The Power of Framing: How News Headlines Guide Search Behavior (2025)

Abstract: Search engines play a central role in how people gather information, but subtle cues like headline framing may influence not only what users believe but also how they search. While framing effects on judgment are well documented, their impact on subsequent search behavior is less understood. We conducted a controlled experiment where participants issued queries and selected from headlines filtered by specific linguistic frames. Headline framing significantly shaped follow-up queries: conflict and strategy frames disrupted alignment with prior selections, while episodic frames led to more concrete queries than thematic ones. We also observed modest short-term frame persistence that declined over time. These results suggest that even brief exposure to framing can meaningfully alter the direction of users’ information-seeking behavior.

## introduction while the visibility and ranking of news content receive significant attention @xcite @xcite , far less is known about how framing of headlines within those results influences behavior. framing, whether through linguistic cues, emphasis, or implied meaning, can shape perceptions, reinforce bias, and steer the course of information seeking @xcite . algorithmic ranking amplifies certain narratives @xcite , and exposure to specific frames affects how issues are interpreted @xcite @xcite . yet how framing within results affects subsequent search behavior remains poorly understood. discussions of search engine bias @xcite and query reformulation @xcite often center around how users revise their queries based on internal goals. but search behavior may also be influenced in other ways like the framing of content in top results @xcite as shown in fig. 1 . click patterns and term overlap are often used to track engagement @xcite , though this overlooks more subtle semantic shifts that reflect deeper interpretive changes. because headlines frequently serve as the first point of contact with a topic @xcite , these frames may exert a lasting influence on how people explore, understand, and act upon information @xcite . ## experimental design we designed a between-subjects randomized controlled experiment (illustrated in fig. 2 ) where participants were assigned to one of six experimental conditions, each corresponding to a specific news were randomly assigned to one of six conditions (control or one of five framing treatments: conflict, game/strategy, human interest, episodic, or thematic). in each of six rounds, participants entered a news-related search query, viewed a subset of google news headlines filtered according to their assigned frame, and selected one headline to read after a brief delay. we observed how exposure to specific frames influenced follow-up queries and their results. we measured changes in query content using semantic similarity, frame match rate, and linguistic characteristics such as concreteness and emotional valence. procedure participants were randomly assigned to one of six frame conditions corresponding to journalistic frames: game/strategy, conflict, thematic, episodic, human interest, and a control group. each participant was asked to enter an initial news-related query into a custom web form that resembled a google news search interface. the interface clearly indicated that it was part of an experiment and was not intended to deceive participants into believing it was a real search engine. for each submitted query, the top 50 search results were retrieved in real time from google news using the scaleserp api 1 . this tool issues queries through clean proxies, minimizing the personalization or adaptive learning on search results. the api used u.s.-based proxies and returned englishlanguage results; all other settings remained at their defaults. each headline was then automatically classified into one of the five frame types or labeled as other if no suitable frame was detected @xcite . classification was performed using chatgpt-4o mini; the full classification 1 http://scaleserp.com prompt is included in the appendix. participants in the control condition were shown the top three headlines from the original search results, irrespective of frame. participants in each treatment group were shown the top three headlines matching their assigned frame condition. if fewer than three matching headlines were available, the remaining results were randomly selected from the rest of the top 50 to ensure that three headlines were always displayed. participants were then asked to select one result to read, with a five-second delay before a selection could be made. this delay encouraged participants to review all options rather than clicking immediately. after making a selection, participants were prompted to enter a new query and repeat the process. each participant completed six rounds in total, with the assigned frame condition held constant throughout. this design allowed us to observe how initial exposure to a particular frame shaped the trajectory of subsequent search behavior over time. we retrieved and classified over 157,000 headlines distributed as shown in outcome measures we recorded several aspects of participants' information-seeking behavior throughout the experiment: (1) the sequence of search queries entered, (2) the search results presented in response to each query, and (3) the spe-cific headlines selected by participants. these behavioral traces allow us to assess changes in search intent, framing exposure, and engagement across repeated interactions. at the conclusion of the task, participants completed a short demographic survey. participants we recruited @xmath0, which ensures demographic diversity aligned with u.s. census benchmarks. all participants were based in the united states, provided informed consent, and were compensated $1.20 usd upon completion. the study was approved by the institutional review board at the university of notre dame. the sample included 47% male and 51% female participants (2% preferred not to disclose). participants resided in rural (15%), suburban (53%), and urban (32%) areas. educational attainment varied: 15% had a high school diploma, 24% had some college experience, 40% held a college degree, and 22% had a graduate degree. racial/ethnic composition was 63% white, 15% african american, 10% latino, and 8% asian (4% identified with other or multiple categories). participants also reported a range of political orientations: 12% identified as very conservative, 24% as somewhat conservative, 24% as moderate, 24% as somewhat liberal, and 16% as very liberal. to assess baseline engagement with news search, participants were asked how frequently they used search engines to find news. responses indicated that 11% searched a few times per month or less, 25% a few times per week, 17% about once per day, and 45% multiple times per day. classification consistency as stated before, the news headlines were zero-shot classified into frames with chatgpt-4o mini. to ensure reliability, the classifications were checked using chatgpt-4, which assigned identical labels 93.75% of the time with 1,500 headlines, showing strong reliability. 100 headlines were also manually spot-checked, with chatgpt-4 matching human consensus: κ = 0.69, macro -f 1 = 0.74. consistent with prior work @xcite @xcite on llms and framing, which shows llms can match or exceed human consistancy on classification tasks. ## headlines affect follow-up queries before turning to the effects of news framing, we begin with a foundational question: to what extent do search results shape the evolution of user queries, independent of their original intent? while prior work shows that users revise their queries based on both internal goals and external feedback @xcite , the degree to which retrieved content nudges users' thinking in new directions remains unclear. ## discussion this study shows that subtle variations in headline framing significantly influence user behavior in search environments. even a single exposure can alter how users reformulate queries and what narrative structures persist in follow-up results, revealing a dynamic interplay between algorithmic curation and cognitive bias. we find strong support for h1: framing shapes immediate search behavior. conflict and strategy frames reduce semantic alignment with headlines and lead to emotionally or ideologically salient query reformulations. h2 receives partial support: exposure to certain frames increases the likelihood of retrieving similarly framed results in the next turn, but these effects diminish quickly, offering no support for h3. framing shapes intent, but its influence fades across rounds. exploratory findings highlight that individual traits moderate framing effects. frequent news searchers (e1) are more responsive to frame cues, and political orientation (e2) amplifies effects of conflict framing-particularly among liberal users-suggesting that ideologically congruent frames may more strongly guide interpretation. overall, these findings underscore that search engines do more than reflect user intent; they actively shape it. even small changes in framing can nudge users along different information paths, influencing not just what they see, but what they search for next. ## conclusions framing effects in search results are subtle but consequential. this study demonstrates that the narrative structure of headlines can influence the trajectory of user queries, reinforcing certain interpretations and shaping short-term information seeking. while these effects attenuate over time, their immediate impact underscores the importance of framing as a mechanism of cognitive and algorithmic influence. understanding this dynamic is essential for designing search systems that support informed, reflective engagement with news content.