The Ways of Emotional Sensation: A Study on the Communication Strategy of Startling News Headlines on Social Media Platforms

On aspects of startling news headlines, its history could be traced back to Yellow Journalism, of which the main communication strategy is emotional sensation, while it referred to the newspaper owned by Hearst full of startling headlines to attract the audience. This paper revealed that the genesis of yellow journalism had been unraveled before, as it explained the concept of emotional sensation as a kind of emotional activity or communication strategy, meanwhile, the startling news headlines in social media shared similar features to the bold headlines in the era of yellow journalism. This research depicted the development history of yellow journalism through a multi-case study, which showed the basic characteristics of yellow journalism. At the same time, it gave birth to the necessary analysis of the startling news headlines on social media platform.