Predictions For Journalism: Zizi Papacharissi

Zizi Papacharissi is the UIC Distinguished Professor of Communication and Political Science at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Papacharissi predicts that "Headlines are going out of style" in 2024. She acknowledges the importance of headlines in media, especially in a current context, explaining that "In a news infoscape riddled with affective polarization, headlines help focus public opinion and offer much needed balance". Headlines are meant to capture your attention and draw you into the article it presents, but now, headlines "blend in too easily" while "News audiences are now too savvy for clickbait". In my experience, the headline definitely plays an important role in peoples consumption of a media. I find that proper headlines make a large difference, especially on social media where links dominate your feed. People will often judge whether or not they'll read the article based off the headline alone, like judging a book by its cover. Papacharissi touches on this, asserting that "a headline with a distinct style — well, that can reveal so much about the person who wrote it and the person who reads it." She even goes on to suggest AI as a potential aid in crafting proper headlines, believing "it could help spark up ideas within a human imagination clogged up with banalities". After all, the internet has changed the way we consume and approach media, it is time for journalists to adapt.

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