The Effects of Negative Language on News Headlines

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News headlines containing negative language are more likely to be clicked on. A reader was 2.3% more likely to click on a headline of average length when it contained a negative word such as wrong, bad or awful. The effects of negative language in headlines were strongest for political and economic news. Smriti Malapati is the Senior Reporter for the Asia Pacific Bureau here at Nature. She joins us now to talk about renewed interest in bat research.

00:46 A new test to get autonomous vehicles on the road

Truly autonomous vehicles, ones that don't require a driver to be present and are driven by AI, aren't yet safe for public use. Part of the reason for this is it has been difficult to train them to deal with rare dangerous situations. Now researchers are unveiling a new approach to present lots of these infrequent events to the AI very rapidly, speeding up the training and testing process.

Research Article: Feng et al.

News and Views: Hazards help autonomous cars to drive safely

Video: The driving test for driverless cars

08:23 Research Highlights

How bird-flu is adapting to mammals, and the effect of negative headlines.

Research Highlight: Bird-flu virus makes itself at home in Canada’s foxes and skunks

Research Highlight: It’s bad! Awful! Negative headlines draw more readers

10:43 Why bat research is taking off

Bats are known to tolerate a lot of viruses that are deadly to humans without much issue. With the ongoing pandemic, this has driven researchers to dive more into the world of bats in the hopes of applying bats' tolerance to humans. Reporter Smriti Mallapaty has been writing about this renewed interest and she joined us to tell us more.

News Feature: Bats live with dozens of nasty viruses — can studying them help stop pandemics?

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