This study focuses on the impact of both the headline strategies and the posters on the received readership on social media. Taking the heated social event “Beijing Red, Yellow, Blue (RYB) Kindergartent event” for example, we content analysed 1644 headlines on WeChat from November 2017 to January 2018 to explore the dynamic relationship among headline strategies, information sources (posters), and the clicks on different phases of the developing social event. Results show that no one headline style dominated the entire issue developing process, but some styles did draw more attention in a certain phase. In addition, posters used “three colors” pronoun as a strategy to fight against the internet censorship and to continue the online discussion of the social event. Results show that headlines with frames that define problem and attribute responsibility received more clicks. For such an important social event, posts from the officials and the individuals both drew most attention, demonstrating users’ need to seek information from both sides.
Keywords: news sources, headline strategy, headline style, headline frame, readership, social media