No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the authors.
Native Advertising and the appropriation of journalistic clout
Abstract
The use of native advertising has sparked a heated debate. While similar formats have a long history within journalism, this new iteration furthers the blurring of boundaries between news and ads by producing ads that look and feel like news, but that are clearly labeled as advertising. This book chapter critically addresses the phenomenon of native advertising from three different angles. First, a historical and conceptual discussion on native advertising brings to the fore earlier models of native advertising that were referred to with different terms, as well the current understanding of what native ads are. Second, the current normative debate about native advertising is teased out to shed light on the rhetorical shift that seems to be permeating the news industry. To publishers this kind of advertising creates important streams of revenue; to advertisers, it appropriates journalistic clout. Finally, the potential challenges and benefits of native ads vis-à-vis digital journalism are presented, aiming to demystify a commercial initiative that could lead to economic viability but also could question journalistic allegiance to the citizen, and threaten the legitimacy and autonomy of contemporary news media.
... In other words, "native advertising deliberately disables consumers' ability to recognize advertising elements on a website, rendering advertiser and publisher liable for deceiving consumers" (Wojdynski 2019, 1). This integration of advertising within journalism contradicts the long-standing normative tradition of keeping editorial and commercial content separate (see Ferrer-Conill and Karlsson 2018;Glasser, Varma, and Zou 2019), in which news organizations need to establish their authority and autonomy from commercial actors (Li 2019). Its deceptive nature sparks controversy, primarily as the industry increasingly advocates for its deployment (Carlson 2015). ...
... This tension lies at the heart of native advertising because, on the one hand, deception is key to ensure readers perceive ads as a trusted source of information (Campbell and Marks 2015), and on the other hand, transparency is needed to circumvent regulation and avoid readers feeling deceived, jeopardizing the news outlet's credibility (Amazeen and Wojdynski 2018). In order to be effective, native advertising is embedded in the form of "shiny camouflage" that both mimics news appearance to lure readers while at the same time, labelling content to warn them (Ferrer-Conill and Karlsson 2018). ...
... The prevalent choice is not to use a border or a different colour, but to add a small label as disclosure. Such a combination of visual objects provides support for Ferrer-Conill and Karlsson (2018) claim that native advertising functions as a "shiny camouflage," using design to hide and disclose its commercial nature at the same time. As Ikonen and colleagues (2017) suggest, the majority of visual objects in our sample attempt to maximize deception, and relatively few news outlets work towards transparency by making coinciding objects look different than news articles. ...
This study investigates the visual objects that are used to either disclose or disguise the commercial nature of native advertising as news articles. We adopt a “material object” approach to explore the potential implications for journalism regarding transparency, trust, and credibility. Methodologically, this study used content analysis covering 21 publications in five countries: Germany, Israel, Norway, Spain, and Sweden. We analysed 373 individual native ads. The findings show that news outlets do not follow a consistent way to disclose native ads visually, negotiating the balance between transparency and deception. In this balance, news organizations do not boldly push for transparency and instead remain ambiguous. Our analyses show that both national and organizational characteristics matter when shaping the visual boundaries of journalism.
... While masked, covert, or deceptive advertising formats are not new (Ferrer-Conill and Karlsson 2018), empirical evidence for how such ads are processed by consumers comes largely from research conducted in the past few decades, with a notable spike in the present decade fueled by the rise of digital native advertising. Experiments examining how consumers respond to covert advertising, in various media platforms, with various kinds of products and levels of integration, have yielded a series of fairly conclusive findings, which we will briefly review here. ...
... As the advertisers develop new message formats , including some that do not rely on explicit references to products or services (Ferrer-Conill and Karlsson 2018;Gwinner and Eaton 1999;Serazio 2013), consumers' definitions of advertising will likely also evolve. While the prototypical definition of advertising as "paid nonpersonal communication from an identified sponsor using mass media to persuade or influence an audience" may have been ubiquitous two decades ago ( Richards and Curran 2002, p. 64 ...
Covert advertisements, or those that utilize the guise and delivery mechanisms of familiar non-advertising formats, differ from other more direct forms of advertising in several ways that are important for understanding users’ psychological responses. Research across various covert advertising formats including various forms of sponsored editorial content, other native advertising formats, and product placement has shown that variation consumers’ persuasive responses to such messages is largely driven by whether they recognize that such messages are advertising at all. After reviewing the findings of empirical research into covert advertising effects, we present a model of covert advertising recognition effects (CARE) that outlines potential antecedents and processes underlying the recognition of covert advertising, and maps several pathways to persuasive outcomes that are contingent on advertising recognition and perceptions related to the information in and perceived presentation of the advertisement itself.
... Both these media types (including Obrero microdocumentaries) may be programmed to appear next to each other on a Facebook timeline or in Google search results. Their co-existence in the same Web 2.0 platform, together with native advertising videos that are camouflaged as news, makes it difficult for an audience to distinguish alternative from mainstream media (Ferrer-Conill & Karlsson, 2018). 49 ...
This thesis is a creative and critical exploration of how transmedia storytelling meshes with political documentary’s nature of representing social realities and goals to educate and promote social change. I explore this notion through Obrero (“worker”), my independently produced transmedia and transjournalistic documentary project that explores the conditions and context of the Filipino rebuild workers who migrated to Christchurch, New Zealand after the earthquake in 2011. While the project should appeal to New Zealanders, it is specifically targeted at an audience from the Philippines. Obrero began as a film festival documentary that co-exists with strategically refashioned Web 2.0 variants, a social network documentary and an interactive documentary (i-doc).
Using data derived from the production and circulation of Obrero, I interrogate how the documentary’s variants engage with differing audiences and assess the extent to which this engagement might be effective. This thesis argues that contemporary documentary needs to re-negotiate established film aesthetics and practices to adapt in the current period of shifting technologies and fragmented audiences. Documentary’s migration to new media platforms also creates a demand for filmmakers to work with a transmedia state of mind—that is, the capacity to practise the old canons of documentary making while comfortably adjusting to new media production praxis, ethics, and aesthetics. Then Obrero itself, as the creative component of this thesis, becomes an instance of research through creative practice. It does so in two respects: adding new knowledge about the context, politics, and experiences of the Filipino workers in New Zealand; and offering up a broader model for documentary engagement, which I analyse for its efficacy in the digital age. --- https://researchspace.auckland.ac.nz/handle/2292/54643
... Online media face the increasing number of media consumers who expect to get information without charge but show a non-favorable attitude toward advertising. Aside from the ineffectiveness of the old type of advertising, advertisers are migrating to platforms such as Facebook and Google to reach a broader audience (Ferrer Conill, 2019). ...
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to test hypotheses on the effects of native advertising on young media consumers. First, it aims to discover whether the young audience activates news-based schema or advertising schema when exposed to different themes of native advertising. Second, this research tests whether there is a relationship between the theme of native advertising and the credibility of the media in which it is placed and the ability of young media consumers to recognize the advertising. Third, it attempts to seek a possible relationship between the recognition of native advertising and the credibility of the advertiser.
Design/methodology/approach
An experimental study was carried out using 186 university students in the greater Jakarta area whose ages ranged between 18 and 22 years. Participants were randomly assigned to six groups (2 × 3 experimental design) and asked to respond to a set of questions related to their awareness of native advertising. They were also asked their opinions on the advertiser’s credibility before and after they were told that the content was native advertising.
Findings
Results show that most of these young media consumers could not spot native advertising and have difficulties in recognizing political native advertising. The findings also point out a more profound decline in advertiser credibility among groups exposed to political native advertising compared to nonpolitical native advertising.
Research limitations/implications
Results show that most of these young media consumers could not spot native advertising and have difficulties in recognizing political native advertising. The findings also point out a more profound decline in advertiser credibility among groups exposed to political native advertising compared to non-political native advertising.
Originality/value
This research shows that the theme of the native advertising has a significant influence on the ability of media consumers to recognize native advertising. The results indicate that non-commercial native advertising is highly deceptive. This finding is valuable for the improvement of advertising regulation, especially on non-commercial native advertising.
... How are we to perceive materials that look just like news from diverse actors, including but not limited to 'alternative media (see Holt, 2018) and independent news producers, who produce 'news', 'information' as well as 'misinformation'? Moreover, and as shown by Ferrer and Karlsson (2018), also native advertising is produced to look similar to news. ...
The link between journalism and participation has since long been envisioned and argued to be an important one. However, it is also a complex link. It encompasses how the news media and their social actors actively work towards enabling and engaging citizens as active participants through the digital infrastructures of their proprietary platforms, as well as the ways citizens potentially make use of such opportunities or not in their everyday lives, and how this affects epistemologies of news journalism. However, to date, journalism studies scholars have mostly focused on positive forms of participatory journalism via proprietary platforms, and thus fail to account for and problematize dark participation and participation taking place on social media platforms non-proprietary to the news media. This introduction, and the thematic issue as a whole, attempts to address this void. The introduction discusses three key aspects of journalism’s relationship with participation: 1) proprietary or non-proprietary platforms, 2) participants, and 3) positive or dark participation.
This essay argues that there are overlooked yet important journalistic beliefs, norms, rules and practices regarding, aesthetics, automation, distribution, engagement, identity, and proximity that could be a part of formalized codes of ethics. There are four reasons why these should be formalized. First, making the implicit normative dimensions explicit allow for a shared understanding of journalism, cutting across institutional borders. Second, it promotes a more unified and homogenized understanding of journalism across the institution based on those shared explicit norms (normative isomorphism). Third, it reduces the fuzziness of these codes and sharpens their functions as boundary objects, simplifying the negotiation between journalists and audiences. Fourth, and finally, these implicit codes might be an untapped resource that could make journalism better connect with citizens and increase its legitimacy. The paper offers two main contributions to journalism studies. First, it shows that elements of journalistic practice and culture that seem disparate in fact play similar institutional roles, forming boundary objects as sites of tension where codes are negotiated by different actors. Second, systematizing these informal codes into the style of traditional codes of ethics renders them more visible and could help journalism scholars understand the uneven formation and evolution of journalistic norms.
O que sabemos sobre competências digitais, os processos pelos quais são adquiridas pelos adolescentes e os seus impactos nas oportunidades e riscos online? De que modos adolescentes europeus avaliam as suas competências digitais? Que competências digitais são necessárias para enfrentarem os desafios presentes e futuros de sociedades cada vez mais digitais? Respondendo a estas perguntas, o presente capítulo apresenta alguns dos primeiros resultados do projeto ySKILLS (2020-2024)1: a identificação de atores e de fatores que intervêm nas competências digitais. Para isso, analisa as considerações de informantes privilegiados – especialistas em Educação e Trabalho/Emprego; adolescentes entre os 13 e os 17 anos.
The e-book version is available in open access at the following address: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.3/6326
Introduction of the chapter
A broad scholarly consensus maintains that citizen participation represents the very foundation of democratic life, and that news journalism is one of the pillars that support democracy’s continued and healthy existence, by guaranteeing the sustainment of an informed citizenry who identifies with the core principles of civic participation. In this context, young people are usually viewed as one of the key actors, without whose active contribution democratic societies are destined to a future of disintegration, apathy, and rampant individualism. Consequently, young people are also one of the primary targets when it comes to lay the blame for the decline of active citizenship and the rise of disenfranchisement, which is identified with low information levels and lack of news attentiveness (Buckingham 2000; Putnam 2000). In fact, research has suggested, in Europe and elsewhere, that younger generations have for a long time been growing less and less interested in traditional news content and more disconnected from mainstream news media, even to a greater extent than their counterparts in earlier decades (Lauf 2001; Blekesaune, Elvestad and Aalberg 2012).
At the same time, however, several studies have demonstrated that representations of youth in mainstream news media tend to reinforce the stereotype of an apathetic and individualistic collective actor, almost triggering a «self-fulfilling prophecy» (Merton 1948) which implies that predictions or expectations on what young people would wish and do eventually influence their behaviour. This common-sense representation of the disenfranchised younger generations who are only interested in «fun» further complicates the relationship between news journalism and young people (Griffin 2004; Wayne et al. 2010). It is not surprising, then, that such preju- dice tends to translate into youth’s migration from traditional news media to new digital news sources, that are explicitly designed for younger audiences (Newman et al. 2020; AgCom 2020) and can often provide young citizens with new opportunities in terms of repertoires of representations and tools for self-representation (Loader 2007).
The mutual distrust between traditional news media and youth that emerges from studies on media consumption has highlighted the need for further research on those sources of information that are growing ever more popular among younger audiences. If news consumption can still be considered one of the crucial elements of civic participation, it is important to investigate young people’s experiences of news and the main representations of the public sphere that they recognize as meaningful and legitimate. We refer here in particular to two kinds of youth-oriented news media, which have emerged in the last two decades:
1) hybrid digital native journalism – positioned at the intersection of information, entertainment, youth culture and advertising – which explicitly represents itself in opposition to the mainstream media and offers news content that is specifically designed to appeal to younger audiences;
2) algorithm-driven sources, which include social network sites (SNS), news aggregators, and news outlets that are native to social media, that have progressively appeared after 2006 with the diffusion of connected mobile devices and the growth of technology companies like Facebook, Google, and Twitter.
In order to examine the differences between these two forms of digital news media and retrace the processes that brought from one to the other we will address two case-studies, even though they refer to two different periods and contexts. Notwithstanding their distinct methodological frame and framework, we propose that the two sets of data can be discussed together and can provide useful insights to understand some of youth’s orientations towards information, also in the context of the most recent changes in the news media landscape. Therefore, we will discuss:
(a) parts of a large set of comparative international data obtained during an European research in 2016: from this research we have specifically selected data regarding the case of Vice, a transnational digital news source focused on youth culture, that was originally born as a print magazine and grew into one of the most successful and innovative media companies of the early 2000s;
(b) an analysis based on data collected in ongoing research on the case of Will, an Italian digital news start-up born in 2020 that is part of a new generation of social-media native sources that distribute news exclusively through their Instagram profiles.
Additionally, to provide a background to our discussion of youth-oriented digital news media and discuss the role of mainstream news media in shaping pub- lic perceptions of youth, the first segment of our contribution will summarize the results emerged out of our participation in the European project mentioned above, by discussing part of the media landscape traced across seven EU countries.
We move from two main research questions: are youth a relevant actor within the discourse on the EU in news mainstream media, and what are the main issues most frequently connected to them? Conversely, what are the main issues covered in youth-oriented news media, and how are the processes of agenda setting and framing influenced by the specific forms taken by digital native news sources?
This paper examines the relationships between young people's political mobilization and political parties by analyzing women?s mobilization effects on political parties' youth wings over the last five years in Argentina (2015-2020). The discussion raised in this article is part of a broader research focused on the Argentinean case that studies the production of "youth" as a central issue in national political parties during the last decade. This paper first gives a brief overview of the recent history of the relationship between young people's political mobilization and political parties' youth wings since the return of democracy in 1983 up to the present. Then, it examines the emerging gender-oriented agenda between younger generations since the 2015 women's mobilizations. The third part discusses the main transformations observed on the political parties' youth wings in relation to this process, including organizational structures, internal agenda, generational experience of young women, actions taken to work against gender violence, ideological orientations and relationships between youth militancy and adult leadership during the 2018 abortion legalization debate at the National Congress, gender parity law, and young women running for elected office. The last section comments on the main findings revealed by the relations between social movements and political parties, and boundaries between political system and social life. The paper finally argues that, in Argentina, younger generations of women are reshaping political parties and advance on their ongoing struggle for social, economic and gender equity.
http://hdl.handle.net/10400.3/6326
This study adds to the growing literature on native advertising and journalism by analyzing how seventeen prominent news organizations promote their in-house content studios on their web sites. As public-facing spaces oriented toward attracting clients, these sites are understood as discursive artifacts that provide insight into how news organizations negotiate their allegiance to norms of journalistic autonomy while simultaneously developing the role of creating paid advertising campaigns that sit alongside news content. Our analysis reveals that news organizations simultaneously engage in discourses of integration and separation between native advertising and news content. They signal the integration between news and advertising through the usage of “story” as an umbrella term for digital content while also maintaining separation through nuanced language choices that imply some degree of distance between news and native advertising. These diverging discourses demonstrate how fraught native advertising is for news organizations striving to be recognized as legitimate providers of authoritative news while attempting to bolster revenues in face of the difficulties arising with the digital advertising market. These findings draw on and expand discursive theories in journalism studies by broadening inquiry beyond news content to encompass the complex terrain of content production emerging within the digital space.
This article explores the rise of government-sponsored content, a recent development in the branded content model, in which government agencies assume the role of sponsors of editorial content. Theoretically, branded content blurs the boundary between strategic messages and communicative ones. As such, it embodies an inherently manipulative essence. By examining three case studies of government-sponsored content deals in the Israeli market (2014, 2016, 2017), the article seeks to understand the implications of such blurring once government agencies adopt this practice. Based on triangulation of sources (government documents, media content and reports in the press) the study follows the formation of these deals and dissects the consequences of their implementation. Findings suggest that government-sponsored content promotes the infliction of new types of harm that differ from those customarily associated with commercial sponsorship. It impels media bodies to adopt the role of government agencies at the formation stage. Subsequently, it allows these government campaigns to establish a ubiquitous presence within media space. Most important, the deals open a path for stealth propaganda, either for personal promotion of politicians or advancement of political agendas concerning controversial topics. As such, they corrupt both media outlets and the public sector.
Based upon a 3-year data set of Tweets linking to native advertising from leading U.S. news publications, this study provides human content analyses (n = 1,527) of the practice of native advertising disclosure in the field – both on publisher websites and when shared on Twitter – and explores whether disclosures serve the inoculating function of resistance to persuasion. Leveraging the Persuasion Knowledge Model (Friestad and Wright [1994]. “The persuasion knowledge model: How people cope with persuasion attempts.” Journal of Consumer Research 21 (June): 1–31) and inoculation theory (McGuire [1964]. “Inducing resistance to persuasion: Some contemporary approaches.” In Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, edited by L. Berkowitz, 191–229. New York: Academic Press.), results show a) regular use of disclosures on publisher landing pages, b) the absence of disclosures in over half of publisher Twitter Cards, and c) the presence of disclosures corresponded to an increased likelihood of negatively-valenced Twitter posts.
This study uses 48 in-depth interviews with managers, editors, and reporters at local and regional newspapers and their parent companies in four countries (Finland, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom) to examine how they discuss changes to their business models and the ways their news organizations are adapting to emerging audience-consumption trends in the digital environment. The results show that interviewees continue to prioritize the economic importance of their print products, despite declines in advertising and subscriptions. They also believe that for local news to continue, journalists must better understand the business strategies of their news organizations. Finally, they acknowledge the value of experimenting with new approaches to monetization, including implementing paywalls and using analytics to personalize content. In balancing the merits of their print products with their desire to develop new digital offerings, local newspapers seek to operate as ‘ambidextrous organizations’ that exploit the products of the past while exploring innovations that may help sustain them in the future.
Declining revenues from offline and online ads has led publishers to pursue new avenues, such as native advertising: camouflaging ads as news. Critics of native advertising claim that this form of advertising blurs the boundaries between editorial and commercial content, and can reduce the audiences’ trust in editorial content. However, little research has assessed the possible effects of native ads on audiences’ trust in news. With an experimental design embedded in an online survey (N = 733) representative of the Norwegian population, this study explores the consequences of political native advertising for citizens’ trust in political news. This article discusses how political native advertising poses a challenge to the boundary between journalism and advertising as well as the boundary between journalism and powerful elites. Our study examines (1) how prominently native advertisements should be labelled in order for readers to recognize them as advertising content and (2) whether exposure to such ads reduces readers’ trust in political news. Our most important finding shows that when explicitly labelled, native advertising by political parties can reduce people’s trust in political news.
As sponsored content is gaining ground globally, the boundaries between strategic communication, advertising and journalism are blurring. As sponsored content becomes more common, it raises novel ethical concerns that no industry alone can answer, such as How much disclosure is needed for transparency? Self-regulation via codes of ethics has been suggested as a remedy to meet the rising transparency expectations, and this article analysed 40 codes of ethics in the fields of communication, advertising, and journalism (United States and Finland) related to sponsored content. The results indicate that there remains excessive variation within the codes of ethics of how transparency of sponsored content is addressed. According to our analysis, most of the codes deal with transparency and the separation between commercial and editorial content only vaguely, and only eight of the total 40 guidelines take sponsored content into account. Therefore, we believe that the strategic benefit of sponsored content is threatened as long as no joint codes of ethics exist for sponsored content. To the degree that sponsored content is practiced across professions, we call for a joint code of ethics for sponsored content transparency, as the current codes of ethics fail to answer this emerging need.
This study analyzes how business and editorial staff members at US newspapers rhetorically construct or deconstruct the metaphoric norm of a wall or line of separation between news and advertising functions. The study is based on 18 in-depth interviews with news and advertising professionals at middle-market US newspapers and the subsequent analysis of their rhetoric about the relationship between the news and advertising sides of their organizations. The study seeks to understand the rhetorical construction of an institutional norm and our observations are focused on the organization level. This study aids understanding of two related phenomena: how institutional norms are rhetorically constructed and how norms are rhetorically renegotiated or deconstructed.
Native advertising, defined as the practice by which a marketer borrows from the credibility
of a content publisher by presenting paid content with a format and location that
matches the publisher’s original content, has been the primary driving engine of the
Internet marketing economy for several years. Spending on native advertising is projected
to grow from $4.7 billion in 2013 to $21 billion by 2018 (Hoelzel, 2015), and
advertising agencies are not only using native broadly but also hoping to increase their
usage (Aldridge, 2016). While a majority of online marketing seeks to narrowly target
users based on topic, through the use publication audience data, user tracking, collaborative
filtering, and other techniques, native advertising not only gives users content
that matches the topic of the publishers’ original content but also does so by copying
the format of nonpaid content. Native advertising can take a wide variety of forms,
ranging from sponsored posts on social media platforms, sponsored articles and videos
on sites that publish original content, and sponsored links and recommendation blocks
on content providers and Web search engines.
Sponsored news is a form of native advertising that has engendered much hope as a solution for digital publishing revenue woes, but also much concern about whether the average consumer can discern its advertising nature. Recent U.S. federal guidelines and industry recommendations preach clear and conspicuous labeling of sponsored news articles, but little is known about how individual readers interpret these labels, and how their interpretation shapes their understanding of article content. The present study contributes knowledge to the former areas by presenting the results of a between-subjects experiment (N = 343) that tested the effects of four disclosure characteristics (proximity, visual prominence, wording clarity, and logo presence) on recognition of the sponsored content as advertising, and by analyzing the psychological process through which such recognition influences perceptions of the article and the sponsor. The results show that while logo presence and visual prominence increase the odds of recognition, logo presence also increases misperception of the disclosure label as a stand-alone display advertisement. Recognition of the article as advertising led to decreased perceptions of article quality, attitude toward the sponsor, and intent to share the article. A serial mediation analysis shows that the effects of recognition on attitudes and intent to share are primarily mediated through conceptual persuasion knowledge activation and perceived deceptiveness of the article. Implications of these findings for practitioners and for the application of persuasion theories to covert advertising are discussed.
This paper explores the increasing trend of adopting native advertising in the digital editions of traditional news media outlets. Native advertising is defined here as a form of paid media where the commercial content is delivered within the design and form of editorial content, as an attempt to recreate the user experience of reading news instead of advertising content. Methodologically, this study examines 12 news websites of legacy newspapers from Sweden, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States, and analyzes the adoption of native advertising during the span of January 2015. Subsequently, these advertisements are analyzed in terms of type, form, function, integration, measurement, disclosure, and authorship. The results show that while the degree of implementation is still modest, the way in which it is implemented is uneven across countries.
Despite recent industry attention, questions remain about how native advertising is perceived and processed by consumers. Two experiments examined effects of language and positioning in native advertising disclosures on recognition of the content as advertising, effects of recognition on brand and publisher evaluations, and whether disclosure position affects visual attention. Findings show that middle or bottom positioning and wording using “advertising” or “sponsored” increased advertising recognition compared to other conditions, and ad recognition generally led to more negative evaluations. Visual attention mediated the relationship between disclosure position and advertising recognition. Theoretical, practical, and regulatory implications for disclosures in native advertising are discussed.
See link below (in comments) to read full publication!
In this article, we develop an understanding of native advertising, a growing new form of online advertising, which we define as desired marketing communications that appear in-stream. Current forms of native advertising can be considered in terms of their secrecy: how aware a consumer is of a native adver- tisement’s source and intent. Based on existing research, we argue that less secretive native advertising will be more successful in the long run, and illustrate this using several cases. Finally, we detail important considerations for those marketers looking to capitalize on native advertising.
Extensive research over the past 100 years has shown that the interrelationship between journalism and PR is tensioned and paradoxical, with negative perceptions of PR among journalists and trivialization and demonization of PR as ‘spin’ contrasted by claims of ‘symbiosis’ and evidence that 40–75% of media content is significantly influenced by PR. However, studies have been predominantly quantitative and most predate the recent ‘crisis in journalism’ and rapid growth of new media formats. This article reports in-depth interviews with senior editors, journalists and PR practitioners in three countries that provide new insights into journalism–PR relations today and identify trajectories for future research, education and practice.
This article investigates the concept of autonomy within the journalistic institution. A review of the literature reveals that journalist autonomy is restricted at the political, economic and organisational levels of news production, negotiated at the editorial level, and exercised at the level of practice. The article addresses the limits of professional autonomy, aiming for a wider contextualisation of the question to analyse the factors that restrict and enable journalistic autonomy. By investigating journalistic autonomy within the duality of structure, the analysis finds that autonomy is attained when journalists engage in the recursive reproduction of the institution. The level of autonomy enjoyed by journalists therefore remains a fluid concept that is continually adjusted to manage the daily task of reporting the news.
This article focuses on reactions toward two mixtures of advertising and editorial content in magazines, namely theme features and advertorials. A survey among subscribers (n=316) to five different magazines showed that the most editorial mixture generated the most attention, appreciation, and acceptance. Furthermore, audience reactions toward mixtures were influenced by the perceived authority and informational value of the magazines. The findings did not substantiate concerns that have been expressed in the literature about the misleading character of these subtle forms of advertising. Intertwining of advertising and editorial content appears to be a promising format for advertisers and publishers.
This study explores feature advertising, or single advertisements designed to look like editorial copy. A national survey of editors and ad managers at newspapers and magazines found that print media typically have an unwritten policy to label feature ads as advertisements. An information processing experiment was performed to test the efficacy of such labeling. Experimental results suggest that feature ads borrow from the editorial credibility of a publication and that the current labeling policy does not adequately address the problem.
The aim of this article is to show the usefulness of an expanded version of Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis approach, i.e. an approach that combines text analysis with an analysis of discourse processes in studying text production and interpretation, and also incorporates ethnographic methods, in this case, participant observation and interviews. This expanded approach was checked in the study of illegal promotional news discourse; the study was conducted chronologically in two stages. In the first stage, an analysis of interpractice—which identifies cases in which specific other practices of the process of text production and interpretation are overtly drawn upon within a practice—was used to identify promotional news reports and uncover elements of promotional practice which are drawn upon within journalism, such as having the advertiser, who realizes his/her commercial interest by paying for publishing or killing a certain story, as the key actor in the process of promotional news production. In the second stage, analysis of interdiscursivity revealed how promotional journalism through textual devices (genre, topics, perspective, choice of sources, lexical choice, over-lexicalization, coherence, choice of processes and participants) incorporates discursive elements of promotion which are drawn upon within the news report discourse, such as using representatives of the organization as almost the only participants, partiality, positive-only evaluation of the characteristics/activities of the subject discussed, which is in the interest of those discussed by the texts and not the readers.
The presence of a diversity of information offers citizens access to a range of ideas, expertise and topics. In this study, a measure of content diversity was created to determine whether online citizen journalism and online newspaper publications were serving this function in the USA. Based on the findings from a quantitative content analysis (n = 962), online citizen journalism articles were more likely to feature a greater diversity of topics, information from outside sources and multimedia and interactive features. The findings suggest online citizen journalism content adds to the diversity of information available in the marketplace.
The border between journalism and advertising in contemporary Estonian media is being increasingly blurred as a consequence of rapid commercialisation. The aim of this paper is to analyse this “blurring” in the context of a small media market where editorial resources are limited and the capital costs of media products are high. The study draws on interviews with journalists and editors, journalists’ questionnaire responses and textual analysis of news media contents. The different media of newspapers, magazines, television, and radio view this distinction between promotional material and independent journalistic production in contrasting ways; even particular newspapers display differing attitudes. Media organisations, moreover, openly declare an ideology that is contrary to the logic of economics. Hence, the complex process of the diminution of the border is hidden from public view but should not simply be reduced, as is frequently the case, to a matter of unethical journalistic behaviour.
Journalists enjoy unprecedented freedom from government interference to gather facts from sources, but journalistic tradition and custom restrict the freedom of journalists to report fact as they see it. This study critically examines the concept of objectivity and proposes an alternative philosophy for encouraging ethical behavior. The first section of the article focuses on the ideological and occupational origins of objectivity and identifies the conflict between these two perspectives Next, the study reviews contemporary literature in regard to objectivity, showing how the concept has evolved, and why objectivity as a journalistic norm needs reevaluation. Third, the study proposes linking the occupational norms and standards of objective journalism with a subjective existentialism, which is more consistent with the ideological definition of objectivity. Finally, the study proposes that journalists improve ethical behavior by developing an existential ethic emphasizing individual responsibility.
The placement of brand references within mainstream entertainment (called here ‘entertainment marketing’) is a rapidly evolving marketing communications field in its scale and sophistication. Much previous research in the field has conceptualized entertainment marketing as promotion and focused on measuring consumer attitudes, purchase intentions and brand recall in response to brand exposure. This conceptual paper suggests that there is also a need for understanding the quality of consumer engagement with brands in the context of mediated entertainment. The paper draws on phenomenological/existential research traditions in order to begin to theorize the role that entertainment marketing techniques may play in facilitating consumer self‐concepts and identity formation through brand exposure within dramatic portrayals of characters and lifestyles.
The claim made in public relations that editorial content has greater value than an advertisement of the same size was tested. Results of an infomation-processing experiment indicate there may be some basis for claiming that a third- party endorsement by editorial staff adds credence to editorial copy. I found that moderate better recognition memory for editorial content than for one type of advertisement was not significantly eroded by a 2-week delay. However, when making claims that publicity outperforms advertising, public relations practitioners should bear in mind that advertisements used in this study were in advertorial format. Further study is needed to determine how the credibility of publicity performs against the broad array of persuasive appeals available in display advertisements (visual effects, humor, sex appeal, emotional impact, etc.).
This study uses qualitative research interviews and a survey to quantify and analyse business models at online newspapers in the UK. Senior editors and executives reported that news websites rely on advertising income to a greater extent than their print counterparts. Despite this, British news sites continue to charge users for some content, although to a varying degree. The fact that online editions still contribute barely a tenth of total revenues explains this experimental approach towards business strategy. Although paid-for content has mostly failed as a mechanism for the online news business in the past, changes in technology and net culture may mean that it is becoming an option again. The authors examine what content is being charged for and why, and investigate: how the 12 newspapers studied are balancing the need to develop additional revenue streams with the demand for traffic in a buoyant advertising market; the extent to which cannibalisation of the print parent is still a concern; the complementary benefits of developing digital products; strategies towards archived content; the value of columnist content to online users; the success of digital editions and email alerts; the potential of mobile services; and the rapidly developing number of online services and commercial partnerships hosted by newspapers on the Web.
Native advertising mimics journalistic content while labelling it as advertising. News and native ads are differentiated through a negotiation between news attributes that form the look and feel of a typical news story and a set of boundary devices. In this paper, we explore how boundary devices are implemented and we compare how they differ within and across five different countries. As the main criticism towards native advertising is the deception of readers, it is crucial to discern how digital newspapers mirror editorial content while demarcating its commercial nature. Empirically, this comparative study draws its data from a content analysis of twenty newspapers in Norway, Sweden, Spain, Germany, and Israel. This paper contributes to the literature on native advertising in journalism from an international perspective, providing a framework to expand comparative research on the interplay of commercial and journalistic content across different countries, cultures, and media systems.
Extending research from Wojdynski and Evans, this experimental study replicates the challenges of effectively disclosing native advertising to readers and demonstrates a promising inoculation method that increases likelihood of recognition. Moreover, this quantitative research indicates that both legacy and online news publishers were evaluated less favorably for displaying native advertising. Attitudes toward the publisher and perceptions of its credibility declined for both, although online publishers suffered greater attitudinal damage than did legacy publishers who may benefit from their established reputation.
The separation of editorial and business departments has long been regarded as central to the identity and integrity of journalism in the United States. Financial challenges confronting news organizations are seeing a gradual relaxation of this separation, though tensions remain. This study examines the perspectives of those involved in creating, developing, and executing specific editorial–business collaborative initiatives intended to enhance the financial standing of their respective news organizations. Drawing on organizational theory, it uses qualitative interviews with individuals at editorial and business departments of various news organizations to ascertain the scope and nature of these initiatives and the factors that participants attribute to their success. It identifies a range of different initiatives, finds that such initiatives have organization-wide effects, and categorizes factors affecting the success of collaborative initiatives into individual, organizational, and institutional levels.
In what is becoming an increasingly cluttered competitive environment, advertisers are being forced to identify alternative approaches with which to communicate their messages. This article focuses on one possible approach, the advertorial, a term typically used to describe a print advertisement where the execution, and in particular the copy, is in the editorial style of the host publication. Drawing on a preliminary review of the literature and an exploratory research study, comprising a press review and a series of in-depth interviews with practitioners, the article considers the profile of the press advertorial and advertising feature within the present advertising environment and their potential as an effective communication tool.
In the strategic communication field, native advertising has been hailed as the next big trend. However, this type of marketing technique may negatively affect the perceptions of brands as well as media outlets that provide such content due to its obscurity of persuasive intent and ambiguity of the content source. The current study examined these issues by conducting a 2 (priming: presence vs. absence) × 2 (media credibility: high vs. low) × 2 (corporate credibility: high vs. low) factorial between-subjects experiment. A total of 500 participants recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk completed the online experiment. Findings suggested that priming of native advertising information would significantly improve users’ ad recognition and change their content perception. In addition, a series of three-way interaction effects suggested that the interaction between the two types of source credibility (media and corporate) tend to work as a function of priming of native advertising information, which could completely change individuals’ perception of the ad content and evaluation of the media source in the future, but not their future corporate evaluation. Important theoretical as well as practical implications have also been discussed in this article.
Native advertising’s effectiveness lies in its ability to look like content produced by
journalists. The potential for deceiving readers and proliferation of native advertising
threaten journalism’s credibility along with its core boundary: the separation
between editorial and advertising. For the press to function in a normative manner,
as a watchdog, contributing to the public’s ability to self-govern, it simply cannot
participate in deception. Therefore, 56 qualitative interviews were conducted with
journalists, advertising, and public relations executives to examine the extent to
which native advertising impedes on the social responsibility of the press. Perspectives
revealed that all three professions agreed native advertising raises ethical concerns.
Native advertising potentially deceives audiences who are unaware that native
advertising is paid, persuasive content versus editorial, thus contributing to the
diminishing credibility of journalism. Furthermore, if native advertising is done well,
it is undetectable from traditional editorial content. Based on these findings, authors
discuss how native advertising threatens several tenets of social responsibility theory.
This contribution analyzes why media companies are “late bloomers” in the field of branding and marketing. Thereafter, it focuses on different instruments of media branding and media marketing and the ethical conflicts which may arise between branding (as a long term strategy to create and to improve brand value and to preserve journalistic values) and “trial and error” marketing efforts which may—particularly in the “upper quality segment” of media markets—work at short term but endanger journalistic credibility, and thus, brand value. The major research question for this article is: how can the branding perspective within media support professional and ethical journalistic values, and do some marketing efforts conflict with a branding strategy?
The present article aims to shed light on the broader paradigm change that has led to native advertising as a revenue model for the publishing business recently. The early emergence of native advertising is thus described in the light of branded content and brand culture strategies, a set of marketing practices that modify firms’ branding through a fresh editorial approach. The development of the native advertising concept is further problematized as a manifestation of the intertwined and blurring lines between communication and information, i.e., between marketing and journalism practices. We finally discuss potential implications of this type of sponsored content and some managerial recommendations.
Traditional news values no longer hold: infotainment has the day. Journalism is in a terminal state of decline. Or so some contemporary commentators would argue. Although there has been a great diversity in format and ownership over time, Conboy demonstrates the surprising continuity of concerns in the history of journalism. Questions of political influence, the impact of advertising, the sensationalisation of news coverage, the 'dumbing down' of the press, the economic motives of newspaper owners - these are themes that emerge repeatedly over time and again today. In this book, Martin Conboy provides a history of the development of newspapers, periodicals and broadcast journalism which· enables readers to engage critically with contemporary issues within the news media· outlines the connections, as well as the distinctions, across historical periods · spans the introduction of printed news to the arrival of the 'new' news media· demonstrates how journalism has always been informed by a cultural practices broader and more dynamic than the simple provision of newsBy situating journalism in its historical context, this book enables students to more fully understand the wide range of practices which constitute contemporary journalism. As such it will be an essential text for students of journalism and the media.
International non-governmental organizations (INGOs) are known to employ freelancers to produce multimedia and to pitch it for them to mainstream news outlets. So it seems odd that research about the blurring of news organizations and INGOs has been largely focused upon the practices of full-time staff at these kinds of organizations. To help fill this lacuna, this article constructs a model capable of interrogating the multiple forms of structure and agency at the heart of such forms of freelancing by blending Critical Realist theory with work by Bourdieu. It then uses this model to analyse semi-structured interviews with six freelancers who were involved in the production of media items about sub-Saharan countries. All of them were found to erode the distinction between INGOs and news organizations through different kinds of commissioning and syndication practices. But this article's main critical contribution lies in its efforts to illuminate why freelancers chose to engage in such liminal work; for the legitimating rationales they employed enabled them to avoid the “inter-role conflicts” experienced by freelancers who work for news outlets and commercial public relations organizations.
This study examined reactions to brand journalism in light of frame, source, and product involvement. Participants in an experimental study viewed a custom magazine with either a commercial (branded) or editorial (nonbranded) frame and read a story quoting either a peer or a corporate source. Readers rated the nonbranded magazine higher in credibility, but source cues had no direct effects on credibility ratings. Source did matter when combined with consumer product involvement. Highly involved consumers had stronger brand attitudes and purchase intent after reading advice from a peer source; low-involved consumers responded more favorably to a corporate source.
Professional journalism’s normative commitment to autonomy has long dictated the separation of editorial functions from advertising. However, the emergent practice of online native advertising complicates this division, resulting in conflicting visions of how journalistic authority should be established for digital news. This study examines reactions to a controversial Church of Scientology native advertisement on the Atlantic web site to assess how competing processes of norm-making and boundary work shape normative understandings of online journalism. Emergent understandings of content comprising both editorial and advertising components require new models for critical inquiry sufficiently sensitive to the online news environment.
This article addresses implications for democracy of two interconnected developments involving big data and the media. One is the targeting of consumers for advertising by marketers and the new data-capture industry that supports them. The other involves the transformation of advertisers’ approach to subsidizing media content production. We describe these developments and consider their consequences for democratic life, drawing on classical and recent democratic theory (Paine, Dahl, Mouffe, Rosanvallon). We conclude that big data’s embedding in personalized marketing and content production threatens the ecology of connections that link citizens and groups via information, argumentation, empathy, and celebration as members of a shared social and civic space. Unless challenged, these developments risk eliminating the connective media necessary for an effective democracy.
The impact of newsroom policies on job satisfaction was studied in an onsite survey of 429 newsroom staffers at twelve West Coast daily newspapers. The study found that newsroom policy changes are affecting journalists' job satisfaction, primarily through the perceived impact of such changes on newspaper quality and on the balance between business and journalism in the newsroom. If the newspaper's quality was perceived as improving, job satisfaction was higher; if journalism was perceived as taking a back seat to business, job satisfaction was lower. Also important were the amount of emphasis on profits (which lowered job satisfaction) and on journalistic policies (which raised job satisfaction). Newspaper size was not found to be a major factor in job satisfaction, but ownership structure was.
The aim of this article is to reveal the production process behind unethical and illegal advertorials — to uncover its main actors, their motives, and responses to this practice. The study combines participant observation and interviews with the main participants in the production of texts which appear in an identical form to journalistic text, yet are commercial messages. The analysis showed that the key actors are advertisers, as they are the initiators of the practice; they define the content and the form of publication to achieve commercial benefit. Both marketing agents and journalists/editors are more or less subordinate to them at all stages of the production. The analysis also revealed that relations between the main actors in the advertorial production process are predominately negative, even antagonistic, although members of a specific group, especially journalists and editors, do not share a homogenous view towards other actors or the advertorial practice itself.
This paper reports an ethnographic case study of how one newspaper organization undertook the redesign of its advertorial products. Examining the design and production of advertorials enables us to see and understand the moments when the values of the interpretive communities of advertorialists (advertising) and journalists are invoked. This case study examines the potential for internal conflict within a news organization as distinctly oppositional interests--advertising and news--seek to control a newspaper's symbolic goods.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to compare the perceptions of agencies, advertisers, and media consumers on the blurring practices commonly used to confuse editorial and advertising.
Design/methodology/approach
A self‐administered questionnaire was mailed out to three sample groups, namely advertisers, agencies, and media consumers: 100 questionnaires were mailed to advertisers, 400 to agencies and 1,000 to media consumers. The response rate by group was 10, 11.75, and 24.5 percent, respectively.
Findings
The findings did not substantiate the concerns that blurring practices are misleading to stakeholders in the industry. Advertisers in particular showed positive attitudes towards blurring practices. It is also revealed that there are few significant differences in the attitudes towards regulation of blurring practices among the three sample groups. However, there are differences in perception across sample groups towards the various types of blurring practices.
Research limitations/implications
Limitations to the paper include the differences in time frame, market size, as well as location from which the samples were drawn. Future research could investigate media executives. Furthermore, the paper is only a snapshot across different blurring practices. Potentially, a specific blurring practice could be monitored over time to provide deeper insights.
Practical implications
The results of this paper offer both advertisers and agencies a guide to shifts in the perceived role of advertising blurring practices across a 15 year period. Moreover, it also provides advertising stakeholders with a consumers' view of such blurring practices, highlighting the extent and direction to which consumers deviate from the industry perspective. Such insights offer a useful yardstick to assist advertising decision makers on the relevance of using a blurred advertising approach as a strategic or tactical advertising initiative.
Originality/value
With its replication and extension focus, the restricted originality in this paper is compensated by its comparative insights into advertising blurring practices among advertising stakeholders.
The development of new communication technology vis-a-vis the Internet affords scholars the opportunity to consider how new technology will influence the practices of journalism. This study reconsiders John McManus' (1994) conceptions of market-driven journalism by examining how traditional news producers on television, in print, and online tell the news. Three aspects of online journalism (centralization, news structure and flow, and temporality) are examined to demonstrate how journalists and media firms struggle to reconcile commercial and news interests.
News professionalism is an efficient and effective means of controlling the working behavior of journalists. The norms of news professionalism determine legitimate arenas and news sources, and although journalists do not set out to report news so that the existing political and economic system is maintained, their norms end up producing stories that implicitly support the existing order. Furthermore, professional norms legitimize the existing order by making it appear to be a natural state of affairs. In addition to allowing news organizations to maximize audience size and maintain marketplace controls, news professionalism results in coverage that does not threaten the economic position of the organization or the overall system in which it operates. Since professionalism is independent of any one organization, journalists have a power base to use as a lever against management, and management limits potential conflict by establishing policies that further limit the professional behavior of journalists. The boundaries created by this interplay are broad enough to permit some creativity in reporting, editing, and presenting news stories, and narrow enough so that journalists must act in the interest of the news organization. (CRH)
With a category system drawn from the ethical elements listed in the American Society of Newspaper Editors' (ASNE) Canons of Journalism, this analysis examines Editor & Publisher's discussion and debate of the problems of journalism on its editorial page in the more than 20 years leading up to ASNE's adoption in 1923 of the first nationwide code of ethics for the newspaper industry. This study confirmed the presumption that the code was a culmination of an ongoing and historical conversation about the normative standards of journalism in the newspaper industry's primary trade journal. It showed that Editor & Publisher raised every one of the ethical issues and problems of journalism outlined in the Canons, to include responsibility of the press, truthfulness and accuracy, partisanship, independence, freedom of the press, propaganda, and sensationalism.
That market forces drive the news is not news. Whether a story appears in print, on television, or on the Internet depends on who is interested, its value to advertisers, the costs of assembling the details, and competitors' products. But in All the News That's Fit to Sell, economist James Hamilton shows just how this happens. Furthermore, many complaints about journalism--media bias, soft news, and pundits as celebrities--arise from the impact of this economic logic on news judgments. This is the first book to develop an economic theory of news, analyze evidence across a wide range of media markets on how incentives affect news content, and offer policy conclusions. Media bias, for instance, was long a staple of the news. Hamilton's analysis of newspapers from 1870 to 1900 reveals how nonpartisan reporting became the norm. A hundred years later, some partisan elements reemerged as, for example, evening news broadcasts tried to retain young female viewers with stories aimed at their (Democratic) political interests. Examination of story selection on the network evening news programs from 1969 to 1998 shows how cable competition, deregulation, and ownership changes encouraged a shift from hard news about politics toward more soft news about entertainers. Hamilton concludes by calling for lower costs of access to government information, a greater role for nonprofits in funding journalism, the development of norms that stress hard news reporting, and the defining of digital and Internet property rights to encourage the flow of news. Ultimately, this book shows that by more fully understanding the economics behind the news, we will be better positioned to ensure that the news serves the public good.
Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Alabama, 1995. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 116-123).
The wall becomes the curtain: Revisiting journalism's news-business boundary
- M Coddington
Coddington, M. (2015) "The wall becomes the curtain: Revisiting journalism's news-business boundary." In
M. Carlson and S. C. Lewis (eds.), Boundaries of Journalism: Professionalism, Practices and Participation. New
York, NY: Routledge (pp. 67-82).
Blurring the lines. Ethical dilemmas for journalists with native advertising and other look-alike editorial content
- M Edström
Edström, M. (2015) "Blurring the lines. Ethical dilemmas for journalists with native advertising and other
look-alike editorial content." Presented at the Nordmedia, August 2015. Copenhagen, Denmark.
Ellerbach, J. (2004) "The advertorial as information pollution." Journal of Information Ethics, 2004(1), 61-75.
Publicity under siege: A critique of content marketing, brand journalism, native advertising and promoted user endorsements as challenges to professional practice and transparency
- K Hallahan
Hallahan, K. (2014) "Publicity under siege: A critique of content marketing, brand journalism, native
advertising and promoted user endorsements as challenges to professional practice and transparency."
Presented at the Proceedings of the 17th International Public Relations Research Conference (pp. 391-437).
The Routledge Companion to News and Journalism, Routledge Companions
- M Hampton
Hampton, M. (2010) "The fourth estate ideal in journalism history." In S. Allan (ed.), The Routledge Companion to News and Journalism, Routledge Companions. New York, NY: Routledge (pp. 3-13).
Native advertising and endorsement: Schema, source-based misleadingness, and omission of material facts
- C Hoofnagle
- E Meleshinsky
Hoofnagle, C. and Meleshinsky, E. (2015) "Native advertising and endorsement: Schema, source-based
misleadingness, and omission of material facts." Technology Science, 1-23.
We need a better definition of 'native advertising
- M Joel
Joel, M. (2013) "We need a better definition of 'native advertising'." Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from
https://hbr.org/2013/02/we-need-a-better-definition-of