种不同的解释，其中第一种解释在文章内容方面是错误的，而第二种解释在内容方面是正确的，但明显不太明显。我们的目标是确定用于创建俄罗斯点击诱饵的语言结构和语用机制，并通过实验测试点击诱饵标题的有效性。为了回答我们的研究问题，我们编译、注释和分析了俄罗斯点击诱饵标题的语料库，并设计并运行了一个在线实验。我们证明了用于创建点击诱饵的主要设备是一种虚假的广义会话含义（GCI），它是通过无视 Gricean 的数量、方式、或相关性，随后被文章内容取消。我们确定了有利于它们发生的特定语言上下文，并展示了记者如何探索俄语的语义、句法和指称特性，以创建点击诱饵中固有的 GCI。最后，我们证明并非所有的点击诱饵标题都是有效的：为了吸引点击，点击诱饵不能明显是虚假的，并且必须增加关于不需要专业知识的主题的引人入胜的新闻文章的潜在吸引力和重要性。和俄语的参考特性来创建clickbait固有的GCI。最后，我们证明并非所有的点击诱饵标题都是有效的：为了吸引点击，点击诱饵不能明显是虚假的，并且必须增加关于不需要专业知识的主题的引人入胜的新闻文章的潜在吸引力和重要性。和俄语的参考特性来创建clickbait固有的GCI。最后，我们证明并非所有的点击诱饵标题都是有效的：为了吸引点击，点击诱饵不能明显是虚假的，并且必须增加关于不需要专业知识的主题的引人入胜的新闻文章的潜在吸引力和重要性。