Authors’ contributions The authors confirm that the manuscript has been reviewed and approved by all authors. All authors have made a substantial contribution to the study and manuscript preparation. Author contributions are as follows: TJ (conceptualization, research design, manuscript writing and editing, funding acquisition), XW (data acquisition, processing, and analysis, and manuscript writing and editing), YC (research design and manuscript editing), YW (data acquisition, processing, and analysis). This research has been made possible through the financial support of the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grants No. 72074173, No. 71774125, and No. 71904057 and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities. Summary points What was already known on the topic: • News providers have been considering a variety of verbal techniques, including sensationalism, selectivity, negativity and so on to increase the effectiveness of a headline. • Message framing and the
