Mass Communication Commons^™

News Goes Native: An Examination Of Online Media's Disclosure Practices For Sponsored Content, Joseph Dean Moore

College of Journalism and Mass Communications: Theses

Online news publishers are increasingly using sponsored content that assumes the format of the host site's editorial content. This has led to concern among some in the journalism industry that readers will be unable to distinguish advertising from news editorial. A content analysis and an experiment examined how publishers are formatting sponsored content and how readers are processing disclosure information for sponsored content. The results suggest that current labeling and disclosure practices may be inadequate in alerting readers to the commercial nature of sponsored content.

Adviser: Ming Wang