WEBVTT - New Research: The Advertorials Many Media Outlets Make for Oil Companies Are Misleading, But They Don't Have to Be 0:00:01.320 --> 0:00:04.560 Welcome back to Drill. I'm Amy Westervelt. I know we've 0:00:04.720 --> 0:00:09.959 been away for a little bit. That's for two reasons. First, 0:00:10.119 --> 0:00:12.600 I've been working on a book that's done at least 0:00:12.640 --> 0:00:15.920 the first draft now. And second, we've been working on 0:00:16.920 --> 0:00:19.800 a few different seasons for this year, so we've got 0:00:19.800 --> 0:00:23.439 a lot of stuff coming your way today. An update 0:00:23.480 --> 0:00:27.360 on something that we've covered a few times in the past, advertorials. 0:00:28.080 --> 0:00:32.760 I'm joined by doctor Michelle Amazon from Boston University. Doctor 0:00:32.760 --> 0:00:36.960 Amazone has done some of the best research on how 0:00:37.000 --> 0:00:42.120 people actually take in information from advertorials, whether they're able 0:00:42.200 --> 0:00:47.120 to differentiate between advertorial and editorial content, all that kind 0:00:47.159 --> 0:00:51.400 of thing. She's just completed a new study looking at 0:00:51.560 --> 0:00:58.040 how different interventions might work to help readers navigate an 0:00:58.160 --> 0:01:03.920 information ecosystem that includes lots of advertorials. She particularly looked 0:01:04.200 --> 0:01:10.240 at how labeling on social media could help people figure 0:01:10.280 --> 0:01:15.360 out what's what, and also whether surrounding these ads could 0:01:15.480 --> 0:01:20.520 help people be inoculated to some of the misleading information 0:01:20.680 --> 0:01:23.880 that's often included in them. It's a really interesting study 0:01:23.880 --> 0:01:26.920 and we had a super interesting conversation to hope you 0:01:27.000 --> 0:01:27.479 enjoy it. 0:01:39.959 --> 0:01:41.720 I'd love to know just a little bit of the 0:01:41.760 --> 0:01:47.160 background on what prompted you guys to undertake this study, 0:01:47.360 --> 0:01:49.080 What made you think, Okay, we need to look at 0:01:49.200 --> 0:01:50.880 what might be done about this stuff. 0:01:51.400 --> 0:01:58.200 Yeah. So, I have been studying persuasion and misinformation for 0:01:58.440 --> 0:02:06.440 probably a decade now, and I started looking into native advertisements, 0:02:06.800 --> 0:02:10.320 just broadly, not specific to the fossil fuel industry. I 0:02:10.400 --> 0:02:14.400 published a number of studies about the use of native advertising, 0:02:14.680 --> 0:02:18.280 how difficult it is for the public to be able 0:02:18.280 --> 0:02:23.400 to identify native advertising and distinguish it from news reporting, 0:02:23.840 --> 0:02:26.840 news articles, and I think at one point I had 0:02:26.880 --> 0:02:33.240 a study where I contrasted two native advertisements. One was 0:02:34.560 --> 0:02:38.480 from I think it was Colhan, so it was a 0:02:38.520 --> 0:02:43.720 fashion designer that ad was kind of imitating, mimicking soft news. 0:02:44.160 --> 0:02:50.800 The alternative native advertisement was from Chevron, which was examining 0:02:51.040 --> 0:02:55.080 global energy consumption, and that was more hard news oriented, 0:02:55.760 --> 0:02:58.560 And so the study looked at the differences between the 0:02:58.600 --> 0:03:03.480 two of those how difficult it was for consumers to 0:03:03.600 --> 0:03:07.760 recognize that this was commercial content and not genuine news reporting. 0:03:07.960 --> 0:03:12.360 And that got me thinking, okay, well, how dangerous is 0:03:12.400 --> 0:03:17.880 it for fashion retailers to be using native advertisement compared 0:03:18.000 --> 0:03:23.840 to companies such as Chevron and other fossil fuel providers 0:03:24.400 --> 0:03:29.200 leveraging it. And so that's what got me thinking about 0:03:29.480 --> 0:03:34.240 who is using this type of advertising strategy. And I 0:03:34.280 --> 0:03:38.320 live in Massachusetts, and I was aware that in twenty eighteen, 0:03:38.960 --> 0:03:43.760 our state Attorney General sued Exxon for the claims they 0:03:43.760 --> 0:03:49.760 were making in their advertisements. And I noticed that one 0:03:49.800 --> 0:03:54.440 of the exhibits in the lawsuit was a native advertisement 0:03:54.720 --> 0:03:59.800 that was created by T Brand Studio, and so I 0:03:59.840 --> 0:04:03.480 think that was the impetus. So I've continued to do 0:04:03.560 --> 0:04:07.680 more studies on this. I've been working on a book. 0:04:07.720 --> 0:04:11.080 I have a book coming out from MIT Press later 0:04:11.160 --> 0:04:18.880 this year about native advertising. And it became apparent that 0:04:18.960 --> 0:04:23.000 it wasn't just happening in Massachusetts. You know, there's many 0:04:23.040 --> 0:04:27.160 states and municipalities who have brought forth these types of lawsuits, 0:04:27.360 --> 0:04:29.920 but there's not a whole lot of concrete evidence as 0:04:29.960 --> 0:04:35.720 to what exactly the impacts are. And so we decided, well, 0:04:35.800 --> 0:04:37.400 let's see if we can tease that out. 0:04:38.000 --> 0:04:42.200 It's interesting because I've written about the native advertising stuff 0:04:42.200 --> 0:04:44.840 a bit and cited your research, so thank you. And 0:04:45.400 --> 0:04:48.359 actually the last time I wrote about it, I talked 0:04:48.440 --> 0:04:50.440 to someone that you know, was doing this stuff, but 0:04:50.560 --> 0:04:53.080 probably not as much as other outlets, and so the 0:04:53.279 --> 0:04:55.919 question was sort of like, why why continue to do it? 0:04:55.960 --> 0:04:59.120 And the thing that really resonated with her the most 0:04:59.279 --> 0:05:01.640 because a lot of times newsrooms will just sort of say, oh, well, 0:05:01.680 --> 0:05:04.880 you know, we have a wall between an edit and 0:05:05.520 --> 0:05:09.000 the advertisers aren't influencing our reporting and all that kind 0:05:09.000 --> 0:05:11.000 of stuff, And I said, yeah, but that's not really 0:05:11.080 --> 0:05:13.800 the concern. The concern is that readers confuse these things 0:05:13.839 --> 0:05:17.320 for each other. And I pointed her to the studies 0:05:17.360 --> 0:05:19.120 that have been done on that, and that was the 0:05:19.120 --> 0:05:23.839 thing where she was like, oh really, Yeah, so it 0:05:23.880 --> 0:05:27.360 does seem like something that at least some newsrooms might 0:05:27.360 --> 0:05:31.880 be looking for ways to minimize. But I wanted to 0:05:31.920 --> 0:05:35.120 ask you about the experiment that you ran, was kind 0:05:35.160 --> 0:05:36.840 of mimicking a social media feed? 0:05:37.000 --> 0:05:37.160 Right? 0:05:37.360 --> 0:05:38.880 Is that accurate to say? 0:05:39.640 --> 0:05:40.039 Correct? 0:05:40.120 --> 0:05:45.480 Yeah, And maybe I could have you walk through the 0:05:45.560 --> 0:05:50.960 two possible interventions that people were seeing in their feed 0:05:51.760 --> 0:05:55.000 and why you decided to look at those two things 0:05:55.040 --> 0:05:55.800 in particular. 0:05:56.440 --> 0:05:59.480 Yeah, so I can preface it with the reason why 0:05:59.520 --> 0:06:06.000 we choose to format this as a social media post 0:06:07.240 --> 0:06:11.839 is because not only do these native ads live on 0:06:12.200 --> 0:06:20.839 the news organizations websites, but oftentimes these news organizations that 0:06:20.880 --> 0:06:25.360 are creating these ads, it's not an external ad agency, 0:06:25.400 --> 0:06:30.040 it's these in house content studios that are creating it. 0:06:30.839 --> 0:06:38.280 Often they are contractually obligated to amplify these native advertisements, 0:06:39.000 --> 0:06:42.400 meaning it's not just residing on their websites, but the 0:06:42.440 --> 0:06:48.920 news organizations have to amplify these ads on their social 0:06:48.960 --> 0:06:53.640 media sites. And what some of my previous research has 0:06:53.720 --> 0:06:59.920 shown is that when native advertisements are shared on social media, 0:07:00.240 --> 0:07:04.320 frequently the disclosures that are required by the Federal Trade 0:07:04.360 --> 0:07:08.760 Commission that distinguish them as commercial content. Half the time 0:07:09.400 --> 0:07:14.640 those disclosures disappear. And they are supposed to stick with. 0:07:15.240 --> 0:07:18.280 They're supposed to travel with the native advertisement no matter 0:07:18.320 --> 0:07:20.120 where it appears oh interesting. 0:07:20.160 --> 0:07:22.600 So when it shows up on social that like paid 0:07:22.600 --> 0:07:24.840 for by thing there. 0:07:24.880 --> 0:07:28.960 Wow, all the time it disappears wow. So that's why 0:07:29.120 --> 0:07:31.880 we decided to Okay, well, let's show this in a 0:07:31.920 --> 0:07:38.320 social media feed format. I do have to acknowledge that 0:07:38.800 --> 0:07:42.760 the New York Times, for the most part, they follow 0:07:42.800 --> 0:07:47.400 the rules. They're labeling is good in terms of having 0:07:47.600 --> 0:07:52.040 labeling or disclosures, and they generally stay with the content 0:07:52.520 --> 0:07:55.880 when it appears on social media, so I want to 0:07:55.920 --> 0:07:58.960 be sure that that's clear because in this study we 0:07:59.040 --> 0:08:03.520 are focusing on a New York Times creative ad, but 0:08:04.640 --> 0:08:08.440 they could make their disclosures more prominent, they could use 0:08:08.560 --> 0:08:12.360 more clear language. We adopted the language that the New 0:08:12.440 --> 0:08:16.360 York Time uses, which is paid post, So that was 0:08:16.400 --> 0:08:21.120 one of the interventions, is the disclosure. The New York 0:08:21.160 --> 0:08:25.760 Times uses the language paid post, which not everybody knows 0:08:25.760 --> 0:08:30.960 what that means, and that is one of the challenges 0:08:31.040 --> 0:08:36.200 of the current regulation of native advertising is that the 0:08:36.280 --> 0:08:40.559 FTC does not require any sort of standardization in terms 0:08:40.559 --> 0:08:44.760 of what the disclosures say, so the news outlet can 0:08:44.800 --> 0:08:49.679 call it whatever they want and they do so that 0:08:49.720 --> 0:08:52.559 makes it more confusing for the public when one outlet 0:08:52.600 --> 0:08:56.120 is calling it this, another outlet is calling it something else, 0:08:56.200 --> 0:09:00.360 and so forth. So one of the interventions we had 0:09:00.640 --> 0:09:05.040 was the disclosure, and since this was an experiment, we 0:09:05.160 --> 0:09:10.000 had certain people who saw the disclosure and then other 0:09:10.080 --> 0:09:13.000 people we did not show them the disclosure, So that 0:09:13.080 --> 0:09:16.559 was one of our manipulations. And then the other intervention 0:09:16.800 --> 0:09:21.360 we looked at was what we call an inoculation message, 0:09:22.320 --> 0:09:27.200 so it was a forewarning about the type of content 0:09:28.640 --> 0:09:32.920 that people may see in their social media feeds, and 0:09:33.240 --> 0:09:36.720 we had it, We had the source of that message 0:09:36.760 --> 0:09:42.360 as the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterrez, and you just 0:09:42.440 --> 0:09:48.960 basically talked about what's happening with the climate emergency and 0:09:49.320 --> 0:09:52.679 warning people to make sure the information that you see 0:09:52.840 --> 0:09:56.400 that you rely on on social media from credible sources 0:09:56.800 --> 0:10:01.160 who have relevant expertise and who aren't motivating to greenwash 0:10:01.280 --> 0:10:07.880 their activities or to cherry pick data, so essentially encouraging 0:10:08.040 --> 0:10:10.760 people to be media literate. So that was the other intervention. 0:10:10.960 --> 0:10:15.880 Some people saw those messages, other people did not. Those 0:10:15.920 --> 0:10:18.679 were the people in our control group. That people in 0:10:18.720 --> 0:10:25.199 the control group, they saw a social media post about sushi, 0:10:25.880 --> 0:10:30.240 which sounds kind of random, but in the academic literature 0:10:31.040 --> 0:10:33.760 that has been used many times. 0:10:33.520 --> 0:10:35.400 Before, that's so funny. 0:10:36.800 --> 0:10:40.240 Yeah, And then that was so first there was either 0:10:40.280 --> 0:10:45.400 the inoculation message or forewarning or the control message. And 0:10:45.440 --> 0:10:54.360 then people then saw the native advertisement from ExxonMobil, So 0:10:54.679 --> 0:10:58.720 either the one with the disclosure or the one without 0:10:59.040 --> 0:11:02.640 the disclosure. Those were the treatment groups, the two treatment groups, 0:11:02.800 --> 0:11:04.760 and then there was a third group that was again 0:11:04.960 --> 0:11:09.160 the control group who instead of seeing the native advertisement. 0:11:09.600 --> 0:11:12.920 They just saw a social media post about a restaurant review, 0:11:13.280 --> 0:11:18.120 which is anonymous, and it was they we blurred out 0:11:18.200 --> 0:11:18.760 the name of the. 0:11:18.760 --> 0:11:22.160 Restaurant just because it didn't really matter. Do you have 0:11:22.200 --> 0:11:27.160 a sense of how well these things work on social 0:11:27.320 --> 0:11:32.079 versus on the outlet's own website. I'm just thinking, like, Okay, 0:11:32.200 --> 0:11:34.120 I'm a climate reporter, have been for a long time. 0:11:34.200 --> 0:11:38.679 My own mother still occasionally sends me native as articles 0:11:38.720 --> 0:11:41.720 that she's seen on climate. Yeah, I mean. 0:11:43.120 --> 0:11:46.559 I believe that. So I opened my book with a 0:11:46.679 --> 0:11:53.120 vignette about me grading my students' papers one of them, 0:11:53.200 --> 0:11:56.359 not one of them, a handful of them. We're citing 0:11:56.559 --> 0:12:02.880 a native advertisement they saw. Yeah, so I'm shocked, and 0:12:02.960 --> 0:12:06.360 I'm trying to figure out how did they how did 0:12:06.400 --> 0:12:10.040 this happen? And well, I won't give away the story. 0:12:10.080 --> 0:12:11.360 You'll have to get my book. 0:12:11.679 --> 0:12:14.400 Yeah, oh wow, that's fascinating. 0:12:14.960 --> 0:12:17.800 Yes, So, I mean even you know, it's it's everybody. 0:12:17.800 --> 0:12:22.480 It's college students, it's it's senior citizens, it's it's even 0:12:22.559 --> 0:12:25.160 college professors who get fooled by this stuff. 0:12:25.640 --> 0:12:29.600 Yeah. Yeah, Okay. On the it sounds to me like 0:12:29.640 --> 0:12:33.439 from the results of your study, the inoculation messages work 0:12:33.760 --> 0:12:37.600 much better than the like the disclosures are necessary and 0:12:37.640 --> 0:12:40.400 should you know and should and could be much more 0:12:41.080 --> 0:12:44.840 large and prominent, but the inoculation messages seem to be 0:12:44.960 --> 0:12:46.720 much more effective. 0:12:47.520 --> 0:12:51.320 Their functions are slightly different the disclosure. The function of 0:12:51.360 --> 0:12:56.160 that is to allow people to recognize that the content 0:12:56.320 --> 0:13:02.440 is commercial in nature, whereas the inoculation and is supposed 0:13:02.640 --> 0:13:06.199 to make people more resilient to influence. 0:13:07.040 --> 0:13:09.400 Okay, Okay, So I can see how that would work 0:13:09.440 --> 0:13:14.040 on social I wonder how it would work on a 0:13:14.080 --> 0:13:16.720 website and whether you've looked at that at all, because 0:13:16.760 --> 0:13:20.760 I know sometimes these ads will intentionally be run next 0:13:20.800 --> 0:13:26.160 to like legit reporting, and I'm thinking especially around the 0:13:26.160 --> 0:13:29.720 potential of carbon capture, Like they'll often run this native 0:13:29.720 --> 0:13:32.120 ad that's like very positive about the potential of carbon 0:13:32.160 --> 0:13:35.400 capture right next to a reported piece that's like pretty critical, 0:13:35.559 --> 0:13:38.360 and it has the effect sometimes I think of people thinking, oh, 0:13:38.480 --> 0:13:40.960 like there's two sides to the story or whatever, like 0:13:41.000 --> 0:13:42.840 there's the juries out but right. 0:13:43.120 --> 0:13:46.240 Or sometimes they'll even sponsor a newsletter, like there's a 0:13:46.280 --> 0:13:49.880 lot of environmental newsletters that are sponsored by a fossil 0:13:49.920 --> 0:13:54.480 fuel property Yeah, so I don't think I've designed any 0:13:54.520 --> 0:13:59.480 studies to test that, but I agree with your conjecture 0:13:59.559 --> 0:14:02.240 that that probably muddies the waters for. 0:14:03.720 --> 0:14:07.280 Consumers. I wonder if you have talked to any outlets 0:14:07.280 --> 0:14:10.360 in your research about how much might they be willing 0:14:10.480 --> 0:14:15.840 to do to counteract the potentially negative impacts of these ads. 0:14:15.960 --> 0:14:18.760 I don't know if you've heard anything from them on 0:14:18.800 --> 0:14:19.320 that front. 0:14:19.600 --> 0:14:22.120 Yeah, well, I mean, I guess who were you talking to. 0:14:22.360 --> 0:14:25.680 I mean, I've talked to reporters like climate reporters. 0:14:25.800 --> 0:14:29.160 Yeah, climate reporters buy and large really want their outlets 0:14:29.200 --> 0:14:30.280 to do something about this. 0:14:30.560 --> 0:14:33.800 Yeah. Well, many of them are quite a guest at 0:14:33.840 --> 0:14:38.200 what's happening, and some of them have actually left their 0:14:38.480 --> 0:14:45.920 employer because the employer is accepting fossil fuel money and 0:14:45.960 --> 0:14:51.200 creating ads around them. I've also talked to reporters who 0:14:52.800 --> 0:14:58.680 have talked to people from the content studio, the people 0:14:58.680 --> 0:15:03.320 from the content studio, the product marketers or whatever you 0:15:03.320 --> 0:15:06.680 want to refer to them, as they will try and 0:15:06.720 --> 0:15:11.240 talk with reporters to coordinate to find out what they're 0:15:11.240 --> 0:15:17.320 writing about. So, despite that presumed firewall between the newsroom 0:15:17.400 --> 0:15:22.040 and the business side of things, it's very porous, and 0:15:22.640 --> 0:15:27.960 you know, the reporters don't have much recourse, right, they 0:15:27.960 --> 0:15:31.640 can leave if they don't like it. Yeah, in terms 0:15:31.680 --> 0:15:35.040 of them saying to management, oh, we need to make 0:15:35.080 --> 0:15:38.680 these more clear, we need to make native advertisements more clear, 0:15:39.760 --> 0:15:43.440 I don't know. I mean, Jill Abramson got forced out 0:15:43.480 --> 0:15:46.080 of The New York Times because in part she thought 0:15:46.160 --> 0:15:50.200 native advertising was a bad idea. And another point is 0:15:50.240 --> 0:15:53.440 that years ago, I believe it was the New York 0:15:53.520 --> 0:15:59.280 Times they swore off. They committed that they would no 0:15:59.360 --> 0:16:05.000 longer take tobacco industry ad dollars any kind. Yeah, but 0:16:05.600 --> 0:16:11.240 in twenty twenty one, Philip Morris International came back to them, 0:16:11.520 --> 0:16:13.600 came back to a lot of the majors that the 0:16:13.680 --> 0:16:17.840 legacy media in the US, and ran a native advertising campaign, 0:16:17.920 --> 0:16:21.080 not about cigarettes, but about their what do they call it, 0:16:21.440 --> 0:16:23.680 tobacco harm reduction efforts. 0:16:23.920 --> 0:16:27.119 Yeah, that's that's right. And some people. 0:16:26.880 --> 0:16:29.040 Pointed out, wait a minute, the New York Times and 0:16:29.080 --> 0:16:32.920 the Boston Globe are carrying this. They had committed that 0:16:32.920 --> 0:16:36.720 they would no longer take tobacco money, and how they're 0:16:36.800 --> 0:16:41.040 violating it. So I don't know how strong these commitments 0:16:41.080 --> 0:16:42.160 are when they make them. 0:16:42.440 --> 0:16:44.560 I just have one more question for you. I know 0:16:44.640 --> 0:16:47.600 that the social media platforms themselves have been very resistant 0:16:47.640 --> 0:16:52.360 to any kind of labeling or content moderation or things 0:16:52.400 --> 0:16:56.240 like that. Increasingly so in the last six months, I know, 0:16:56.320 --> 0:17:00.960 I've seen people saying that even just the like verifiable 0:17:01.400 --> 0:17:06.280 information kind of labels our censorship. So I'm curious for 0:17:06.359 --> 0:17:08.600 your take on that. And i know that, you know, 0:17:08.680 --> 0:17:11.920 even research like yours is being targeted as sort of 0:17:12.000 --> 0:17:16.280 like censorship, So I'm curious what you think about that. Yeah. 0:17:16.320 --> 0:17:22.400 So I actually fielded a quick poll in January after 0:17:22.440 --> 0:17:26.000 Mark Zuckerberg made his statement about getting rid of the 0:17:26.000 --> 0:17:30.399 third party fact checking and found that I think it 0:17:30.440 --> 0:17:37.000 was two thirds of Americans do want content moderation on 0:17:37.080 --> 0:17:40.760 social media, and the majority of them think that fact 0:17:40.880 --> 0:17:48.560 checking is beneficial, and they were significantly us favorable towards 0:17:49.560 --> 0:17:53.359 what did he call it, community notes, Right, that's what 0:17:53.440 --> 0:17:56.320 he was going to pivot. So, I mean, we have evidence. 0:17:56.640 --> 0:17:58.679 I mean, not that there was any question that that 0:17:58.800 --> 0:18:01.879 Zuckerberg was doing this for any reason other than to 0:18:02.040 --> 0:18:10.480 bend to the new administration. Nonetheless, here's empirical evidence suggesting 0:18:10.800 --> 0:18:16.840 that the public wants these sorts of labels. Yeah, you know, 0:18:16.960 --> 0:18:18.200 it's not censorship. 0:18:18.720 --> 0:18:19.480 Yeah. 0:18:19.960 --> 0:18:22.640 Yeah. You can still access the content, right. 0:18:22.480 --> 0:18:25.200 You can still read it, you just have some context 0:18:25.359 --> 0:18:28.200 for it, all right. Thank you so much for taking 0:18:28.240 --> 0:18:28.720 the time. 0:18:28.800 --> 0:18:30.399 Well, thank you so much. Amy. 0:18:34.760 --> 0:18:38.040 That's it for this week, Thanks for listening. In case 0:18:38.080 --> 0:18:40.720 you missed it, last year we did a pretty exhaustive 0:18:41.119 --> 0:18:46.119 report on adveritorials, looking at which outlets were making the 0:18:46.160 --> 0:18:49.520 most of them for fossil fuel companies, how much money 0:18:49.520 --> 0:18:53.160 they were making, and what various researchers had to say 0:18:53.160 --> 0:18:56.760 about that, including Doctor Amazine. You can find that on 0:18:56.800 --> 0:19:01.000 our website Drilled dot Media, along with lots of other coverage. 0:19:01.880 --> 0:19:05.960 Our producer this week is Peter duff Our. Music is 0:19:06.119 --> 0:19:10.199 Bird in the Hand by Foreknown. Thanksgin for insting, and 0:19:10.280 --> 0:19:11.240 we'll see you next time.