Pixel International Conferences

The study identifies the amount of headline/article discrepancies in the corpora of online articles on sensitive political topics: 25 to 50% of Internet headlines distort the publications they introduce. Language means and manipulative strategies employed by different authors vary considerably: extensive use of expressive language, style variation, information substitution, subjective modality and selective citations are identified as major causes of these distortions. Manipulated headlines establish false logical sequences and form wrong causative implicatures that may affect inexperienced readers, in particular, ESP students. Complete avoidance of authentic materials, however, can demotivate students; therefore, it is suggested developing a number of text analysis exercises for the students to be able to "decrypt" the online articles' style not to be harmed by the misinformation and manipulation techniques. 

Dor, D. (2003). On newspaper headlines as relevance optimizers. In Journal of pragmatics, 35, p. 695-721. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0378-2166(02)00134-0">10.1016/S0378-2166(02)00134-0.

Kozyreva, A., Lewandowsky, S. & Hertwig, R. (2020). Citizens versus the internet: Confronting digital challenges with cognitive tools. In Psychological science in the public interest, 21 (3), p. 103-156. DOI:10.1177/1529100620946707.

Tymbay A. (2022 - a) Balancing authentic content and “hot topic” discussions in an ESP classroom. ESP Today, 10(2),  p. 310–328. DOI: 10.18485/esptoday.2022.10.2.6