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The biggest source for breaking news around the world. Compare headlines across the political spectrum using media bias ratings driven by data. Spot misinformation. Be well informed.

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Checkology is a free e-learning platform with engaging, authoritative lessons on subjects like news media bias, misinformation, conspiratorial thinking and more. Learners develop the ability to identify credible information, seek out reliable sources and apply critical thinking skills to separate fact-based content from falsehoods.

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Registrations now open for the Australian Media Literacy Summit

The Australian Media Literacy Summit is FREE professional development conference in Sydney and online for those who are passionate about supporting lifelong media literacy education

Australian Media Literacy Summit: register your interest now!

The Australian Media Literacy Alliance, with the support of META Australia, is hosting a FREE professional development conference in Sydney for 100 people who are

AMLA Celebrates Media Literacy Week 2022

Celebrate Media Literacy Week in Australia: October 24-31 2022 The Australian Media Literacy Alliance is proud to be participating in the eleventh Global Media and Information

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Registrations now open for the Australian Media Literacy Summit The Australian Media Literacy Summit is FREE professional development conference in Sydney and online for those who are passionate about supporting lifelong media literacy education Australian Media Literacy Summit: register your interest now!

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AI in libraries - LIANZA 2023 Conference

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AI in libraries - LIANZA 2023 Conference

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LIANZA TEL SIG - Data, AI and Digital Transformation

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ALIA Blog: AI, libraries, and the changing face of information literacy

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Massachusetts Library System AI Subject Guide

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Massachusetts Library System AI Subject Guide

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Text-generating AI - General Tools

Text-generating AI - Specialized Tools for Librarians, Educators, and Researchers

Want to discover even more tools built on GPT? Try searching or browsing these compiled lists of tools:

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LibGuides: ChatGPT and Generative Artificial Intelligence: Generative AI Tools, Prompts, and Detectors

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This guide accompanies MLS continuing education opportunities about generative artificial intelligence. Links to some of the most popular generative AI tools, ideas for prompting the tools, and detectors

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23 resources to get up to speed on AI in 2023

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Selected by the IFLA Artificial Intelligence SIG Artificial intelligence is said to be having a dramatic, even transformative effect on many aspects of society. It will affect lib…

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Phishing. Hacking. Jacking. There's a lot of talk flying around about cybersecurity, but how do you know if you're staying safe online? Enter our Online Security Test. By asking only a few simple questions, we can figure out where you fall short when it comes to cybersecurity. Of course, if you do have something to learn, we can help with that as well. Let's get started!

Test Your Online Security

Cybersecurity Tips

Along with our security quiz, we offer a few easy tips to improve your online security.

Two-Factor and Multi-Factor Authentication

The easiest way to increase your cybersecurity is to turn on two-factor authentication, or, for additional security, multi-factor authentication. Although it may seem tedious,

Receiving a push notification on your smartphone or

Using biometrics like your fingerprint

is a great way to ensure that you are who you say you are.

Password Manager

We also recommend using a password manager which would create difficult and unique passwords for all of your websites and accounts. Don't worry, though- you won't have to remember all these passwords, just the password to your password vault, otherwise known as a master password. Depending on the password manager, you'll be able to:

Sign in to all of your accounts with just one click

Sync your passwords across multiple devices

VPNs vs. Incognito Mode

For a user that wants even more security, we recommend using a VPN, or virtual private network. VPNs are useful if you:

Have particularly sensitive data or

Want to use a server from a different country.

Rather than being directly connected to the Internet, all of your data will travel through encrypted tunnels to private servers. Wondering which VPN is for you? Pick out the best VPN for your needs, or start by reading our VPN guide.

Incognito Mode

Another, more simple option would be going in private or incognito mode. Keep in mind that incognito mode will only hide your internet activity from someone using your device, but it doesn't protect your activity from outside of the device. Companies, employers, and governments will still be able to track you via your internet service provider, the websites you visit, and your network.

Social Media

Social media may seem ubiquitous today, but have you ever really stopped and thought about what data you're putting out to the world? Many people faced a rude awakening when social media app Timehop had a data breach that affected about 21 million app users.1 Sensitive information like names, emails, and phone numbers was released, although private messages, photos, and Timehop data remained secure.

If you have any privacy concerns, start by making all of your social media accounts private. You may just think that you're just posting fun pictures, but information like your:

Location

Education

Email

Employment

may be exposed to the world. It's important to practice caution whenever posting on social media, especially if your profile is public.

Organizational Cybersecurity

For an organization, we recommend having a few people handle one account, rather than a single person through a personal account. If only one person handles an account and it's hacked, there will be no way for other people to step in. Jumping off of that, if an employee quits or is terminated, their social media access should be revoked as soon as possible. Otherwise, you risk having the former employee post something that could potentially damage your brand.

Aside from employees that have recently been let go, keep in mind that naive employees may be your biggest cybersecurity threat. In fact, over 90 percent of cyber-attacks are attributed to human error.2 Hackers' strategies include:

Phishing

Ransomware

Pharming

so it's important to educate employees on potential threats.

Software Updates

Now let's talk about your computer. Every computer should have:

Antivirus software

Anti-spyware software

Firewall software

downloaded. Concurrently, users should update all app and operating system software right away, as this might contain further security updates. As viruses are constantly being tinkered with, frequent updates are a must.

Cloud Storage

If you have cloud storage, consider that you're at an increased risk of being hacked. According to Symantec, over 75 percent of cloud websites contain vulnerabilities, nine percent of which are critical.3 We recommend:

Backing up your data to local storage like a hard drive

Closely monitoring the data you're storing in the cloud.

Online Banking Security

Finally, we provide tips about financial security, and no, we don't mean how much money you have. When it comes to online banking, users should

Consistently check their bank transactions to make sure every expense is accounted for

Make sure that a padlock symbol is visible before making any online purchases

If your browser is telling you that a website is insecure, it's probably a good idea to not complete your purchase, no matter how cute that dress might look on you.

We hope this quiz and tips will help you stay safe online! While digital security may feel like an overwhelming topic, in a few minutes, you can greatly bolster your resistance to cyber attacks.

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Phishing. Hacking. Jacking. There's a lot of talk flying around about cybersecurity, but how do you know if you're staying safe online? Enter our Online

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Discover some of the essentials of cyber safety like how your browser can help keep you safer online, how to create and remember strong passwords, spot common scams like phishing scams, safely download documents including PDF files, learn about the different payment options, such as Apple Pay and Google Pay, for shopping in-store and online, as well as run antivirus software.

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safety first | online courses | be connected

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Safety first | Online Courses | Be Connected

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Build your digital skills with Be Connected, an Australian Government initiative. Access hundreds of free short courses today.

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eSafety can help Australians experiencing online bullying or abuse to take action or make a complaint. Discover how we can help you stay safe online

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11 Social Media Red Flags Parents Should Know About

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11 Social Media Red Flags Parents Should Know About

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11 Social Media Red Flags Parents Should Know About

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Find out which social media features are cause for concern -- no matter which app your kid is using. Advice from Common Sense Media editors.

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As the world responds to the COVID-19 pandemic, we face the challenge of an overabundance of information related to the virus. Some of this information may be false and potentially harmful.

Inaccurate information spreads widely and at speed, making it more difficult for the public to identify verified facts and advice from trusted sources, such as their local health authority or WHO.

However, everyone can help to stop the spread. If you see content online that you believe to be false or misleading, you can report it to the hosting social media platform.

WHO works with the Government of the United Kingdom to tackle misinformation

In the context of the strategic partnership with the Government of the United Kingdom, WHO has joined forces with its communications teams to raise awareness of misinformation around COVID-19 and encourage individuals to report false or misleading content online.

This cooperation started with the joint Stop the Spread campaign in May-June 2020, which encouraged the use of trusted sources such as WHO and national health authorities for accurate COVID-19 information. The new phase of the joint campaign focuses on proactively identifying and reporting potentially wrong or misleading information, as part of WHO's efforts to address the spread of inaccurate and harmful information during the pandemic.

Learn more about inaccurate information on theWHO myth busters pages.

Visit our infodemiology pages to familiarize yourself with this emerging field of science.

Play Go Viral! to uncover the latest tactics used to spread false information, build your resistance to misinformation and help stop the spread of COVID-19. Go Viral! is brought to you by the Government of the United Kingdom and the University of Cambridge.

Learn more about cyber security.

Common COVID-19 vaccine misconceptions addressed

A year into the pandemic, vaccines are being rolled out, and information about them (some reliable and some not), is everywhere. In response, the Government of the United Kingdom and WHO have produced a digital series to address common misconceptions circulating online and explain the safety of approved COVID-19 vaccines.

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As the world responds to the COVID-19 pandemic, we face the challenge of an overabundance of information related to the virus. Some of this information may be false and potentially harmful. However, everyone can help to stop the spread.

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N&MRC Media Literacy Education Evaluation Framework

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N&MRC Media Literacy Education Evaluation Framework

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The News Literacy Project works with educators and journalists to give students the skills they need to discern fact from fiction and to know what to trust.

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Wil Anderson, Jan Fran and some of Australia's best and brightest comedians dissect the news to give you the clues to unpack the news, miss all the misinformation, and stay informed not alarmed.

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The algorithm recommends Australia's favourite and only show about advertising - Gruen. Back for its 15th season, Wil Anderson and a panel of advertising know-it-alls are here to stop you from buying under the influence.

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The Social Dilemma - More About the Film

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We tweet, we like, and we share- but what are the consequences of our growing dependence on social media? Discover what’s hiding on the other side of your screen at TheSocialDilemma.com

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Cranky Uncle game: building resilience against misinformation

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Cranky Uncle game: building resilience against misinformation

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The Cranky Uncle game uses cartoons and critical thinking to fight misinformation. The game was developed by Monash University scientist John Cook, in collaboration with creative agency Goodbeast. The game is now available for free on iPhone, Android, and as a browser game.

The game was first crowd-funded and developed at George Mason University, with version 1.0 launching in December 2020. Version 2.0 was launched a year later, featuring multiple languages. Anyone interested in helping with our efforts to translate the game into different languages, please sign up to indicate your interest.

Building public resilience against misinformation
Developing solutions to misinformation is more important than ever in this post-truth era where science and facts are under constant assault. A key solution to making the public more resilient against fake news is inoculation - avoid being misled by learning the techniques of denial.

In the Cranky Uncle game, players are mentored by a cartoon personification of climate science denial. Cranky Uncle explains 14 techniques of science denial, from fake experts to cherry picking and a variety of different logical fallacies.
Using gamification to practice critical thinking
Cook's research has focused on critical thinking as a tool for building public resilience against misinformation. "The challenge is critical thinking is hard," explains Cook. "That's where the combined effect of humor and games are so powerful - they engage players and get them practising critical thinking through gameplay." The deeper a player gets into the game, the more resilient they become against misinformation.

This (non-profit) game will be available in classrooms and to the general public around the world, on iPhone and Android. We use gameplay elements such as interactive quizzes and reward feedback to engage players, taking them deeper into the game - the longer they play, the more resilient they become against climate misinformation.

Supported by:

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Cranky Uncle game: building resilience against misinformation - Cranky Uncle

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The Cranky Uncle game uses cartoons and critical thinking to fight misinformation. The game was developed by Monash University scientist John Cook, in collaboration with creative agency Goodbeast. The game is now available for free on iPhone, Android, and as ... Continued

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The currency of the New Economy won't be money, but attention-a radical theory of value.

As is now obvious, the economies of the industrialized nations-and especially that of the US-have shifted dramatically. We've turned a corner toward an economy where an increasing number of workers are no longer involved directly in the production, transportation, and distribution of material goods, but instead earn their living managing or dealing with information in some form. Most call this an "information economy."

Yet, ours is not truly an information economy. By definition, economics is the study of how a society uses its scarce resources. And information is not scarce-especially on the net, where it is not only abundant, but overflowing. We are drowning in information, yet constantly increasing our generation of it. So a key question arises: Is there something else that flows through cyberspace, something that is scarce and desirable? There is. No one would put anything on the internet without the hope of obtaining some. It's called attention. And the economy of attention-not information-is the natural economy of cyberspace.

Attention has its own behavior, its own dynamics, its own consequences. An economy built on it will be different than the familiar material-based one. For the past decade I have been exploring how this new system will work. This article is a rough outline of where we are headed.

Technically, at least, information and its flow can be accurately detected and counted (in bits, bytes, and baud rates) by simple electronic devices. Attention is more mysterious, a process that can occur only in a mind, yet somehow it moves out into the world as well. If you're in a phone conversation, your attention goes to the party at the other end of the line. If you're chatting over the net, your attention flows through it. The flow may be metaphoric, but it is a metaphor of uncommon depth. Phrases such as "pay attention" and "I can't give you my full attention right now" trip easily off our tongues-almost as if this state of awareness were a substance.

"Attention," write Thomas Mandel and Gerard Van der Leun in their 1996 book Rules of the Net, "is the hard currency of cyberspace." They're dead on. As the net becomes an increasingly strong presence in the overall economy, the flow of attention will not only anticipate the flow of money, but eventually replace it altogether.

Though it might sound peculiar at first, attention as the basis of a new economy really does work. To begin with, attention addresses a fundamental human desire. Let's suppose you woke up one morning, well supplied with food and other material essentials, but invisible and inaudible, unable to get noticed in any way at all. At first, it could be quite amusing to spy and eavesdrop, to see what you're not supposed to. But no matter what you discovered, not being able to share your encounters with anyone would soon become torture-itself a pain you couldn't express to anyone. Living without feedback, even in the lap of luxury, would be for all but a few recluses barely living at all.

Some minimum of attention is essential. While many of us crave huge amounts of recognition, the lure is not merely fame or a place in history. It's also praise from the people around you for what you do. The internet is an amazing expression of these desires. People log on to connect with others, gossip, debate, advise, and learn about those like or unlike themselves. They log on to exchange attention. And, not surprisingly, anyone who has spent an appreciable amount of time on the net has advice about paying attention. In his online book Virtual Community, Howard Rheingold lays out two guidelines: "Rule Number One is to pay attention. Rule Number Two might be: Attention is a limited resource, so pay attention to where you pay attention."

But how does attention come to dominate the emerging economy? Any conventional economist will tell you that ordinary material products are scarce and presumably always will be. Technically, that might be true, but in practice, mass production spews forth so much that there's a shift in emphasis away from the material desires that dominated the old economy. For many people in the US, Western Europe, Japan, and a growing list of other places, the materials needed for basic living are more than abundant. To take one small example, in the US food is so cheap and plentiful that eating too much is considered more of a concern than getting too little.

Attention is different. It really is scarce, and the total amount per capita is strictly limited. To see why, consider yours, right now. It's going to these words. No matter how brilliant or savvy at multitasking you are, you can't be focusing on very much else. Ultimately then, the attention economy is a zero-sum game. What one person gets, someone else is denied.

As it happens, I have conflicting feelings about what this implies. I happen to favor equality-equal distribution of the world's wealth. But I also like getting recognition. I can't have it both ways. The size of the attention pie can grow as more and more people join the world audience, but the size of the average slice can't. Real attention to you, meaning minds focusing on you, is always limited by the number of minds there are. The more minds, the more attention-but also the more who might want attention. The total available attention per capita (per mind) is simply not going to change.

Howard Rheingold offers two guidelines on attention. Rule One: Pay attention. Rule Two: Pay attention to where you pay attention.

To summarize, attention can ground an economy because it is a fundamental human desire and is intrinsically, unavoidably scarce. It can be a rich and complex economy because attention comes in many forms: love, recognition, heeding, obedience, thoughtfulness, caring, praising, watching over, attending to one's desires, aiding, advising, critical appraisal, assistance in developing new skills, et cetera. An army sergeant ordering troops doesn't want the kind of attention Madonna seeks. And neither desires the sort I do as I write this. There are also many ways to capture attention: via your thoughts, inventions, self-revelations, expressions, performances, artistic creations, achievements, pleas, and arresting appearances.

There is one further wrinkle. Attention goes both ways, even when information doesn't. Suppose you run into Sam, an old acquaintance. The dialog might go: "How are you?" "Just fine." You may not be any wiser for the small talk, but you've exchanged attention. If you truly want your question answered, Sam's honest reply would be attentive to your desire to know. Each time someone focuses directly or indirectly on anybody else, that can be thought of as a "transaction" in this new economy-a transaction that usually doesn't involve money.

What about this transaction now, where attention flows from a reading audience to an individual? Is it also flowing from me to you? In reality it's not, but if I don't make you feel that I'm writing for you to some extent, what would keep you reading? Whenever you pay attention to someone, you have to be getting at least some illusory attention back.

The key point about the various forms and avenues of attention is that while we each want it to some extent, it does not arrive in equal measure. This explains why many of us are working harder and harder to get some, and why we eagerly latch onto technologies such as the internet and the Web. Cyberspace affords new opportunities for capturing attention that might otherwise dissipate. It promises nearly everyone a chance at attention from millions, the potential to be noticed by the largest possible audience-or by an audience of peers whose attention we value most. But the net also ups the ante, increasing the relentless pressure to get some fraction of this limited resource. At the same time, it generates ever greater demands on each of us to pay what scarce attention we can to others.

Keeping attention transactions equitable in the future will be no easier than keeping cash transactions equitable today. A spendthrift will allow a few people to monopolize her attention. Or she may even lavish it on someone who can't give it back-say, Elvis, or an ancestor. Remember Rheingold's advice: Pay attention to where you pay attention.

That's because the attention economy is a star system, where Elvis has an advantage. The relationship between stars and fans is central. Even without cyberspace, celebrities in show business, politics, and every other discipline accumulate huge amounts of notice. Over a billion tune into TV specials like the Super Bowl and the Academy Awards. TV networks claim that two and half billion people watched the funeral of Princess Diana.

But suppose you aren't a star like Elvis or Princess Di. Does that mean you'll be impoverished in the coming economy? Maybe not. Cyberspace offers a much more effective means of continuing and completing attention transactions, as well as opening up more possibilities to almost everyone. Whoever you are, however you express yourself, you can now have a crack at the global audience. Most likely you will also see people picking stars (and microstars) and becoming part of their "entourages." In cyberspace, this might mean you set up and run a fan site, or help design or maintain a complex cybercommunity, such as Geocities, where subsections of the site have their own webmasters. If you're a software programmer, for example, you might seek out some visionary codemaster who excites you. She will probably build a rather large entourage, and since you are in her circle, some of that attention will be diverted to you, the upcoming microstar.

Attention flows not only from fan to star, but in a hyperlinked way it can be passed from star to star, or fan to fan. A growing variety of attention types can bounce along through cyberspace: personal advice, suggestions, connections, editing, assistance in self-expression, responses, acclaim, or new software designed especially for your purposes. More gets more. Someone can pay you attention by helping you track down a specific fact (or create some special effect) that will help you get still more notice. Of course, you can earn negative attention as well, such as flaming, shaming, and outright hatred. But as many a disobedient child knows, negative attention can be better than none at all. On the Web, if you're adept, you can use notoriety to bring more notice to yourself.

And here's where it gets interesting: attention can't be bought. When advertisers pay for an ad, for example, they are guaranteed only a chance at an audience's notice. Audience members learn to ignore or turn off all but the most interesting ads, and even then they may not focus on what's being advertised. In fact, as the attention economy becomes dominant, the advertising industry won't exist as it does today, since its point is to induce people to spend money. In the future, ads will exist only to attract and direct attention, because money will be obsolete.

Let me attempt to make this outlandish thought easier to swallow. To begin with, cyberspace is not that hospitable to monetary transactions. Electronic money (in the form of digital bits) requires a complex set of codes, passwords, firewalls, et cetera. Attention requires no encryption. It flows naturally across the Web.

Second, if you get attention, that means you have some control over both the thoughts and actions of those paying it to you. Think of a panda. When you started reading this article, you had no idea this black-and-white mammal would enter your thoughts. (Or did you notice a hint in the illustration?) Did you just turn the page back to check? Some readers did. Their action came under my control because of the attention they gave me. Someone better at this than me, someone who "enthralls" an audience, is in quite a real sense temporarily making the audience members her "thralls"-or, slaves. The very act of paying attention may seem voluntary, but often it is not completely so. There is a definite element of compulsion involved. It's no coincidence that people say things like, "I have to check out that Web site," "You've gotta watch that show," or "That book is a must read." And each of those activities takes physical as well as mental effort.

Already today, no matter what you do, the money you receive is more and more likely to track the recognition that comes to you for doing what you do. If there is nothing very special about your work, no matter how hard you apply yourself you won't get noticed, and that increasingly means you won't get paid much either.

As the attention economy becomes dominant, advertising will exist only to attract and direct attention, because money will be obsolete.

This trend in recompense in the US has been documented in The Winner-Take-All Society, a book by economists Robert H. Frank and Philip J. Cook. The authors note that the star system we are accustomed to in sports, entertainment, and the arts has migrated to the professions. As a September 3, 1997, front-page headline in The Wall Street Journal announced, "CEOs are stars now." That's how they are paid, hired, utilized, and dismissed. They operate within their companies more as attention-getting motivators than bosses. The same goes for rainmaking legal partners, high-powered lobbyists, and academics. More and more they are treated as celebrities. When they leave, they leave like stars, taking their entourages in tow. At the other extreme, ordinary line workers, fast-food servers, custodians, and others who don't particularly stand out have found their relative financial standing eroding. In times past, you could be obscure yet secure-now that's harder.

But how exactly will a moneyless attention economy play out in the world of old-fashioned, but still-needed, material goods? How will attention get you, say, an automobile? Cars emanate from vast corporations. Can you really expect an entity like GM to pay you enough attention to build one for you? In truth, the process is not nearly so monolithic; no single company makes cars in isolation. Automobile designs are copied, reverse-engineered, or licensed, and parts are often made by smaller outside workshops. Much of the advice, planning, and management comes from outside consultants. The car is no longer assembled from parts on one long assembly line; rather, subassemblies are often put together in different locations first. At every stage, more and more tasks are automated; that means more of the attention required to make a car occurs upstream as part of design and production planning.

With most people involved in the entire process connected to each other and to the rest of the world through cyberspace, it is not difficult to foresee a time when corporations will pretty much disappear, and when it will make a lot more sense to speak of a complex carmaking community, made up mostly of entourages surrounding thousands of stars and microstars. As is common among entourages, much participation would be less than full time, and the majority of members would belong to other communities as well, and even to other entourages.

Thus many people in the broad car community will also share membership in some of the same communities of attention as anyone who might want a car. As long as the person in question gets enough attention, she would almost certainly be able to draw enough from overlaps between her primary communities and the car community to arrange to be put into the driver's seat she craves. Assuming automation keeps cutting the total amount of actual attention needed to make each individual car, less and less stardom will be required to end up with one.

In cyberspace, there is nothing natural about large-scale divisions like cities, nations, bureaucracies, and corporations. The only divisions, and rough ones at that, are among audiences, entourages, and what could be called attention communities. Each community is centered on some topic and usually includes a number of stars, along with their fans. Attention flows from community to community. Below this primary exchange will flow the less important exchange of goods and materials.

History offers a parallel for understanding this radical notion of an attention economy superseding the use of money. At the height of the feudal order in Europe, everyone took for granted that tilling the soil would always be primary, and that wealth and property would always depend on possessing the right bloodlines to own title to land (which could never be sold). It was unimaginable to either serfs or nobles that nobility and titles could cease to be a means to wealth. They were all that counted then. Yet, as the industrial economy developed, food production became just another industry, and not even a highly important one. Bloodlines lost significance as well, except for pedigreed dogs and racehorses. Something that had hardly existed-money-became the basis of a new economy. And, incidentally, the most gorgeous armor, the most magnificent knightly tournaments, and the greatest interest in noble lineage all took place just as feudalism was on its way out.

If you prefer to think in more numerical terms, ponder this: transactions in which money is involved may be growing in total number, but the total number of global attention transactions is growing even faster. By attention transactions I mean occasions when attention is paid to someone who can possibly make some use of having it, or is able to pass it on to someone else. People trade attention at work, at home, and in between, day in and day out. Anyone tied into the Web might make hundreds of such transactions a day, far more than the number of monetary transactions they are likely to be involved in.

The rise of the attention economy has a parallel: at the height of the feudal order in Europe, bloodlines and titles were replaced by a new form of wealth-money.

The attention economy is something real, and like every real economy, it has its shortcomings. Among its problems are these: 1. The danger of huge inequality between stars and fans; 2. The possibility that increasing demand for our limited attention will keep us from reflecting, or thinking deeply (let alone enjoying leisure); 3. The possibility that we will be so engrossed by efforts to capture our attention that we will shortchange those around us, especially children.

Beyond these problems, there are many more changes to expect as the attention economy grows in power. Here are some that come to mind first:

As the flow of attention becomes more important, so will cyberspace.

The importance of stars will increase, with a corresponding decline in power for those who insist on anonymity.

A lessening role for large organizations, because they can't focus or trade attention easily.

The same goes for governments, whose role will diminish as well.

Almost everyone will have a personal Web site.

For a secure old age, you will not want to rely entirely on Social Security or any kind of investment, monetary savings, or pension fund.

In projects of all kinds, comprehensive lists of credits for everyone involved will become as common and necessary as in Hollywood films now.

To thrive in the coming century, you will have to look beyond money in any form and build a stock of attention for yourself as best you can. This will not be an easy current to swim in. But don't be distracted. The most gorgeous castles of capitalism, the most colorful ceremonies of payment and receivables, the most elaborate rituals around money and investments are now at their height, just as the era of the money economy expires. For better or worse, the attention economy will prevail.

Michael H. Goldhaber (mgoldh@well.com) is the author of Reinventing Technology and a visiting scholar at the Institue for the Study of Social Change at the University of California at Berkeley. He's completing a book on the attention economy.

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The New Economy Doesn't Want Your Money-Just Your Attention

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Attention is a fundamental desire that's intrinsically, unavoidably scarce. History can help us understand this radical theory of value.

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The news industry is full of ideas when it comes to experimenting with new storytelling formats and techniques-podcasts, virtual reality, Instagram posts. The list is long, but storytelling across these media and platforms is something the journalism-adjacent advertising industry has been experimenting with for decades. Complex ad-measurement metrics now demonstrate, in granular detail, the effectiveness of traditional advertisements. The rapid adoption of those metrics across the ad industry has forced news organizations to defend how they manage their ad businesses. Publications old and new have to justify the effectiveness of advertisements they create or distribute for clients. This relationship has forced many publications to reimagine their business models as they continue to transition from print to digital.

Newspapers were once able to charge hundreds of thousands of dollars for a single full-page print ad, but as readers abandoned their print subscriptions in favor of digital news, many advertisers realized they were no longer reaching the same large audiences in print. Meanwhile, new digital media began to flourish in the ad-supported digital ecosystem. However, the conventional banner, pre-roll, and pop-up advertising that could be measured for effectiveness was found wanting, to put it mildly-AdAge has described click-through rates on these units as "abysmal."

Enter native advertising: Native ads take on the appearance of real news stories, and are crafted by people inside news publications who want to create and spread commercial messages that don't look like traditional advertisements that overtly push product. This report clearly outlines how news outlets produce native advertising and how this practice borrows credibility from the newsroom in order to enhance the value of the ad created for clients.

Native advertising has been found to deceive readers. Journalists know this. Ultimately, the trust they work hard to secure may be jeopardized by the creation and dissemination of native advertisements.

Executive Summary

Native advertising is not an entirely new concept; in fact, it bears a striking resemblance to the product public relations firms sell. PR firms routinely pitch journalists story ideas that make their client's products and services look good. There is more than one difference between ads and PR, but one is key for our purposes here: news publishers don't earn any advertising revenue if their reporters decide to write on a topic a public relations firm told them about. Native advertising enables news publishers to charge brands for work that has traditionally been performed by PR firms.

This development has created an intimate relationship between brands and news publishers-one that deserves careful examination. After a series of over thirty interviews with people who sell, write, produce, and distribute native advertising, a few important themes bubbled to the surface.
Key Findings:

Native ads borrow the credibility and authority of their respective news publishers. A former employee of the T Brand Studio, The New York Times's branded content division, said the studio tries to create native ads that are "Times-ian."This notion-creating content that is in the same tone as a publication's newsroom-was repeated on several occasions by people working across several news titles.

Clients have significant negotiation power. News publishers compete with each other for advertising revenue and this environment gives marketers an upper hand when they negotiate the terms of a native campaign. One phrase came up in over half the interviews with people with work experience at branded content studios: clients, our interviewees constantly told us, always ask for something that "has never been done " The demand for novelty forces news organizations to pitch campaigns that are closely aligned with what journalists are producing, because other marketing channels can't offer their clients this association. Selling partnerships with journalists was once considered unethical. Partnerships that would not have been possible in 2012 are now becoming standard practice, as clients can point to a new and unusual partnership with another publisher the previous year. The power imbalance means we may be in a race to the bottom when it comes to pushing back on how advertisers can and should work with new outlets.

Transparency is only part of the solution. Regulation managing how news publishers work with clients is needed. Otherwise, advertisers can continue to pit news outlets against one another, ultimately sacrificing the quality of news coverage placed in front of readers. One employee who worked inside The Atlantic's branded content studio said "publishers actively work with brands that are antithetical to their mission," citing a partnership between the magazine and the Church of Scientology. The employee went on to explain how the publisher actively pitched advertisers branded content that was visible on the homepage of The Atlantic's website.

Methodology

The purpose of this report is to outline how advertisers work with news publishers. Properly unpacking this relationship required conducting a series of 32 interviews with people who work inside branded content studios. A mix of legacy publications and digital-only websites were included in this study because we believe both are crucial to a full understanding of how news publishers deal with this market.

This diverse set of companies included: The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Conde Nast, ATTN:, and BuzzFeed. Secondary sources were also vital to a full picture of the trend's adoption across the industry. These sources come from a literature review of publicly available press pieces, academic texts, and ad industry handbooks that deal with native advertising, cited throughout.

The research was driven by a standard set of questions, asked of each interviewee: What's the relationship between journalists and advertisers at your organization? Has it changed? How are native ads pitched? Who helps make them? How are they labeled? Who decides? What do clients ask for? How do you negotiate the terms of a branded content campaign?

These questions are meant to provide readers, journalists, and students with a clear understanding of the ethical challenges emerging inside news organizations today. After outlining how native advertising gets pitched and created, this guide aims to show news workers how to navigate the interests of the business side of a news organization without sacrificing their journalistic integrity. As for news readers, I hope this report encourages careful review of the articles that whiz by us, because they may be shaped by commercial interests that have the potential to conflict with the publication's duty to its readers.

Introduction: Why Are Publishers Making Native Ads?

Today, native advertising is the central digital revenue stream for the publishing industry. It makes up some 60% of the market, or $32.9 billion, according to a 2018 forecast by market research firm eMarketer. Understanding why the trend has taken off with such speed requires a fuller appreciation of the changes that have shaped our overall information environment.

How we choose to spend our time means weighing trade-offs: What should we do right now? And what are we comfortable missing? In economics this trade-off is referred to as opportunity cost: Every time we make a choice, a cost is incurred-the loss of the second best choice. Tim Wu, a professor of law at Columbia University, expanded on this concept in his book The Attention Merchants, in which he posits that time has become a commodity in large part because we have so many options when it comes to deciding how to spend it.

Wu says that today we live in an "attention economy." An abundance of media channels provide us with more choices, meaning producers of content-from journalists to lawmakers-must work harder to secure the increasingly scarce resource of attention. News publishers compete for attention alongside everyone else. As a consequence of this newly widened media landscape, legacy news publishers are no longer able to exclusively capture ad revenue at the same scale, and with the same ease, as they were when print was their primary medium. Before the explosion of digital platforms, marketers relied heavily on print newspapers. There were neither browser extensions to hide the ads nor "engagement metrics" ostensibly guaranteeing that an ad had been "delivered" to a reader's eyeballs. One print ad used to reach a large and captive audience: The New York Times first passed the million-copy mark for its daily edition's circulation in 1985; in 2015 the print edition hovered around 625,000.

As profits from traditional forms of advertising continue to shrink, digital "display" ad formats-the boxes of text, images, or video that sit at the top of a given page, called "banners," and the boxes that cover content until you dismiss them, called "pop-ups"- have not replaced the lost revenue. According to Smart Insights, an advertising measurement platform, these units have an average "click-through" rate of only .05 percent.

Worse, the number of times an ad has been shown to a potential customer-which retroactively determines the price of the ad- is often over-reported. Data suggest people don't view them and that many of the clicks are accidental. The public also gets irritated by ads that pop up and auto-play video because they interrupt the reading experience. Hence, ad-blocking technology is extremely popular and effective. Thirty percent of internet users are using some type of ad blocker.

Branded content has seemed like a perfect solution. For one, it has none of the many drawbacks of digital display ads. The goal of branded content is not to distract, irritate, or annoy, but rather to engage people. The jargon around this concept can get confusing because branded content and native advertising are often used interchangeably, but they represent two different functions: Branded content is the word used by the ad industry to describe the type of content they are either making or buying. Chris Rooke, senior vice president of strategy and operations at the native advertising production company Nativo, explained in an interview that branded content is made with the intent to affect "consumer perception, affinity, and consideration."

What distinguishes branded content from traditional TV spots or print ads is that the "content" attempts to deliver something its target audience will recognize as valuable. This might take the form of original reporting on a news website, or a compelling narrative around a product instead placing a brand at the center of a story. In contrast to digital display ads, value in branded content is defined by its non-interruptive nature and the way it provides people with content they might choose to see because it is entertaining or informative.

Native advertising simply refers to the placement of branded content. When branded content appears in a form that mimics the appearance of where it is placed, it becomes native advertising. For example, a native ad that is published on a news publisher's website will take on a similar visual aesthetic and writing tone as the publication. It may use the same font as the publisher's newsroom, it certainly shares the same URL, and depending on the publisher it may share imagery or pictures with the newsroom.

Branded content created by an advertiser and uploaded to that advertiser's YouTube channel is not native. YouTube is not lending its logo to the advertiser, it is simply hosting another entity's content. But, if an advertiser pays someone to create branded content on their behalf, like an influencer, then the content would be considered native advertising because it is in the influencer's tone of voice, or mimics their aesthetic.

Over the past decade, numerous news publishers have created branded content departments. Native advertising not only mimics news content in appearance, but it is also delivered through the same platform, and allows for the same interactive elements. Branded content departments are tasked with selling original marketing to advertisers by guaranteeing reader engagement with content (text, video, podcasts, etc.) Engagement in this context is defined by time spent on page, video views, or scroll depth. The business model of selling native ads is so lucrative that many respected news publishers have invested in the trend. The New York Times opened T Brand Studio (disclosure: I worked in T Brand from the fall of 2015 to the spring of 2017); The Atlantic has Re:Think; BBC hosts Storyworks; and Condé Nast has tried to position 23 Stories as a stand-alone agency. Native advertising is predicated on a newspaper's ability to translate the storytelling credibility of its newsroom to the publisher's advertising department, even though it remains largely separate from the newsroom.

Publishers are well suited to making native ads because their newsrooms already create stories that millions of people read every day. A newspaper's advertising department claims to be able to do the same thing for clients, especially and explicitly if it has branded content studio. The New York Times's native advertising department, T Brand Studio, marketed its services with the slogan "Stories that influence the influential."6 The explainer video on T Brand's website emphasizes the newsroom's role in inspiring the studio's branded content. The video features vignettes that shift back and forth between images of news articles-created by Times journalists- and images of native ads produced by T Brand for clients. The video was created to attract advertisers, not to explain how The Times actually creates native ads. It shows the finished product, advertisements, and compares it to the work of the organization's newsroom.

Who Makes Native Ads?

News organizations were never structured to create original advertisements for clients. Publishers were simply distribution platforms. The advertising department inside a news publisher used to be filled, almost entirely, by salespeople. Success was defined by the thickness of a magazine, because that meant the issue attracted a lot of advertisers. Advertising agencies and clients were on the other side of the process. They gave salespeople the commercial messages they wanted readers to see. Traditionally, advertising agencies worked directly with brands to produce original commercial content. When the news industry realized it had to offer advertisers something besides distribution-native advertising-to remain profitable, the first task was obvious: they had to hire people who could make ads.

More than a quarter of the people I interviewed first found their job inside a branded content studio because the job title matched what they were searching for when looking for open positions in the advertising industry. Every publisher in this study created new job titles: Creative Director, Strategist, Video Producer. These job titles had never existed in news publishing before; they were the terms advertising agencies used. Entire departments inside ad agencies are filled with strategists and video producers.

The new job titles spoke clearly to ad industry veterans who might be seeking open positions inside news organizations. Clare Stein is now the creative director of a digital publisher ( ATTN:) and she had this exact experience when she made the decision to leave advertising to join The New York Times in 2014. Stein was hired as the first creative media strategist at the Times. She sat within a department called Sales Development. Prior to joining the paper she worked as a copywriter at Vayner Media. Stein found the job through LinkedIn while she had her filters set to look for open positions in the advertising industry.

When I interviewed Stein after she left the Times, she reflected on the experience, "In hindsight, I was probably naive about what a shift to a publisher would mean... I didn't quite understand the realities of working at a publisher." Her statement is indicative of the drastic cultural change the paper was undergoing during her time there. The Times craved the perspective and experience of advertisers; the organization wanted Stein's expertise to rub off on salespeople who were used to selling ad space. The new positions introduced valuable marketing skills to the sales department. News outlets never had to hire creatives, art directors, or copywriters. For the most part, they looked toward the ad industry's job descriptions to craft their own recruitment materials. This cultural shift was actually made explicit in the Times' leaked 2014 innovation report, which stated that the paper needed to change titles to attract fresh talent, and acknowledged that "Digital staffers want to play creative roles, not service roles." Previously, Stein's position had fallen under the title "sales support." When she said she didn't realize what a transition into publishing would mean, she was referring to the fact that while the Times had changed some of its job titles, its sales-first culture had not changed.

Lisa Harvey is a salesperson who has worked at The Atlantic and The New York Times; she was able to shed light on just how much has changed between 2015 and our present moment. "For me it went from something that was quite simple- a sale (such as) a straight print buy, or media plan... (to) 'What kind of story do you want to tell?'" In 2016, "It was like I had a different job. It was like they were speaking a different language." Harvey's experience was the same at both companies: the sales job was no longer selling space; she had to become a story-seller. Every salesperson I spoke with said they were selling ideas or stories now.

After publishers staffed up to handle the demands of producing branded content, the challenge became organizing the ways native ads would actually be produced. Vox, the Times, and The Atlantic created new product teams. These teams acted as liaisons between branded content studios and newsroom employees. People on product teams work closely with editors and reporters to see what projects they are working on and try to find ways to align advertisers with upcoming newsroom content.

One Linkedin page captured a trend I was seeing across the profiles of many product managers who work for news organizations. As one of their accomplishments, a product manager at a prominent magazine lists, "Partnered with editorial and marketing leadership to plan special projects and map out editorial/product calendar." This description may sound like jargon to the average reader, but it makes sense to people in the industry. To shed light on this trend I spoke with Ashley Neglia, who was the director of product marketing and ad innovation at The New York Times for three years. She said the role means "working in between the newsroom, product, and sales. My job is to work very closely with the newsroom as they come up with new ideas, and for me to determine what might be interesting to an advertiser. What might be sellable or sponsorable?" Neglia's response captures the special position product teams hold within the organizational structure of a news publisher. Previously, publications were made up of two entities: the newsroom and the business side of the operation. Product marketing works in the middle.

When news organizations create new teams like product marketing, they are able to skirt the implication that news staff work directly with brands to craft commercial content-something that would damage the publication's reputation and make its own brand identity less valuable. The product marketing team is responsible for the negotiation between publisher and advertiser. They shape the conversation with the newsroom and marketers, respectively.

If an editor wants to work on a culinary trends column, the product development team will consult various brands to see if a company wants to be associated with such content. For example, Vox sold Infiniti (the car company), a native advertising initiative that blended into Eater's culinary coverage. It was called The Museum of Food and Drink, and featured a series of articles outlining the latest trends in the culinary world. The native advertising campaign was labeled "Presented by Infiniti" (see Figure 1). It takes further digging to see the disclosure text that said news staff had no hand in creating the content (see Figure 2).

Every interview conducted as part of this report circled one question: is native advertising ethical if it looks like real news? Most subjects said they believe they craft ethical native advertisements. Almost everyone who defended the practice evoked the church and state axiom. They said their publisher understood the importance of keeping the newsroom (church) separate from the advertising department (state). However, a few people said they understood that native ads do present a threat to traditional newsroom values. Four people said sometimes publishers get it wrong. Pete Tosiello worked in The Atlantic's branded content studio and said the publisher did work on ads that had no place in journalism. Tosiello cited the native ad The Atlantic ran for the Church of Scientology in 2013. The ad outlined the growth of the Church and came out right before New Yorker writer Lawrence Wright's book Going Clear, an expose on the Church's hidden practices. It was created to offset the negative press generated from Wright's book. The publisher removed the native ad, and apologized for their poor judgment. Tosiello said that after stumbling over a few native ads they became more discerning and probably wouldn't make the same mistake today. When he discussed the practice he said it was essentially "Calling in world-class publications to effectively write press releases."

Many people said they didn't feel comfortable talking on the record about certain partnerships or how some deals are negotiated between the newsroom and marketers. Five different sales people from legacy news publishers said there were always avenues for advertisers to collaborate with the newsroom. They each discussed going on sales meetings with a popular journalist. If the wall between the newsroom and advertisers is as sturdy as most interviewees proclaimed, I was curious to see how they justified bringing journalists on sales calls.

Most interviewees said there is no conflict of interest because they align branded content with projects, columns, or articles their respective newsroom is already in the process of producing. A trend did emerge, people who adamantly defended the practice were employed by a publisher during the time I interviewed them. However, those who shared their skepticism about the trend had left the industry. Tracy Doyle worked at The New York Times, where she was creative director, for over two years. She put it in perspective-when asked how she felt about the ethics of native advertising, she simply said:

This is not in line with the campaign they are putting out that talks about the truth when they will turn around with another hand and take money from an advertiser to run an ad about fracking not being bad. We know that this is not the truth. This is what happens when you have glorified salespeople running The New York Times - their take-money-from-anyone mindset ultimately jeopardizes the journalistic integrity of the newspaper.

Doyle was referencing a native ad the legacy publisher created for Chevron. Beneath the header, " Innovation Unlocks Untapped Energy" readers saw the text, "more effective extraction techniques, such as hydraulic fracturing - unlocked vast, previously untappable reserves. In turn, ample supply has reduced natural gas prices to historic lows."

Despite the obvious problems with writing native ads that oppose the information coming out of a publisher's newsroom most interviewees defended the practice. Almost everyone I spoke to said native advertising is a valuable and necessary revenue stream for publishers. The dire economic state of the publishing industry seemed to offset any ethical concerns over the potential native ads have to confuse newsreaders. It is worth noting that many people who work in branded content studios used to be journalists. They are familiar with the values, rigor, and dedication reporters exercise when pursuing a story. Despite this desire to keep journalistic ethics intact while crafting native ads, the pressure to secure advertising revenue is substantial.

Denise Burrell-Stinson used to be a freelance journalist and is currently the head of storytelling at The Washington Post's branded content studio. In this role, she creates media for advertisers. This involves pitching clients' stories in the form of articles, videos, and podcasts. Burrell-Stinson actively works with clients, creates branded content, and sells story ideas by leveraging her past experience working as a journalist. She reminds brands that she has been trained to tell meaningful stories people care about for years. Burrell-Stinson has been at The Post over a year and has seen the company's culture intensify. "The mandate here is to up your game all the time . . . push the envelope, make it bigger," she said. Nearly everyone I spoke with mentioned the push to make work that has "never been done before."

Clients routinely ask Burrell-Stinson, Neglia, and Harvey to show them advertising opportunities that have never been offered to anyone else. This isn't a request; it's an ultimatum. Clients can go to an advertising agency if they simply want a thirty-second ad or Instagram post. Marketers work with publishers because they want to be associated with the trust people place in organizations like The Washington Post. They want commercials that don't strike readers as advertising at all, something that has never been done before.

Why Should We Pay Attention to Native Advertising?

Over 30 interviews, a common theme emerged: Clients have all the bargaining power. Marketers have well-established relationships with their ad agency of record and view news publishers as one piece of their larger promotional plan that can easily be jettisoned for another line-item on the budget. A client's agency of record is in the unique position to advise a brand on where they should spend their money- which platforms are worth valuable distribution dollars. This environment means news organizations have to build a relationship with advertisers, one that enables them to be more than a distribution line-item. The dynamic encourages product marketing teams to work directly with the newsroom to create original opportunities for brands to sponsor. When a product team can give a client an opportunity to embed their brand in or near news coverage, then the publisher becomes more than a simple distribution platform. Reporters, editors, and news workers will need to be equipped to address these new requests coming out of the business side of a newspaper as long as native advertising remains en vogue.

The economic pressure on newsrooms across the country has made branded content studios compete against one another for revenue. When publishers are asked to "push the envelope" of what is possible, the results benefits clients, not readers. Clients have consistently approached the people I interviewed and informed them that another publisher offered them a partnership closely aligned with one journalist's column, or a new type of sponsorship altogether. Then they asked the person I interviewed whether they can match the offer or enhance it in some way. For example, ad labels vary and clients can often push publishers to create a label that is vague, or none at all, if they show that another publisher is willing to offer the same vague or nonexistent label. Branded content that can be difficult to spot exists in events a publisher hosts, in the podcasts it produces, in a series of columns-indeed, it is present in every medium a publisher is using.

Every publisher in this study uses a data analytics company like Chartbeat or Parse.ly to measure how readers engage with their coverage; this data is used by both the newsroom and branded content studios. Studios are able to share this proprietary data with advertisers when they are trying to sell branded content around a specific topic like travel. Product managers often create partnerships around topics readers are most likely to engage with, determined using engagement data from readers' browsing patterns. Branded content producers interviewed for this study overwhelmingly said they wanted to make native ads that sound and look like the work produced by their respective newsroom-branded content that is "Times-ian" or sounds like an explainer article Vox's newsroom would write.

In the winter of 2017, The New York Times launched a native advertising initiative. The ad series was labeled, "An editorial residency with the support of Véa, a snack company owned by Mondelez." The text describing the residency itself was vague and wasn't written in the form of a normal job description: the Times had created a standalone website asking journalists with two to three years of experience to apply to a new editorial residency. The website hosting the application portal said, "As a New York Times reporter, you'll travel the country and the world seeking out others with fascinating identities, and share their stories with Times readers in an upcoming cultural series called Surfacing." At the bottom and top of this landing page the logo of the snack company appeared with the text "Supported by Véa" (see Figures 3 and 4).

This initiative, labeled as a residency, was actually Véa funding reporters to cover food, culture, and travel for New York Times readers.

As Jason Levine, vice president of marketing for Mondelez International, said in a press release for the native ad,

We are proud to help The New York Times empower a new era of journalists to uncover new experiences, seek out others with fascinating identities and share those authentic stories in real-time-an endeavor that truly resonates with and engages Véa fans.

Meanwhile, the Times newsroom was responsible for recruiting and training Véa residents to explore the world and create food, culture, and travel content within its Travel section, all led by the Times travel editor Monica Drake. In the same release, Sebastian Tomich, senior vice president of advertising and innovation at The New York Times, said:

We're excited to work with the Véa brand because their spirit of exploration and presence is very much aligned with the kinds of stories that curious Times readers come to us for day after day. We're looking for the next generation of passionate and thoughtful creators who are pushing the boundaries on how to tell stories and how to tap into what's at the core of culture right now.

The Véa residency blurs the boundary between newsroom content and advertising messaging by centrally placing Véa's brand in the context of a real reporting job description. Further, there was no clear label identifying the content as an advertisement. It's important to note the product marketing team that helps craft these deals between advertisers and the newsroom report directly to Tomich. But these product teams are only one part of the story. There are also former journalists who craft commercial messages for advertisers.

Native Advertising and Journalism

The rise of native advertising leads to other questions about the state of journalism that news organizations haven't been addressed fully:

Should reporters share what they are working on with product marketing teams? When the newsroom works with product teams-whether simply by consulting on journalistic standards or by partnering more deeply- its knowledge and expertise get commodified and shared with advertisers in an effort to create branded content.

Does native advertising affect how real news stories are crafted and delivered?

Does native advertising challenge the supposition of objectivity accorded to modern reporting?

Does native advertising taint or otherwise undercut the relationship between publishers and the readers who trust them for independent coverage of companies that may buy advertising from them?

These questions pose new challenges for news workers. News organizations have never placed such a premium on the data they have about readers, or the targeting capabilities publishers can implement. Today, reporters are well aware that they need to keep readers on an article page. This allows publishers to tell advertisers they have a healthy audience of engaged readers, reachable through ad placements that look like news stories. Research has shown newsrooms know they have to keep readers on article pages and actively engaging with content; this knowledge can shape reporting decisions. What is clear in this study is that journalists see that branded content generates revenue and thus secures the future of their publication and consequently their job. Pete Tosiello worked in The Atlantic's branded content studio and said the need for ad revenue was visible on both the business and newsroom side of the publication. "There were pressures to band together. In some cases popular reporters came to sales meetings." They came to these meetings to try and help close ad deals. Reporters may not negotiate the price of a native ad, but they are certainly recognize the importance of these conversations.

Native Advertising & News Readers

In 2015, content marketing company Contently conducted an in-depth study that showed hundreds of people a combination of editorial and clearly labeled native ads. The company,which has a financial interest in ensuring that native advertising remains popular and profitable, found that "most consumers identified the native ad as an article. That includes native ads on The Wall Street Journal (80 percent identified it as an article), The New York Times (71 percent), BuzzFeed (71 percent), and Forbes (65 percent)."

Advertisers invest in branded content and native advertising because they are said to capture the valuable attention of readers. People engage with native ads for a variety of reasons; they may find the content intriguing, or they may not realize it is a commercial message.

News publishers try to sell the status, reputation, and aura of their newsroom and the reporting skills of their investigative journalists to create a case for why advertisers should trust news publishers to craft commercial messages. The premise of native content studios is that they are able to use the same skills journalists utilize to tell compelling stories and engage readers.These studios employ former journalists, pay them well, and show marketers that ads crafted by news publishers will be executed with the same level of care as news stories. Employees can also transfer between the newsroom and branded content studio of same publisher. It's important to note here that the majority of native ads don't have bylines, making it easy for journalists at a publisher to write commercial content without readers knowing. This trend means former journalists are able to leverage their skill sets in advertising departments across major newspapers. The question then becomes, what if it works? What if readers find native advertising to be just as compelling and persuasive as real news?

Brandon Keenen, senior director at BuzzFeed, answered this question:

Our branded content at times outperforms our editorial content. It really just depends on the content. We don't see a massive drop-off on branded content, so it's a great opportunity for brands to engage with the audience and a community in a way that there's no lesser value in because it's branded or promoted by. It's really important to keep it authentic and to make sure that the content resonates with the audience regardless if there's a brand or not.

Audience development teams work directly with social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter to ensure people are reading native ads. Articles coming out of the newsroom have their own audience development teams that share the same skill set: optimizing headlines, imagery, and text. However, each real news story is not amplified to get a specific number of clicks. But branded content studios have promised clients a specific number of clicks and thus have a financial obligation to amplify commercial messages.

This can come at the cost of promoting editorial content, since both real news stories and native ads are competing for a reader's attention. Yogini Patel was an ad optimization coordinator at BuzzFeed, where she was tasked with ensuring branded content performed well and attracted reader attention. When asked how she worked with the newsroom to promote branded content, she said reporters would share information about what people clicked on, the time of day posts should be put up, and so forth. She also said, "We were talking to them [the newsroom] before posting anything."

By consulting with the newsroom, Yogini knew when to post content and could make sure the newsroom was not covering similar stories. This check-in with the newsroom ensured her branded content stories would receive as many clicks as possible; they wouldn't come out at the same time the newsroom was running a comparable story.

Some of the largest criticisms of native advertising are focused on disclosure and transparency. Regulators and publishers consider native ads ethical if they are labeled clearly. Upholding clear discourse standards is predicated on the assumption that if readers know they are reading commercial messages, because the ad is clearly labeled, then native advertising as a practice can't be deceptive.

The Limitations of Current Regulation

In theory, the disclosure mandated by FTC regulation shields readers from being tricked or misled into reading commercial content and thinking it was produced by a journalist. However, complete transparency is not a proactively enforced legal standard, as evidenced by the fact that many publishers do not follow the FTC's laws on native advertising.

MediaRadar is an advertising intelligence company that tracks where ads are placed and sells that information to ad agencies, brands, and media companies. In 2017, the company reviewed more than 12,000 pieces of native content across a variety of publisher websites and found that 40 percent of native advertisements ignore the FTC's regulations.

The company also found that nearly two out of five publishers creating native ads are not compliant with FTC's guidelines. There is a distinction here that is easy to miss: the study did not find that brands themselves are being deceptive. Rather, the publishers making the native advertisements are not following the FTC's rules. These rules do not provide publishers with standard wording for disclosure, though. Publishers use different labels to mark native content, which can be confusing to readers. A single publisher,

The Atlantic uses a variety of labels: "Crafted by," "Presented by," and in one case simply "With." In a branded content campaign for Nest, The Atlantic's branded content studio worked with PSFK- a research company- to create a custom research report that stated the benefits of using Nest products. The report, "Home Debrief" simply said "PSFK with The Atlantic " (see Figure 5).

Minimizing disclosure up to, and potentially even beyond, the legal standard of transparency adds a fatal layer of confusion to a world of public information that already confounds a skeptical, digital-native readership. Sarah McGrew co-directs the Civic Online Reasoning project at Stanford University and conducted a study on native advertising that looked at how high school students respond to this form of commercial content. Researchers presented high school students with screenshots of two articles on global climate change. One screenshot was a traditional news story from a magazine's science section. The other was a post sponsored by an oil company, which was labeled sponsored content and prominently displayed the company's logo. The students were asked to identify which source was more reliable. Almost 70 percent said the sponsored content screenshot, which contained a chart with data, was more reliable.

The findings indicated that students were often fooled by the eye-catching pie chart in the oil company's post, despite the fact that there was no evidence that the chart represented reliable data. One student said that the oil company's article was more reliable because, "It's easier to understand with the graph and seems more reliable because the chart shows facts right in front of you." Only 15 percent of students concluded that the news article was the more trustworthy source of the two screenshots.

If native advertising convinces readers that brand stories are factual, informative, and worth reading, then journalists have something to worry about. The novel problem native advertising presents may be what happens when people interpret ads as journalistic and trustworthy even when they are clearly labeled as sponsored content. McGrew's research captures an essential part of this conversation: disclosure might not be the primary problem. Rather, the problem with native advertising is that it accomplishes exactly what it sets out to do-it looks as trustworthy and well-reported as a real news story. The BBC's branded content studio explicitly says it is "the creative studio with newsroom values . . . embodying the BBC's creative spark and rigorous editorial quality to help brands connect through beautifully crafted storytelling." Branded content studios are selling their ability to produce content that looks just as believable as real news stories. McGrew's study proves that branded content studios are delivering on this promise to their clients. Producers of native content know they are in the business of copying whichever strategies and tactics the newsroom deploys to maintain reader trust.

Perhaps the most troubling aspect of this study is that when students were given a side-by-side comparison between a native ad and a real news story, they didn't simply think the native ad was better, they thought it was more trustworthy because it had a compelling data visualization.

Advertisers pour money into making content that looks virtually identical to real news; social media experts then sit within branded content studios where they test each native advertising headline and potential image, all in an effort to make sure readers are clicking. Editorial departments have audience development teams as well, which test and optimize headlines, but the newsroom doesn't need to hit a certain number of readers per article. News publishers also work to amplify news across social media platforms, but again they don't have to meet specific click-through goals. Exposure aside, regulatory efforts may be focused on the wrong issues. The problem shouldn't be limited to discussions that emphasize the importance of disclosure, labels, and media literacy.

When brands are armed with real-time newsroom data showing what people are engaging with, ads can be instantly updated and served. Regulation around native advertising should also require that publishers have readers open commercial content in an entirely new browser window, with a URL that has "advertiser content" in the name instead of "paid-post/nytimes.com," for example.

Eye-catching content, created by storytelling experts and funded by a brand, may actually be taking readers away from reading the editorial content independent newsrooms create. When brands work with publishers to create branded content they are promised a specific number of clicks or engagement. Publishers then have to promote the branded content they've created on their website and on social media platforms to meet the promised number of clicks. Therefore, it is entirely possible that people will see a branded content story before they see a real news article because publishers are paying platforms to promote commercial messages, not newsroom articles.

Every time a deal is negotiated between an advertiser and a publisher's branded content studio, a specific number of clicks or engagement metrics are promised to the client. Branded content studios have a contract to deliver clients with the pre-established engagement metrics. Newsroom reporters aren't contractually obligated to hit a specified number of clicks on their articles; especially at legacy publications like The New York Times. However, branded content studios are contractually obligated to hit specified engagement metrics when working with marketers. If by working with publishers advertisers are winning out in securing reader attention through native ads, this has the potential to undermine an important mission of news organizations: maintaining an informed public.

Conclusion: What Should We Do?

The resounding theme in these interviews was the overwhelming desire people had to defend the native ads created inside a publishers' branded content division. Nearly everyone said native ads provide value to readers or at least that is the goal of this type of marketing. Burrell-Stinson, of the Washington Post, said that there is a shared mission between the newsroom and branded content producers: "The content that does the best feels like good storytelling. People who come from real newsrooms... they bring the best talent and authority." She went on to explain that hiring journalists enables branded content studios to show that they can produce work that is just as compelling as what comes out of newsrooms.

Her response seems to skirt the question many people have: is the wall between reporters and advertisers still sturdy? Burrell-Stinson's response encapsulates what many other native advertising practitioners have said-that great stories can be told on either side of the wall. When asked about ethical considerations, people adamantly stated that the ultimate goal of branded content is similar to that of a newsroom-to produce compelling stories. Practitioners did not feel the line between newsroom and commercial content was being blurred; almost everyone thought there was no reason brands shouldn't create content that is just as thoughtfully put together as their publication's news copy. Lisa Harvey, Denise Burrell-Stinson, Ashley Neglia, each clearly stated that they work with clients whose mission and story is closely aligned with the publisher that employs them. It would be easy to think branded content producers are behaving recklessly, and some people who used to work in the industry agree. But current producers of branded content don't seem to reject ethical concerns, they simply don't think commercial content threatens the independence of the newsroom.

These assertions fly in the face of established research on audience behavior. The very thing that gives this form of marketing power is its capacity to blend, to camouflage itself in any given environment-the commercial's ability to be native.

Publishers depend on advertising revenue to support news gathering and production. This economic truth is no longer new. Native advertising shares many similarities with print advertorials-ads that were made to look like editorial content and had a small label at the top of the page marking them "advertorials" or "sponsored content" or a "special advertising section." As with their digital decendents, this label was easy to miss when readers flipped through magazines and saw yet another page that looked like a news column. But the way native digital advertising is being made is unprecedented.

A senior editor at Digiday wrote, "The difference between an advertorial and a native ad lies in the content. Publishers are building out creative services teams [ The Atlantic has a staff of 15; BuzzFeed has nearly 20] to help brands create content that fits the voice of the outlet, whereas advertorials don't necessarily match up"

Advertorials aren't written by news publishers; clients or their ad agency provides the news outlet with text, words, and images. Native ads are different because they are produced within the walls of a news publisher from start to finish. When the voice of an advertiser mimics the authoritative and trustworthy voice of journalists, it is clear that something new is happening. Research shows that readers consistently mistake native advertisements for news stories. We've also seen that regulating the labeling of commercial content is difficult to enforce. While these findings may paint a dark future for news, they also present readers with a unique opportunity to demand more transparency from news outlets. If enough readers voice their concerns about branded content, news outlets will have to respond. At the moment, many readers are confused by native ads because they don't realize how prevalent they are and just how much they blend into the look and tone of news stories. However, if more people become aware of the trend and its prevalence at trusted newspapers, they may be more willing to demand transparency in exchange for subscription dollars.

Acknowledgments

This report would not have been possible without the support of Emily Bell and the Tow Center. Thanks to Elizabeth Watkins for her keen understanding of the digital ad space and critical eye that greatly helped refine my own thinking. Thanks to Sam Thielman and Pete Brown for their patience, thoughtful comments, and razor-sharp edits.

Thank you to all of the people inside publishing and media who allowed me to interview them, their perspective added much-needed nuance to this report. Finally, I'd like to thank Professor Michael Schudson, Professor Andie Tucher, Professor Rodney Benson, and Professor Sam Freedman for their continuous support of my work on this topic.

Notes

NYT Interview. Ava Sirrah. Phone interview. New York, April 25, 2017.

Buzzfeed Interview. Ava Sirrah. Phone interview. New York, February 2, 2017.

Tosiello Interview. Ava Sirrah. Phone interview. New York, July 21, 2019.

Wu, Tim. The Attention Merchants from the Daily Newspaper to Social Media, How Our Time and Attention Is Harvested and Sold. London: Atlantic Books, 2016.

Chaffey, Dave. "Average Display Advertising Clickthrough Rates." Smart Insights, April 16, 2019.

McLellan, Michele. The Rise of Native Ads in Digital News Publications. Report. Entrepreneurial Journalism, Tow-Knight.

O'Reilly, Lara. "Ad Blocker Usage Is up 30% - and a Popular Method Publishers Use to Thwart It Isn't Working." Business Insider. January 31, 2017. Accessed April 29, 2018.
https://www.businessinsider.com/pagefair-2017-ad-blocking-report-2017-1.

Rittenhouse, Lindsay. "The New York Times Hires JWT N.Y. Chief Creative Officer Ben James for Its Branded Content Studio." Adweek, March 29, 2019.

ATTN Interview. Ava Sirrah. Phone interview. New York, October 12, 2017.

Benton, Joshua. "The Leaked New York Times Innovation Report Is One of the Key Documents of This Media Age." Nieman Lab, May 14, 2014.

Atlantic Interview. Ava Sirrah. Phone interview. New York, October 15, 2018.

Melissa, Melissa. "@Theincogneatist." Instagram, n.d.

Tosiello Interview. Ava Sirrah. Phone interview. New York, July 21, 2019.

Doyle Interview. Ava Sirrah. Phone interview. New York, July 26, 2018.

"Stories That Influence The Influential." T Brand Studio, n.d.
T Brand

"The New York Times Surfacing Residency." The New York Times, n.d.

Christin, Angèle. "Counting Clicks: Quantification and Variation in Web Journalism in the United States and France." American Journal of Sociology 123, no. 5 (2018).
https://doi.org/10.1086/696137.

Tosiello Interview. Ava Sirrah. Phone interview. New York, July 21, 2019.

Lazauskas, Joe. "The Problems Facing Native Advertising, in 5 Charts." The Content Strategist. September 24, 2015. Accessed April 29, 2018.
https://contently.com/strategist/2015/09/16/the-problems-facing-native-advertising-in-5-charts/.

Silverman, Jacob. "The Rest Is Advertising: Jacob Silverman." The Baffler, July 3, 2019.

Hannay, Megan. "Local Journalism, Meet Branded Content: What the Decline in Print Means for Brands." Marketing Land, August 17, 2016.

Buzzfeed Interview. Ava Sirrah. Phone interview. New York, February 2, 2017.

Fletcher, Paul. "Report: Nearly 40% Of Publishers Ignore FTC's Native Advertising Rules." Forbes. March 20, 2017. Accessed April 29, 2018.

Fletcher, Paul. "Report: Nearly 40% Of Publishers Ignore FTC's Native Advertising Rules." Forbes. Forbes Magazine, March 20, 2017.

Storyworks". 2019. Https://Www.Bbcglobalnews.Ltd/Solutions/Bbc-Storyworks/.
https://www.bbcglobalnews.ltd/solutions/bbc-storyworks/.

"Article or Ad? When It Comes to Native Advertising, No One Knows." Contently, February 1, 2017.

Lawson, Linda. Truth in Publishing: the Newspaper Publicity Act as Government Regulation of the Press. Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms International, 1989.

Amazeen, Michelle A, and Bartosz W Wojdynski. "The Effects of Disclosure Format on Native Advertising Recognition and Audience Perceptions of Legacy and Online News Publishers." Journalism: Theory, Practice & Criticism, July 2018.
https://doi.org/10.1177/1464884918754829.

Ava Sirrah is a Ph.D. candidate in Columbia University's journalism school where she researches how advertisers shape news production and dissemination. Prior to entering academia, she worked at The New York Times as a creative strategist.

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The news industry is full of ideas when it comes to experimenting with new storytelling formats and techniques-podcasts, virtual reality, Instagram posts. The list is long, but storytelling across these media and platforms is something the journalism-adjacent advertising industry has been experimenting with for decades. Complex ad-measurement metrics now demonstrate, in granular detail, [...]

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The News Literacy Project is a 501(c)(3) educational organization. We are independent and nonpartisan; the support we receive from donors and foundations does not determine or influence any content we develop and provide in our Checkology virtual classroom materials or other resources.

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Is Your Life Really Yours? How 'The Attention Merchants' Got Inside Our Heads

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Is Your Life Really Yours? How 'The Attention Merchants' Got Inside Our Heads

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"My Experience is What I Agree to Pay Attention to," said psychologist William James. And therein lies the problem and danger of advertising: we don't always agree or choose to pay attention, but it shapes our life experience irrevocably.

When we turn on the television, or leaf through the newspaper, every one of us enters into a knowing contract with advertisers - they will do their best to sell us something. According to Tim Wu, law professor at Columbia University and author of new book The Attention Merchants, the online world is markedly different - it runs away with that mutual understanding, stretches it to places and methods you would not sensibly consent to.

What makes us stick around, then? Wu believes it's our love of free things. Facebook, Google, Amazon, eBay and many other platforms that have become the center of our social, business and retail lives don't cost a thing to use, and allow us to do so much. But what are the costs of everything being free? In exchange for these privileges, companies and media organizations harvest our attention and sell it to advertisers. They are 'the attention merchants'. That makes you the commodity.

Many of us revolt against ads - we use ad blockers, choose streaming over broadcast TV, listen to on-demand music rather than radio, and hack our way out of much-loathed YouTube commercial overtures. But there is subtle attention harvesting happening in ways we cannot see, and do not question. Our preferences and habits are being mined and that information used to sell products and ideas to us at an even deeper level. The high-competition for our attention results in ever-increasing misleading click-bait, flashing images, shorter content (anything to get us in and keep us there), and it actually changes us neurologically. We've lost our ability to deeply focus, to get into a flow state where profound work is made - that, in Wu's eyes is a definite and serious cost.

But even more worrying is the way advertisements push and pull you toward decisions that could change the course of your life entirely. You may spend more money than planned and miss out on experiences you would have organically desired instead, like travel. You may vote for someone you previously wouldn't have. Open to the influence of companies who know a lot about you, you may end up living a little differently that you wanted to - without even realizing it. This gets us to one of Wu's big questions: since your mind and attention have become commodities, open to extensive and subtle influenced, are the decisions you're making really yours? How much of your life is motivated by ideas and impulses disguised so that you feel they are authentically yours? Wu says we need to be diligent in removing ourselves from the attention marketplace regularly enough so that we can be sure we are living lives we can truly call our own.

Tim Wu's most recent book is The Attention Merchants The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads.

Tim Wu: So there was a man named Benjamin Day who I call the first of the attention merchants, the founder of the New York Sun, who was in his own way a business genius and an innovator. He had this idea which was as opposed to selling a newspaper for six cents which was the normal way of doing it, he would sell his newspaper for a penny and try and attract an enormous audience and resell that audience to advertisers. So the newspapers at the time, the six penny papers, they're a little bit boring. They covered politics and finance. They didn't have crime stories, that kind of thing. And he introduced a sort of a far more interesting newspaper. The very first issue was all about the suicide of a man who had been separated from his lover. It had stories of death, mayhem, destruction, gossip and was sold at such a low price that he managed to attract these enormous audiences which then were resold to advertisers. Now the thing about that penny price is it was a money losing proposition unless you sold enough and unless you reach enough advertisers to make it worth it. So he pioneered this unusual business model which today is found in as many places as Google, Facebook, Instagram, you know, it's sort of taken over our lives.

So we are in a period where there's something of a revolt going on against advertising. There are a lot of people who consider themselves immune to ads or try and avoid all advertising. There's cord cutters and there's a lot of people who use ad blocking technologies to try and have themselves sort of in an ad free zone. And it's reached the point where it's a little bit of a kind of a war, maybe a war of attrition. And I'll say two things about that. First in the history of advertising there have been similar moments. It seems that about every 30 years or so there's a kind of revolt. Usually because things have gone too far in one way or another and I think in some ways things have gone too far in the web. That there is just too much, too intrusive, too much privacy invasion and people are starting to say, you know, this is not what I bargained for. Whatever deal we had I think you're exceeding the terms.

I think that hopefully it will lead to a place where we strike some kind of new deal, some kind of understanding is made. You know the web lacks any kind of limits as to where advertising should or shouldn't go. It's not like newspapers or something where there's, you know, you don't have every page of the newspaper completely covered in ads. There's kind of a bargain. And I hope we reach that on the web.
[Another thing that it will probably lead to however is also more and more efforts to use advertising that is surreptitious, that gets under the radar, that you don't really realize is advertising. You might even call it manipulation or nudges.

I think you'll see this particularly with some of our devices or new technologies. Let's say you use Google Maps trying to find something, a place to eat. How much of that decision is based on what's nearby and the best, how much it is based on who is paid at Google to sort of put the ad there. I think as we move into an era where we increasingly rely on intelligent intermediaries defining things for us or to be our guides in life the possibilities of surreptitious marketing increase. And I think that's a direction that we'll probably see, particularly with so much resistance to advertising.

You know I think as a culture we've become obsessed with free stuff almost frankly quite to our detriment. You know it's almost impossible for many people to consider using anything on the web that isn't free. Somehow it's like an outrage if you have to pay for it. And there's been a cost to that. I think that when many people signed up for Facebook in the early days it just seemed fun and free. There was very few advertising or very little advertising. But slowly we've come to understand that you're paying in very different ways. You're paying with your data which you hand over. You're paying with your attention. If you spend I don't know how many minutes or even hours a day on Facebook you're giving over something of tremendous value. And ultimately there's several ways in which we're paying. First of all we are granting unprecedented levels of access to ourselves, to our portal of judgment which ultimately has commercial influence or can influence our life in other ways. So we may without realizing it end up living lives that are a little different than we might have wanted to buying more things than we expected to, voting for people we might not have thought we would. All these sorts of things. We make ourselves open to influence, let's just put it that way.

And the other cost is that ad supported mediums have a constant need to deliver a receptive audience. And since we are the audience we are increasingly programmed to be more receptive which means open to distraction, ready to see something, constantly clicking and looking. There's an effect that I call the casino effect which I think comes to describe our lives on the web where you sit down to write an email and then suddenly you notice four hours have gone by. You're not quite sure what happened. You do know you clicked on a bunch of stuff and you went here and you went there. I think that is kind of becoming our lives and that's a very attractive mental state for advertisers because you're constantly clicking, constantly refreshing, constantly seeing new stuff. Whether it's good for us is an entirely different question. And so I think we're at risk of losing some of our ability to deeply focus, to get work done, to have the kind of attention span you need to do more profound kinds of work. And that I think is some of the cost of free.

So one of the inspirations for this book was the philosopher William James who is one of the first psychologists writing in the nineteenth century. And he had this one line that really struck me where he said roughly, you know, your life experience is what you choose to direct your attention to. And so at the end of your day is when it's all said and done what your life was will be the culmination of what you paid attention to. You know and that's in some very profound way true. And it does suggest something interesting about our times. We live in a time where our life experience moment to moment is more intermediated than any other time in human history. It's almost like we live in a built environment of attention. Most, I don't know exactly how you count the hours but many of our hours are screen as opposed to physical. I mean the screen is physical but it's some virtual thing. And in some sense we live in a cocoon almost, a projection at this point. You know we're still here but in terms of what our attention is paid to a lot of it is not here. And so I think that whether that's good or bad I'll leave to one side but it certainly makes it important that we understand the motives of those who are creating the cocoon that you're living in.

If we are living in kind of a simulated reality that's where we are, virtual reality is just the stronger version of it. You better pretty profoundly trust who's creating your reality for you and maybe have some say in what that reality looks like. And I worry and part of the reason I wrote this book is to examine those motivations. And if it is fundamentally the motivation to gather you up for resale to something well that might not actually be in your interest or sort of suddenly manipulate you in different ways. But even more profoundly than being sold to which is kind of annoying there is this issue of living your own life, making decisions which are yours. And I don't care if you listen to the founders or John Stuart Mill or if you're a religious person but the importance of decisions that are truly ours is so fundamental, so profound to a realized life that I think we need in this day and age there's so much that we're exposed to is motivated by other ideas. We need to be very careful about reserving time and space for ourselves and making decisions which we can truly call our own in order to live a life you can truly call your own.

Tim Wu is an author, policy advocate, professor at Columbia Law School, and director of the Poliak Center for the Study of First Amendment Issues at Columbia Journalism School. Wu's[...]

"My Experience is What I Agree to Pay Attention to," said psychologist William James. And therein lies the problem and danger of advertising: we don't always agree or choose to pay attention, but it shapes our life experience irrevocably.

"What you pay attention to, is your life." Where do you place precious brain resources?

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Is Your Life Really Yours? How 'The Attention Merchants' Got Inside Our Heads

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"My Experience is What I Agree to Pay Attention to," said psychologist William James. And therein lies the problem and danger of advertising: we don't always agree or choose to pay attention, but it shapes our life experience irrevocably.

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These 6 tips will help you spot misinformation online

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These 6 tips will help you spot misinformation online

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I'll never forget the moment the mob breached the walls of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.

As a senior multimedia reporter with MediaWise, I was tracking misinformation about the insurrection as it unfolded. The year began with an existential threat to our democracy. And we wrap 2021 with a new COVID-19 variant.

Now, more than ever, we need digital media literacy education in the U.S. - to help teens understand the importance of sorting fact from fiction online; teach older Americans how to spot the fake images, memes and doctored videos that fueled the Jan. 6 insurrection and prolonged the coronavirus pandemic; and support Spanish-speakers, who are disproportionately targeted with misinformation.

MediaWise has done all that in 2021, in addition to expanding our Campus Correspondents program, which centers on college students teaching other college students how to spot misinformation online. And we end the year with plans to take our digital media literacy training global with courses available through WhatsApp in Brazil, Spain and Turkey.

But, right now you might be thinking: "Hey, this sounds great, but here I am on Poynter.org, arguably the greatest journalism website in history - why can't you just tell me right now how to avoid misinformation?"

You're in luck. Here are six tools and techniques you, your friends (or enemies) and family can use to make a dent in the false information flowing on the internet today.

The fake news debunker by InVID & WeVerify is one of the most powerful tools for spotting misinformation online. After installing this Google Chrome plug-in, you can right-click any image you come across on Facebook, Twitter or any other website, scroll down to "Image Reverse Search - Google" and find the original source.

This is helpful because you can see whether the meme you're investigating is using an image out of context - maybe from the wrong time and place - to deceive you. Since reverse image searches also reveal very similar images, you may be able to find out whether a photo has been Photoshopped.
PRO-TIP: Scroll down to "Image Reverse Search - ALL" to locate an image using search engines from other countries. This casts a wider net for your image-based fact check. PRO-PRO-TIP: It works for videos! If you click Keyframes under the video tab, then drop in a YouTube link, InVid will pull still images and perform reverse image searches on them to locate the original source.
Seriously. Stop reading. Open a new tab and Google "Who is Alex Mahadevan and does he know what he's talking about?" Then (thanks for coming back) open another tab and Google "Is MediaWise legit?"

This technique (again, thanks for coming back) is called lateral reading. The Stanford History Education Group, which partnered with Poynter at the launch of MediaWise in 2018, determined that fact-checkers use this technique to navigate the internet - and are better than academics at separating fact from fiction.

The key is to stop digesting the post, image, video or article and immediately start investigating the person or organization who shared it, data or research cited in it or the source of the photograph. SHEG, in 2016 research, found that many people take an article or website as fact, especially if it has slick graphics or official-looking logos.

To get the most out of lateral reading, learn to craft advanced Google search queries. You can drill down on the exact information you see by using a few phrases or special characters.

"Alex Mahadevan" - the quotes quill give you an exact phrase

"Alex Mahadevan" -mediawise - the minus sign will exclude any results that have to do with MediaWise

"Alex Mahadevan" arrest report filetype:pdf - this may bring up a pdf document of an arrest report for the author

"Alex Mahadevan" AROUND(20) "nerd" - this returns any results in which the author's name and the word nerd appear within 20 words (roughly a sentence) of each other. As you can see, this word has never once appeared within the same sentence as this author's name

"Alex Mahadevan" site:poynter.org - this query returns any web page on the Poynter website that mentions the author's name

Remember SHEG from earlier? As part of that original MediaWise partnership, they developed three questions to ask when you want to fact-check something on your social media feed:

1. Who's behind the information?

2. What's the evidence?

3. What are other sources saying?

I would argue that the first question is the most powerful, as you can usually discount a post when you find out the user who posted it has a major bias or history of spreading disinformation. And one of the most powerful tools for checking out who's behind the information: The Wayback Machine.

This Internet Archive, which has saved billions of web pages spanning decades, allows you to go back in time and see if the source you're reading has a devious history, or lacks the expertise in what they are saying. This has been especially useful during the COVID-19 pandemic, as we have seen chiropractors and other fringe health workers spreading anti-vaccine disinformation.

I recently saw some eyebrow-raising Instagram posts that led me to the website of a Dr. Jack Kruse. Using Wayback Machine, I was able to discover that as far back as 2012, the author (who refers to his writing as "thought secretions") had been endorsing health misinformation - such as cell phones being responsible for so-called "geopathic stress."

The digital ad industry was worth $356 billion in 2020, with social media platforms making up more than $40 million, according to a report from the Aspen Institute's Commission on Information Disorder.

Driving all that dough? Algorithms and your eyeballs - as well as those of your aunt Maude, who may be spreading misinformation thanks to the mathematical equations driving the attention economy.

If you, your friends and your family understand that a huge factor determining what you see online are algorithms, and that algorithms function based on clicks, comments and shares, and that that engagement is fueled by rage, anxiety and fear - you're a step closer to being a more critical consumer of online information. Check your feelings the next time you see something posted on Facebook, it might stop you from sharing misinformation.

WeVerify works great for verifying images and videos that have been online for a while. But, if you see a post during a breaking news situation - like this tweet claiming to show a suicide bombing at Hamid Karzai International Airport - you might come up short with a reverse image search (no original photos!)

Is that tweet even showing the airport in Kabul? A look at Google Earth, which displays 3D views of most parts of the planet, confirms that we are likely looking at Hamid Karzai International Airport.

Notice the shadows? Using SunCalc, you can determine whether the image was captured at the hour the post claims. Just plug in the location and time to find out the exact position of the sun at the time of the claim.

And a quick glance at Weather Underground's Historical Weather archive can confirm, or debunk, an image based on what the weather looks like.

Answering the last SHEG question - what are other sources saying - is a time-saver. And the Google Fact-Check Explorer makes it even easier to debunk misinformation online.

This database of fact-checks posted by reputable fact-checkers likely has the answer you're looking for, which lets you bypass all that hard verification work. But, what's the fun in that?

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These 6 tips will help you spot misinformation online - Poynter

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MediaWise, Poynter's digital media literacy program, has expanded to in the U.S. and abroad. But anyone can learn to spot misinformation right now.

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This lesson introduces students to lateral reading, a strategy for investigating who's behind an unfamiliar online source by leaving the webpage and opening a new browser tab to see what trusted websites say about the unknown source. Students watch the teacher model lateral reading and then have a chance to practice the strategy to determine who is behind a website and, ultimately, whether that website is trustworthy.

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Intro to Lateral Reading | Civic Online Reasoning

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This lesson introduces students to lateral reading, a strategy for investigating who's behind an unfamiliar online source by leaving the page and opening a new browser tab to see what trusted websites say about the unknown source.

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I was recently reading comments on a post related to COVID-19, and saw a reply I would classify as misinformation, bordering on conspiracy. I couldn't help but ask the commenter for evidence.

Their response came with some web links and "do your own research". I then asked about their research methodology, which turned out to be searching for specific terms on Google.

As an academic, I was intrigued. Academic research aims to establish the truth of a phenomenon based on evidence, analysis and peer review.

On the other hand, a search on Google provides links with content written by known or unknown authors, who may or may not have knowledge in that area, based on a ranking system that either follows the preferences of the user, or the collective popularity of certain sites.

In other words, Google's algorithms can penalise the truth for not being popular.

Google Search's ranking system has a fraction of a second to sort through hundreds of billions of web pages, and index them to find the most relevant and (ideally) useful information.

Somewhere along the way, mistakes get made. And it'll be a while before these algorithms become foolproof - if ever. Until then, what can you do to make sure you're not getting the short end of the stick?

One question, millions of answers

There are around 201 known factors on which a website is analysed and ranked by Google's algorithms. Some of the main ones are:

the specific key words used in the search

the meaning of the key words

the relevance of the web page, as assessed by the ranking algorithm

the "quality" of the contents

the usability of the web page

and user-specific factors such as their location and profiling data taken from connected Google products, including Gmail, YouTube and Google Maps.

Research has shown users pay more attention to higher-ranked results on the first page. And there are known ways to ensure a website makes it to the first page.

One of these is " search engine optimisation ", which can help a web page float into the top results even if its content isn't necessarily quality.

The other issue is Google Search results are different for different people, sometimes even if they have the exact same search query.

Results are tailored to the user conducting the search. In his book The Filter Bubble, Eli Pariser points out the dangers of this - especially when the topic is of a controversial nature.

Personalised search results create alternate versions of the flow of information. Users receive more of what they've already engaged with (which is likely also what they already believe).

This leads to a dangerous cycle which can further polarise people's views, and in which more searching doesn't necessarily mean getting closer to the truth.

A work in progress

While Google Search is a brilliant search engine, it's also a work in progress. Google is continuously addressing various issues related to its performance.

One major challenge relates to societal biases concerning race and gender. For example, searching Google Images for "truck driver" or "president" returns images of mostly men, whereas "model" and "teacher" returns images of mostly women.

While the results may represent what has historically been true (such as in the case of male presidents), this isn't always the same as what is currently true - let alone representative of the world we wish to live in.

Some years ago, Google reportedly had to block its image recognition algorithms from identifying "gorillas", after they began classifying images of black people with the term.

Another issue highlighted by health practitioners relates to people self diagnosing based on symptoms. It's estimated about 40% of Australians search online for self diagnoses, and there are about 70,000 health-related searches conducted on Google each minute.

There can be serious repercussions for those who incorrectly interpret information found through " Dr Google " - not to mention what this means in the midst of a pandemic.

Google has delivered a plethora of COVID misinformation related to unregistered medicines, fake cures, mask effectiveness, contact tracing, lockdowns and, of course, vaccines.

According to one study, an estimated 6,000 hospitalisations and 800 deaths during the first few months of the pandemic were attributable to misinformation (specifically the false claim that drinking methanol can cure COVID).

To combat this, Google eventually prioritised authoritative sources in its search results. But there's only so much Google can do.

We each have a responsibility to make sure we're thinking critically about the information we come across. What can you do to make sure you're asking Google the best question for the answer you need?

Read more: Is Google getting worse? Increased advertising and algorithm changes may make it harder to find what you're looking for

How to Google smarter

In summary, a Google Search user must be aware of the following facts:

1. Google Search will bring you the top-ranked web pages which are also the most relevant to your search terms. Your results will be as good as your terms, so always consider context and how the inclusion of certain terms might affect the result.

2. You're better off starting with a simple search, and adding more descriptive terms later. For instance, which of the following do you think is a more effective question: " will hydroxychloroquine help cure my COVID?" or " what is hydroxychloroquine used for? "

3. Quality content comes from verified (or verifiable) sources. While scouring through results, look at the individual URLs and think about whether that source holds much authority (for instance, is it a government website?). Continue this process once you're in the page, too, always checking for author credentials and information sources.

4. Google may personalise your results based on your previous search history, current location and interests (gleaned through other products such as Gmail, YouTube or Maps). You can use incognito mode to prevent these factors from impacting your search results.

5. Google Search isn't the only option. And you don't just have to leave your reading to the discretion of its algorithms. There are several other search engines available, including Bing, Yahoo, Baidu, DuckDuckGo and Ecosia. Sometimes it's good to triangulate your results from outside the filter bubble.

Read more: Australia's competition watchdog says Google has a monopoly on online advertising - but how does it work?

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There is, in fact, a 'wrong' way to use Google. Here are 5 tips to set you on the right path

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There are around 201 known factors on which a website is analysed and ranked by Google's algorithms.

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Each case study in the Media Manipulation Casebook is coded with variables and values that are emergent from the existing cases and have been developed after multiple rounds of review. They were determined by identifying the most salient traits that are also applicable to all the cases. These codes function as a way to organize and filter case studies based on a common feature while offering comparability and nuance across the different cases.

Each case goes through a minimum of two rounds of coding to ensure each code corresponds to the evidence and text in the description of the media manipulation life cycle. The initial round is conducted by the primary author of the case, followed by a member of the TaSC team. Any discrepancies in codes are discussed after between the two coders. If there are still any outstanding discrepancies, a third round of coding by a different member of the TaSC team is conducted, and any differences resolved between all three coders.

For more information on the life cycle model, selection criteria, coding process, and research methods, please refer to our code book below.

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Each case study in the Media Manipulation Casebook is coded with variables and values that are emergent from the existing cases and have been developed after multiple rounds of review. They were determined by identifying the most salient traits that are also applicable to all the cases.

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A digital research platform linking together theory, methods, and practice for mapping media manipulation and disinformation cam

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Journalism is tied to a set of ethical standards and values, including truth and accuracy, fairness and impartiality, and accountability. However, journalism today often strays from objective fact, resulting in biased news and endless examples of media bias.

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Pick any of the big topics of the day - Brexit, climate change or Trump's immigration policies - and wander online.

What one is likely to find is radical polarization - different groups of people living in different worlds, populated with utterly different facts.

Many people want to blame the "social media bubble" - a belief that everybody sorts themselves into like-minded communities and hears only like-minded views.

From my perspective as a philosopher who thinks about communities and trust, this fails to get at the heart of the issue.

In my mind, the crucial issue right now isn't what people hear, but whom people believe.

Bubble or cult?

My research focuses on "epistemic bubbles" and "echo chambers." These are two distinct ideas, that people often blur together.

An epistemic bubble is what happens when insiders aren't exposed to people from the opposite side.

An echo chamber is what happens when insiders come to distrust everybody on the outside.

An epistemic bubble, for example, might form on one's social media feed. When a person gets all their news and political arguments from Facebook and all their Facebook friends share their political views, they're in an epistemic bubble. They hear arguments and evidence only from their side of the political spectrum. They're never exposed to the other side's views.

An echo chamber leads its members to distrust everybody on the outside of that chamber. And that means that an insider's trust for other insiders can grow unchecked.

Two communications scholars, Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Joseph Cappella, offered a careful analysis of the right-wing media echo chamber in their 2008 book, "The Echo Chamber."

Rush Limbaugh and the Fox News team, they said, systematically manipulated whom their followers trusted. Limbaugh presented the world as a simple binary - as a struggle only between good and evil. People were trustworthy if they were on Limbaugh's side. Anybody on the outside was malicious and untrustworthy.

In that way, an echo chamber is a lot like a cult.

Echo chambers isolate their members, not by cutting off their lines of communication to the world, but by changing whom they trust. And echo chambers aren't just on the right. I've seen echo chambers on the left, but also on parenting forums, nutritional forums and even around exercise methods.

In an epistemic bubble, outside voices aren't heard. In an echo chamber, outside voices are discredited.

Is it all just a bubble?

Many experts believe that the problem of today's polarization can be explained through epistemic bubbles.

According to legal scholar and behavioral economist Cass Sunstein, the main cause of polarization is that internet technologies have made the world such that people don't really run into the other side anymore.

Many people get their news from social media feeds. Their feeds get filled up with people like them - who usually share their political views. Eli Pariser, online activist and chief executive of Upworthy, spotlights how the invisible algorithms behind people's internet experience limit what they see.

For example, says Pariser, Google keeps track of its user's choices and preferences, and changes its search results to suit them. It tries to give individuals what they want - so liberal users, for example, tend to get search results that point them toward liberal news sites.

If the problem is bubbles, then the solution would be exposure. For Sunstein, the solution is to build more public forums, where people will run into the other side more often.

The real problem is trust

In my view, however, echo chambers are the real problem.

New research suggests there probably aren't any real epistemic bubbles. As a matter of fact, most people are regularly exposed to the other side.

Moreover, bubbles should be easy to pop: Just expose insiders to the arguments they've missed.

But this doesn't actually seem to work, in so many real-world cases. Take, for example, climate change deniers. They are fully aware of all the arguments on the other side. Often, they rattle off all the standard arguments for climate change, before dismissing them. Many of the standard climate change denial arguments involve claims that scientific institutions and mainstream media have been corrupted by malicious forces.

What's going on, in my view, isn't just a bubble. It's not that people's social media feeds are arranged so they don't run across any scientific arguments; it's that they've come to systematically distrust the institutions of science.

This is an echo chamber. Echo chambers are far more entrenched and far more resistant to outside voices than epistemic bubbles. Echo chamber members have been prepared to face contrary evidence. Their echo-chambered worldview has been arranged to dismiss that evidence at its source.

They're not totally irrational, either. In the era of scientific specialization, people must trust doctors, statisticians, biologists, chemists, physicists, nuclear engineers and aeronautical engineers, just to go about their day. And they can't always check with perfect accuracy whether they have put their trust in the right place.

An echo chamber member, however, distrusts the standard sources. Their trust has been redirected and concentrated inside the echo chamber.

To break somebody out of an echo chamber, you'd need to repair that broken trust. And that is a much harder task than simply bursting a bubble.

[ Deep knowledge, daily. Sign up for The Conversation's newsletter. ]

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The problem of living inside echo chambers

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Rush Limbaugh is said to have presented the world as a simple binary - as a struggle only between good and evil. That worked, as a philosopher explains, because many people live in echo chambers.

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The Elusive Backfire Effect: Mass Attitudes’ Steadfast Factual Adherence

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The Elusive Backfire Effect: Mass Attitudes’ Steadfast Factual Adherence

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Political Behavior 41, 135-163 (2019) Cite this article

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Abstract

Can citizens heed factual information, even when such information challenges their partisan and ideological attachments? The "backfire effect," described by Nyhan and Reifler (Polit Behav 32(2):303-330. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-010-9112-2, 2010), says no: rather than simply ignoring factual information, presenting respondents with facts can compound their ignorance. In their study, conservatives presented with factual information about the absence of Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq became more convinced that such weapons had been found. The present paper presents results from five experiments in which we enrolled more than 10,100 subjects and tested 52 issues of potential backfire. Across all experiments, we found no corrections capable of triggering backfire, despite testing precisely the kinds of polarized issues where backfire should be expected. Evidence of factual backfire is far more tenuous than prior research suggests. By and large, citizens heed factual information, even when such information challenges their ideological commitments.

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Notes

1. Google News search for the "backfire", "backlash", or "boomerang" effect and the names of Nyhan or Reifler returns over 300 unique articles. The 2010 backfire paper has also enjoyed remarkable academic attention. Among all papers printed in Political Behavior in the last 10 years, "When Corrections Fail" has been cited four times as much as the next most cited paper.

2. In this way, the apparent difficulty in making one's policy preferences fit with one's factual attitudes is redolent of Americans' struggle to have their policy preferences fit with each other-what Converse ( 1964) famously described as poor "constraint."

3. To avoid the possibility of unintended panel conditioning, we excluded any Turk worker which had been participated in a prior study.

4. The choice of the OLS model, and the specific measures for agreement, ideology, and correction, were chosen to be consistent with Nyhan and Jason ( 2010).

5. This relationship persisted if we compare respondents along the partisan scale. This result is described in Sect. A.14.1 on p. xxvi.

6. Of course, the attitudinal consequence of this fact remains at a respondent's discretion, but functional democratic competence would seem to require that voters adopt a common set of basic political facts.

7. Three articles were taken from study 3: the original Bush WMD article, the piece by Speaker Paul Ryan criticizing President Obama's policy toward abortion, and Secretary Hillary Clinton claim that twice as many Americans were employed in solar than in the oil industry. Three novel mock articles were also provided: Senator Sanders claiming that the EPA had found fracking was responsible for polluting water supplies, Donald Trump claiming that his tax cut plan would grow federal tax receipts, and Trump claiming that the true unemployment rate was actually higher than 30%. These mock articles can be read in Sect. A.9, which can be found in the appendix on p. xvi. The items can be read in Table 11 on p. xxiii.

8. For this study, President Obama, Secretary Clinton, and Senator Sanders are deemed liberal speakers, and President Trump and President Bush are deemed conservative speakers.

9. For instance, the national representative panel who adopted the correction that the flu vaccines did not induce flu infections (Nyhan et al. 2015) or the national representative panel who accepted the correction that the MMR vaccines did not cause autism (Nyhan et al. 2014).

10. Coppock and McClellan ( 2017) report an extensive test of the Lucid sample, comparing it to Turk, the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey, and the American National Election Study's (ANES) face to face and online samples. Treating the ANES face-to-face sample as the "gold standard", the Lucid sample is more psychologically similar to the ANES than the Turk sample on the Big-5 personality battery, and better matches the political knowledge and conservatism in the ANES. Coppock and McClellan also test the Lucid sample's ability to recover treatment effects in canonical social psychology experiments. Both Lucid and Turk samples recover the same framing effect observed the General Social Survey (a massive face-to-face survey instrument), improving the appetite for public spending when it is described as "assistance to the poor" or "caring for the poor" rather than "welfare." Both Lucid and Turk feature the same framing effect underpinning prospect theory [(the famous Tversky and Kahneman ( 1983) finding which shows risk tolerance is affected by framing possible outcomes as gains or losses.] Both Lucid and Turk recover indistinguishable experimental effects as observed in Hiscox ( 2006) in framing attitudes about free trade. Most importantly for this study, the one failed replication was on rumor corrections in the aforementioned Berinsky paper ( 2017), where Lucid respondents were unusually resistant to corrective information. This suggests that the Lucid sample is at least a comparably demanding sample in which to test factual adherence.

11. In brief-a weak correction might inadvertently advertise the weakness of the corrective case, or a strong correction might have more obvious factual implications, and therefore inspire more forceful counterargument.

12. These respondents were recruited on Mechanical Turk.

13. As a robustness check-there was no significant relationship between ideology and perceived accordance, for any of the tested pairs.

14. It's instructive to consider those statement/correction pairs at either end of this spectrum. The statement by Senator Ted Cruz about the incidence of violence targeted at law enforcement, described above, was judged the most proximate correction. At the other end of this continuum is the 2012 claim by Congressman Paul Ryan that "Obama stands for an absolute, unqualified right to abortion-at any time, under any circumstances, and paid for by taxpayers" and the correction that "The number of abortions steadily declined during President Obama's first term, with fewer abortions in 2012 than any year since 1973." While Cruz makes a precise claim about the change in the incidence of killings of police officers, Ryan's statements merely suggested a spike in the incidence of abortion.

15. An example of a proximate correction is Representative Gutiérrez's promise that President Obama would be the "champion...[of the] undocumented" paired with the evidence that Obama was a prodigious deporter of these residents. This correction/statement pair was scored 81.7 on a 100-pt scale of accordance.

16. An example of a distant correction is Governor Romney's description of the United States using "a credit card ...issued by the Bank of China" and the correction that China holds about 15% of US debt. This correction/statement pair was scored 47.2.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Leticia Bode, John Brehm, DJ Flynn, Jim Gimpel, Don Green, Will Howell, David Kirby, Michael Neblo, Brendan Nyhan, Gaurav Sood, and the participants at the Center for Stategic Initiatives workshop. Research support was generously furnished by the Cato Institute, and we owe a special debt of gratitude to Emily Ekins and David Kirby. All remaining errors are the responsibility of the authors.

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Affiliations

1. The Ohio State University, Derby Hall 154 N Oval Mall, Columbus, OH, 43212, USA

Thomas Wood

2. School of Media and Public Affairs, The George Washington University, 805 21st Street NW, Washington, DC, 20052, USA

Ethan Porter

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Thomas Wood.

Additional information

All figures and tables in this paper can be replicated with the syntax available at the Political Behavior dataverse: https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.7910/DVN/AGRX5U

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Wood, T., Porter, E. The Elusive Backfire Effect: Mass Attitudes' Steadfast Factual Adherence. Polit Behav 41, 135-163 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-018-9443-y
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The Elusive Backfire Effect: Mass Attitudes' Steadfast Factual Adherence - Political Behavior

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Can citizens heed factual information, even when such information challenges their partisan and ideological attachments? The "backfire effect," described by Nyhan and Reifler (Polit Behav 32(2):303-330. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-010-9112-2 , 2010), says no: rather than simply ignoring factual information, presenting respondents with facts can compound their ignorance.

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Echo chambers, filter bubbles, and polarisation: a literature review

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Echo chambers, filter bubbles, and polarisation: a literature review

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https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/echo-chambers-filter-bubbles-and-polarisation-literature-review

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Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism

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DOI: 10.60625/risj-etxj-7k60

Executive summary ↑

Terms like echo chambers, filter bubbles, and polarisation are widely used in public and political debate but not in ways that are always aligned with, or based on, scientific work. And even among academic researchers, there is not always a clear consensus on exact definitions of these concepts.

In this literature review we examine, specifically, social science work presenting evidence concerning the existence, causes, and effect of online echo chambers and consider what related research can tell us about scientific discussions online and how they might shape public understanding of science and the role of science in society.

Echo chambers, filter bubbles, and the relationship between news and media use and various forms of polarisation has to be understood in the context of increasingly digital, mobile, and platform-dominated media environments where most people spend a limited amount of time with news and many internet users do not regularly actively seek out online news, leading to significant inequalities in news use.

When defined as a bounded, enclosed media space that has the potential to both magnify the messages delivered within it and insulate them from rebuttal, studies in the UK estimate that between six and eight percent of the public inhabit politically partisan online news echo chambers.

More generally, studies both in the UK and several other countries, including the highly polarised US, have found that most people have relatively diverse media diets, that those who rely on only one source typically converge on widely used sources with politically diverse audiences (such as commercial or public service broadcasters) and that only small minorities, often only a few percent, exclusively get news from partisan sources.

Studies in the UK and several other countries show that the forms of algorithmic selection offered by search engines, social media, and other digital platforms generally lead to slightly more diverse news use - the opposite of what the "filter bubble" hypothesis posits - but that self-selection, primarily among a small minority of highly partisan individuals, can lead people to opt in to echo chambers, even as the vast majority do not.

Research on polarisation offers a complex picture both in terms of overall developments and the main drivers and there is in many cases limited empirical work done outside the United States. Overall, ideological polarisation has, in the long run, declined in many countries but affective polarisation has in some, but not all, cases increased. News audience polarisation is much lower in most European countries, including the United Kingdom. Much depends on the specifics of individual countries and what point in time one measures change from and there are no universal patterns.

There is limited research outside the United States systematically examining the possible role of news and media use in contributing to various kinds of polarisation and the work done does not always find the same patterns as those identified in the US. In the specific context of the United States where there is more research, it seems that exposure to like-minded political content can potentially polarise people or strengthen the attitudes of people with existing partisan attitudes and that cross- cutting exposure can potentially do the same for political partisans.

Public discussions around science online may exhibit some of the same dynamics as those observed around politics and in news and media use broadly, but fundamentally there is at this stage limited empirical research on the possible existence, size, and drivers of echo chambers in public discussions around science. More broadly, existing research on science communication, mainly from the United States, documents the important role of self-selection, elite cues, and small, highly active communities with strong views in shaping these debates and highlights the role especially political elites play in shaping both news coverage and public opinion on these issues.

In summary, the work reviewed here suggests echo chambers are much less widespread than is commonly assumed, finds no support for the filter bubble hypothesis and offers a very mixed picture on polarisation and the role of news and media use in contributing to polarisation.

Introduction ↑

In this literature review, we examine evidence concerning the existence, causes, and effect of online echo chambers and consider what related research can tell us about scientific discussions online and how they might shape public understanding of science and the role of science in society.

We discuss online echo chambers in the context of a set of related concerns around the possible links between the rise of the internet and various digital platforms (search engines, social media, messaging applications, news aggregators, etc.) and polarisation in our societies.

Much of the existing research is focused on the United States, which is in many ways an extreme outlier among high income democracies, as political elites, the media system, and public opinion is more polarised there than in otherwise similar countries.

Thus, while we consider findings from the United States, these insights are not universally applicable. We therefore pay particular attention to comparative studies that can help capture differences and similarities across various national contexts and the situation in the United Kingdom specifically.

We seek to identify (a) areas where we believe there is a clear majority view in academic research, (b) areas where there are some empirical studies but not necessarily convergent interpretations, and (c) areas where there is at this point little evidence to help us understand a situation that is rapidly evolving in terms of both media structure and media substance (as the constant evolution of the digital media environment as well as communications around the coronavirus pandemic has shown).

Research in this area is extensive in some respects, almost non-existent in others. To avoid an overlong review, we focus our efforts on recent studies primarily in the social sciences that have a direct bearing on the possible links between media use and how the public understands the world around them. Most of the work we summarise has been peer reviewed. To be able to present an up-to-date review including work done during the coronavirus pandemic, we also draw on some empirical reports and preprints from academics working at universities and with established social science methods.

In the literature review we aim to summarise relevant empirical research and clarify the meaning of terms that are used both in public and policy debate and in more specialised scientific research, and not always in the same way. Terms like "echo chamber" and "filter bubble" have exploded into public discourse in recent years and the Hansard official record shows how these terms are increasingly used by elected officials in UK Parliamentary debates. Needless to say, public and political use of these terms are not always aligned with, or based on, scientific work. And even among academic researchers, there is not always a clear consensus on exact definitions of these concepts.

Some of the issues we discuss - around echo chambers, polarisation, and inequality - for example, raise moral and political questions and sometimes capture serious societal challenges. Our purpose here is not to outline normative positions on these but to summarise the relevant evidence. This is important to keep in mind because analytical terms such as echo chambers and polarisation often have a negative ring, but their implications of course depend on the substantive nature of the information echoed or the issues that polarise opinion.

Basic descriptive facts about media use ↑

For context, it is important to recognise some basic, often overlooked, descriptive features of contemporary media use.

First, in high income democracies, we live in increasingly digital, mobile, and platform-dominated media environments. Digital media use accounts for more than half of time spent with media, mobile accounts for more than half of time spent with digital media, and the most popular products offered by a few large US-based platform companies, most importantly Google (through e.g., Google Search and YouTube) and Facebook (through the eponymous social network, Instagram, and WhatsApp) account for a large share of time spent with digital media (Hindman 2018; Nielsen and Fletcher 2020).

Second, there is an abundant supply of news online, but on average, people spend a limited amount of time with it and many internet users do not regularly actively seek out online news. Estimates based on web tracking - where representative panels of internet users voluntarily agree to have their internet use passively recorded - show that the share of time spent online with UK news media ranges from about three percent to about six percent (see e.g., Fletcher et al. 2020c; Hindman 2018). In addition, evidence from survey data - where representative samples are asked to describe their media use - shows that just half of UK internet users in 2021 reported they had gone directly to a news website or app (e.g., BBC News, Guardian, Mail Online, HuffPost) in the past week, with the rest relying on offline sources and/or news accessed via platforms such as search or social media (Newman et al. 2021).

Third, given the ease of accessing news online and the abundant supply, differences in individuals' active choices and regular habits play a defining role in the overall distribution of news use, tending towards greater inequalities, with a large minority of news lovers, about 22% of UK internet users, engaging with many different news sources on a regular basis across many different offline and online platforms, a majority of daily briefers (55%) who use a few different sources of news and a large minority of more casual users (23%) who often do not access news daily. Differences in news use are partially aligned with differences in age, gender, education, and income, both in general (Kalogeropoulos and Nielsen 2018) and around, for example, coronavirus information (Fletcher et al. 2020b).

These descriptive features are documented through a combination of surveys relying on nationally representative samples (e.g., Newman et al. 2021) and passive tracking of large parts of the online behaviour of large samples of internet users (e.g., Fletcher et al. 2021a). Though many studies are based on quantitative data from nationally representative samples, it is important to recognise that (a) there is no single-source ground truth that captures all media use (online tracking data struggles to capture behaviour inside apps such as Facebook, does not capture offline use, and can have a hard time separating meaningful from superficial engagement), (b) surveys in particular are dependent on respondents accurately remembering and describing their media use (something many people struggle to do), and (c) news and information involve an irreducibly subjective component, as there is no objective standard for what does or does not constitute, for example, news as opposed to opinion or impartiality as opposed to partisan news, and sometimes no broad-based inter-subjective consensus either, complicating measurements. (Fox News is the single most widely used source of news in the United States, and relatively highly trusted by many on the political right - at the same time, research reported in, for example, the New York Times and Wired have treated it as if everything it publishes is misinformation or "fake news".)

Echo chambers, filter bubbles, and polarisation↑

Social scientists use the term echo chamber to describe a particular situation some people are in as a result of media supply, distribution, and/or their own demand - namely one where they occupy what Jamieson and Capella in their influential book Echo Chamber defined as "a bounded, enclosed media space that has the potential to both magnify the messages delivered within it and insulate them from rebuttal" (2008, p. 76). The magnification part is typically taken to be a preponderance of attitude-consistent information (e.g., people on the left seeking out information that reinforces their pre-existing views) and the insulation part about the absence of cross-cutting exposure (e.g., people on the right not coming across centrist or left- wing perspectives that challenge their pre-existing views).

Because echo chambers are about the media space a given individual or a group occupies, echo chambers necessarily cannot be identified by analysing behaviour on or data from a single platform. In the UK, one might read exclusively partisan newspapers, which might magnify some messages, while also watching the BBC or ITV, which would mean these messages would be unlikely to be insulated from rebuttal. Or one might primarily engage with a very partisan community on Twitter, which might magnify some messages, while also coming across news from Sky News and the local newspaper on Facebook, meaning that these messages were unlikely to be insulated. To establish whether people are truly inside echo chambers - enclosed media spaces - we have to consider all the different media and sources of news they rely on, offline and online, and across different online means of discovery (direct access, social, search, etc.).

In principle, echo chambers could concern any topic and could magnify any messages one can think of - ambiguous, benign, or malign; widely accepted or controversial; evidence-based or demonstrably false, and anything in between. In practice, social scientists have primarily researched one specific type of echo chamber, namely politically partisan news echo chambers where some people exclusively get news and information from sources that are very clearly on one side of the political spectrum.

In public and policy debate the term echo chamber is sometimes used interchangeably with the term filter bubble, but it is important to distinguish between the two.

The term filter bubble was coined by the activist and entrepreneur Eli Pariser in his book of the same name, to capture his concern that the increasing use of personalisation in the ranking of search engine results and social media feeds would create "a unique universe of information for each of us" (2011, p. 10) eroding the possibility of a relatively shared common ground - as we might be shown more and more of things we like, while things we are not prone to like are hidden from us - on the basis of data-driven display decisions dictated by platform companies' commercial interests rather than our own active choices.

The difference between the two terms is important. An echo chamber is a form of bubble, but the term does not prejudge why some people might live in such bubbles - it is possible, for example, that some actively chose to, that the situation is a result of demand more than distribution or supply. A filter bubble, on the other hand, is an echo chamber primarily produced by ranking algorithms engaged in passive personalisation without any active choice on our part, a possible outcome of specific aspects of how news and information is distributed online.

Thus, there are distinct questions of outcomes (how many people live in echo chambers versus more diverse media spaces?) and contributing causes (what is the relative importance of active users' choices versus algorithmic filtering in determining the diversity of sources people access?). Supply, distribution, and demand can all contribute to the formation of echo chambers.

Commentators and analysts typically worry about echo chambers and filter bubbles because they fear they will fuel polarisation, diminish mutual understanding, and ultimately lead to a situation where people are so far apart that they have no common ground - effectively inhabiting different realities. Polarisation can take substantially different forms. The most important forms for the purposes of this review are the following. First, ideological polarisation, which refers to the degree to which people disagree about political issues. Second, affective polarisation, which refers to people's feelings about the 'other side' - those they disagree with on a given issue. Third, news audience polarisation, which refers to the degree to which audiences for news outlets in a given country are generally more politically partisan or politically mixed.

Beyond this, the classical focus of much political science research is elite polarisation (which in turn can have very significant consequences for other forms of polarisation, an issue we return to below), and it is important to remember that while news and media use may contribute to relative increases or decreases in polarisation, many other factors are often seen by social scientists as more important - including the role of political parties in providing partisans with various cues to navigate public issues, as well as degrees of social homophily shaped by changing patterns in how and where we live, including how diverse our primary social groups are (Guess et al. 2018; Tucker et al. 2018; McPherson et al. 2001; Mason 2015).

Evidence of the existence and prevalence of echo chambers ↑

Social scientists have primarily relied on surveys, passive tracking data, and social media data to analyse the existence and prevalence of echo chambers. Of these sources of data, only surveys and tracking data can give a broader sense of what media space people occupy, as findings based on data from a single social media platform - virtually never used in isolation - cannot establish whether people inhabit a bounded, enclosed media space that magnifies messages while insulating them from rebuttal. Twitter data, for example, is often used for analysis because it is easier to access but is necessarily limited to Twitter specifically and says nothing about individuals' wider media use, let alone anything about the large majority of the population that does not use Twitter. In the UK, just 31% say that they use Twitter, with only around half of these saying they use it for news (Newman et al. 2021).

Across a range of different countries, including the highly polarised United States, several cross-platform studies - both those reliant on survey data and those reliant on passive tracking data - have found that few people occupy politically partisan online news echo chambers.

One recent study (Fletcher et al. 2021b), that includes the UK, used survey data from 2020 to assess the number of people in politically partisan online news echo chambers in Austria, Denmark, Germany, Norway, Spain, the UK, and the US by looking at how many people only use news sources with left- or right-leaning slants (measured in terms of the overall ideological slant of each outlet's audience).

In the UK, the proportion of people estimated to be in a left-leaning echo chamber is around 2% and the proportion in a right-leaning echo chamber is around 5% (Fletcher et al. 2021b). This is slightly lower than in most of the other countries covered in the study. In most other cases, a minority of around 5% of people only use news sources with ideological slants in one direction. The US is the main outlier among the seven and the only one where more than 10% of the respondents are estimated to rely only on partisan news sources. In every country covered by this study, many more internet users consume no online news at all on a regular basis than inhabit politically partisan echo chambers.

The UK results from this study are broadly similar to a previous analysis, also based on survey data, that, using a more indirect measure of diversity of news use, found that around 10% in the UK said they almost never see political content on social media that they disagree with (Dubois and Blank 2018).

These findings are consistent with several other studies of other European countries. In Sweden, for instance, Dahlgren et al. (2019, p. 170) found that while some people did engage in selective exposure to partisan news sources, rates were low overall, "suggesting a pattern of cross-cutting exposure more than isolated echo chambers." The authors note that "citizens who are frequent users of online news from one side of the ideological spectrum also tend to be more frequent users of news from the other side" (p. 170). Similarly, in Spain, Masip et al. (2020) did not find strong evidence for widespread news echo chambers and observed that most people accessed "non-like-minded media" at least sometimes. In the Netherlands, Bos et al. (2016) found some evidence of partisan selective exposure to news but noted that the formation of echo chambers was largely undercut by people's common use of relatively impartial public service broadcasting. This is also an important factor in the UK, where the BBC News website is by far the most widely used online news source (Fletcher et al. 2021b).

Even in the United States, researchers have long found that echo chambers are smaller and less prevalent than commonly assumed. Gentzkow and Shapiro (2011, p. 1831) observe that "internet news consumers with homogeneous news diets are rare," and Garrett (2013, p. 248) similarly argues that the notion that large numbers of people are cocooned in pure ideological news echo chambers, cut off from other points of view, is exaggerated and wrong.

Studies based on passive tracking that automatically log people's behaviour on one or more platforms have similar findings to analyses of survey data from nationally representative samples, though there are fewer such studies from outside the United States.

In the UK, Fletcher et al. (2020c) find a relative dearth of partisan online news echo chambers in the UK, using web tracking data collected during the 2019 General Election and show that the proportion of people in like-minded echo chambers in the UK during the election was 2% among Labour voters and 4% among Conservative voters - very similar to the results of survey-based work in the UK cited above.

Similarly, in Israel, Dvir-Gvirsman et al. (2016), using web tracking data collected around the time of the 2013 election, estimate that 3% of people were in an entirely one-sided partisan media echo chamber and that, in most cases, people in Israel had either relatively diverse media diets or did not consume online news at all.

In addition to people's common use of relatively impartial public service broadcasting undercutting the existence of partisan echo chambers, we should keep in mind that - at least online - their potential size is limited by the fact that many people do not consume much online news in the first place. In the UK, around 25% of internet users say they access no online news at all each week (Newman et al. 2021).

Related research - often not specifically aiming to measure the size of echo chambers - often arrives at broadly similar conclusions by analysing patterns of media use. Again, even in the polarised United States, the results are largely similar. Using network analysis and combining TV and internet tracking data, Webster and Ksiazek (2012) find high degrees of audience overlap across news sources and concentration of audiences on large mainstream outlets. Guess (2016, pp. 17-18) observes, based on analysis of tracking data, that there is a "remarkable degree of balance in respondents' overall media diets regardless of partisan affiliation.

Whether Democrat, Republican, or independent, the large bulk of these individuals' media diets cluster around the center of the ideological spectrum." Similarly, Nelson and Webster (2017) find that audiences are concentrated on a few popular political news sites and that, in general, political news sites, irrespective of popularity, have ideologically diverse audiences.

Yang et al. (2020), working with desktop and mobile data from Comscore's panels, also observe that ideologically diverse US audiences converge on mainstream news outlets online, find little evidence of ideological selective exposure and, contrary to what some have suggested, find increasing co-exposure to news sources over time. Reinforcing the results from survey data, the authors also note that many more internet users consume no online news at all than rely solely on partisan sources.

Single-platform studies are, as noted, of limited value in identifying echo chambers, but there are several important studies that identify like-minded communities formed on individual social media platforms - whether through algorithmic selection, self-selection, or some combination thereof (Bakshy et al. 2015; Barberá et al. 2015; Kaiser and Rauchfleisch 2020; Vaccari et al. 2016). Even these, however, often conclude, like Barberá (2015, p. 28), that "most social media users receive information from a diversity of viewpoints." And in the absence of evidence on what other media the individuals involved use in addition to the social media platform in question, these studies simply cannot establish whether people inhabit a bounded, enclosed media space where specific messages are magnified and insulated from rebuttal.

In summary, studies in the UK and several other countries, including the highly polarised US, have found very similar results whether relying on survey data or passive tracking data. Most people have diverse media diets, those who rely on only one source typically converge on large sources with politically diverse audiences such as commercial or public service broadcasters, and only small minorities, often only a few percent, exclusively get news from partisan sources.

Who might end up in echo chambers and why? ↑

Though a large number of empirical studies from different countries and relying on various kinds of data find that echo chambers are smaller and less prevalent than often assumed, it is still important to consider who might end up in echo chambers and why.

To understand what news and information people see, media researchers typically seek to consider the interplay between media supply, media distribution, and media demand(Webster 2014).

While the term "echo chamber" has sometimes been used to describe the news institution as a whole as "the media echo chamber" (Bennett et al. 2007), in a liberal democracy with a diverse media system and a multitude of independent voices expressed online, it is hard to see how, on most issues of importance, supply alone could lead to the formation of echo chambers. Information supply has grown enormously in recent years thanks to the growth of the internet. The data and analytics company Comscore tracks more than one thousand news and information providers online in the UK alone, and that is without counting the variety of information people can access from activists, authorities, educational institutions, political parties, scientists, and many, many other sources available online.

This leaves distribution and demand as the main possible causes for the formation of echo chambers.

In terms of distribution, algorithmic selection by digital platforms such as search engines and social media that make personalised display decisions for countless users using automated systems might, some fear, generate filter bubbles by reducing the diversity of information people come across, serving them more attitude- consistent news and resulting in less cross-cutting exposure.

But empirical studies, whether based on survey data or passive tracking data, have generally found the opposite. They demonstrate that reliance on secondary gatekeepers such as search engines and social media - whatever other problems might be associated with them - is in most cases associated with more diverse news use.

This is a consistent finding across a growing number of survey-based studies (DuBois and Blank 2018; Fletcher and Nielsen 2018a; Fletcher and Nielsen 2018b; Beam et al. 2018) and studies based on various forms of passive tracking data (Flaxman et al. 2016; Cardenal et al. 2019; Fletcher et al. 2021a; Sharkow et al. 2020; Wojcieszak et al. 2021). These findings also hold across different countries (including the United Kingdom and the United States), across different digital platforms (search engines, different social media platforms, and news aggregators), and across different methods and modes of analysis. These avenues particularly increase exposure for people who are less likely to otherwise visit news sites directly (Fletcher and Nielsen 2018a; Wojcieszak et al. 2021). We are not aware of any comparable studies that have found support for the filter bubble hypothesis that algorithmic ranking leads to echo chambers (see Bruns 2019 for a more detailed overview).

To understand why algorithmic selection is consistently found to lead to more diverse news diets, not narrower diets (let alone echo chambers), it is important to remember that the median number of different sources of news that people in the UK use on a weekly basis offline is two, and just one online (Newman et al. 2021). Search engines and social media do not vastly expand this number and it is not the case that people who use these platforms have very diverse and balanced news diets. Rather, they lead people to slightly more, and slightly more diverse, sources of news than what they seek out of their own volition.

The two main drivers of this are automated serendipity, where ranking algorithms may return a result in, for example, a search query from a source that people might not normally access directly (Fletcher and Nielsen 2018b), and incidental exposure, where people come across and read news articles while on, for example, a social media site they primarily use for other purposes (Fletcher and Nielsen 2018a). (Both effects are broadly aligned with the commercial self-interest of platform companies - automated serendipity creates an experience of variety, and incidental exposure can increase time spent on social media as people come across the occasional interesting article.)

These effects are not equally strong for everyone. Passive personalisation based on past behaviour may well make algorithms more likely to recommend more news to those who already engage with a lot of news (Thorson 2020), but they are particularly important - and arguably more beneficial - for those least likely to actively seek out a lot of news on their own, such as younger people and those with lower interest in news (Fletcher and Nielsen 2018a; Wojcieszak et al. 2021).

The role of interest leads us to demand, the final factor we will consider in this section. The main possible causal mechanism here is self-selection: that some people actively opt into echo chambers because they prefer news that aligns with and reinforces their pre-existing views (selective exposure to attitude-consistent information) or actively seek to avoid counter-attitudinal information (selective avoidance of cross-cutting exposure).

Research on self-selection is predominantly a mix of survey and passive tracking studies akin to those discussed above, which often have high external validity but can have limited internal validity, and experimental studies that have higher internal validity but often limited external validity because of the difficulties of creating a situation akin to what media users face outside the experiment.

Broadly, a number of studies find that while many people do engage in some degree of selective exposure, they do not necessarily engage in selective avoidance (Bos et al. 2016; Garrett 2009; 2013; Garrett and Stroud 2014; Jang 2014; Johnson et al.

2011; Kim and Lu 2020; Trilling and Schoenbach 2015). As Weeks et al. (2016, p. 263) write of the US context, "although partisans exhibit some preference for like- minded sources, we find no evidence that they avoid disagreeable information but rather continue to rely mostly on a common set of mainstream, general interest news outlets. These more mainstream sources provide information that at times challenges both Republicans' and Democrats' positions, yet neither make an attempt to avoid them."

This means, for example, that while those with highly partisan political views are significantly more likely to use partisan news media with a similar orientation, they are not necessarily less likely to use other news media with a different orientation.

Evidence from selective exposure experiments - which show different people's tendencies to select content they agree or disagree with - has indicated that the people most likely to choose pro-attitudinal content are those who have stronger partisan/ideological beliefs, are more certain about their beliefs, or who are more politically interested/engaged (Iyengar and Hahn 2009; Knobloch-Westerwick and Meng 2009; Kim and Lu 2020). Similarly, studies focused on specific social media also find that people most likely to be deep into like-minded communities are strong partisans (Barberá 2015; Boutyline and Willer 2017).

But, importantly, many people do not have particularly strongly held political views and do not primarily approach news and media through a political lens (Bos et al. 2016; Yang et al. 2020). Often, basic interest, in turn partly aligned with levels of education and income, is a more important factor.

In Europe, public service media often help bridge these gaps, with differences between those with low interest and high interest being smaller in countries like the UK that have widely used public service media (Castro-Herrero et al. 2018). But many people self-select away from politics and news, choosing entertainment content instead (Prior 2005), and people with more limited levels of formal education and lower levels of income generally use less news than more privileged parts of the population (Kalogeropoulos and Nielsen 2018).

This is a reminder that, while of great interest to politicians and political scientists, politics is not the only, or even main determinant of news and media use. Media use is often more shaped by habits that in turn reflect a mix of instrumental uses and preferences anchored in social contexts that often exhibit more significant homophily in terms of social class than in terms of politics (Bos et al. 2016; Dahlgren 2019; Dubois and Blank 2018; Garrett et al. 2013; Johnson et al. 2011; Skovsgaard et al. 2016; Van Aelst et al. 2017; Yang et al. 2020).

In summary, studies in the UK and several other countries, have found that algorithmic selection generally leads to slightly more diverse news use - the opposite of what the filter bubble hypothesis posits - but that self-selection, primarily among a small minority of highly partisan individuals, can lead people to opt in to echo chambers, even as the vast majority do not, and document that limited news use remains far more prevalent than echo chambers are.

Media use and polarisation ↑

Polarisation, in social science, refers to divisions between groups. It can be used to describe a situation where divisions are already sufficiently large to be considered polarised, or a process whereby divisions are becoming larger over time (even though they may still be quite small). Polarisation can take many forms and is not always intrinsically problematic (some things are worth disagreeing over, see Kreiss 2019).

Just as many assume that echo chambers are pervasive and filter bubbles are real - despite evidence to the contrary - there is widespread public and political concern over polarisation in many countries. Some surveys which aim to measure perceived polarisation suggest much of the public feel that the UK is more divided today than in the past.

Social scientists examine a range of different kinds of polarisation of the public, including ideological polarisation, affective polarisation, and news audience polarisation. As with any attempt to measure a change over time, decisions about what time frame to consider will influence conclusions, and often, there is little consistent data allowing for rigorous longitudinal analysis.

Ideological polarisation, sometimes termed issue polarisation, has been a long- standing focus of political science and focuses on divisions in public opinion on a range of different policy issues. Looking back several decades, comparative research based on the World Values Survey has found some support for the idea that Left/Right polarisation has decreased in many high-income democracies and electoral volatility increased, even as other divisions, sometimes over so-called "post-material" issues, have become more important (Dalton 2006; Ingelhart 2017). However, divisive elections in the last two decades have led to a resurgence of interest in whether political partisans' views have become more polarised again (Abramowitz 2010; Fiorina and Abrams 2008; Iyengar et al. 2012), with one summary in the United States concluding that while public opinion overall on many issues has not become markedly more polarised in recent years on average, it has increased among the most politically engaged (Prior 2013; see also Mason 2013). In the UK, in the longer term, the polarisation of party supporters has declined since the 1970s, as have both perceived polarisation and expert evaluations of polarisation (Rehm and Reilly 2010). Other analyses have also found declines in polarisation in the UK (Adams et al. 2012a; Adams et al. 2012b), but many of these studies are from before Brexit and other recent divisive political discussions.

Affective polarisation refers to how much opposing partisans dislike one another. Most research on affective polarisation has been conducted in the United States and, in contrast to ideological polarisation, affective polarisation clearly seems to be on the rise - as one team of researchers find that ordinary Americans increasingly dislike and distrust those from the other party (Iyengar et al. 2019; see also Mason 2013). In the UK, there is evidence that affective polarisation exists between Labour and Conservative voters and also around opinion-based groups that either support or oppose Brexit (Hobolt et al. 2021). Comparative work on affective polarisation is in its infancy, but a few studies have been published recently. They find that levels of affective polarisation vary greatly by country (complicating the notion that polarisation is pronounced everywhere) and document considerable variation in patterns over time (belying the notion that a single universal cause - for example the spread of the internet - is driving polarisation everywhere) (Gidron et al. 2019; Boxell et al. 2020; Reiljan 2020). In several of these studies, Britain is found to have higher levels of affective polarisation than multiparty political systems in other parts of Northern and Western Europe, though one of these studies actually suggests affective polarisation in the UK may have declined since the 1980s (Boxell et al. 2020).

News audience polarisation, finally, refers to the structure of aggregate public attention to news media, to whether a country is home to large news outlets with both strongly left- and strongly right-leaning audiences, as opposed to outlets with mostly mixed or centrist audiences (Fletcher et al. 2020a). Again, the situation in the United States - where highly partisan news brands including, most importantly, Fox News play an important role - has led some to suggest that news media use is increasingly fragmented and polarised. Despite the very real importance of some highly partisan brands (Benkler et al. 2018), even in the United States, Nelson and Webster's (2017) analysis of Comscore tracking data found that, despite huge choice, most people tend to congregate around a few popular news outlets and that all news sites - including partisan ones - attract reasonably ideologically diverse audiences. Comparative work based on survey data from a sample of 12 high-income democracies suggests that cross-platform (online and offline) news audience polarisation is highest in the United States but lower within Europe. The UK has relatively high levels of news audience polarisation by European standards - largely thanks to widely used partisan newspapers - but overall levels are still low (Fletcher et al. 2020a).

There is an extensive literature in political science and sociology about the drivers of polarisation, with considerable attention to elite cues from politicians (Rogowski and Sutherland 2016; Iyengar et al. 2012) and to social dynamics including social homophily and various kinds of social sorting - all predominantly rooted in our offline lives, where we work, who we spend time with, where we live (see e.g., Guess et al. 2018; McPherson et al. 2001; Mason 2015).

There is also some work on media, including media reporting about polarisation. US studies find that exposure to like-minded partisan media under experimental conditions can strengthen the views of already partisan individuals (Levendusky 2013). Panel survey work, which measures the same people's media use and attitudes at different points in time, has also found that using like-minded partisan media in the US can increase anger toward the 'other side' and make people more willing to share political information on social media (Hasell and Weeks 2016). At the same time, cross-cutting exposure, at least on social media, also seems to be able to increase polarisation, at least among political partisans (Bail et al. 2018).

Furthermore, experimental work finds that exposing people to media coverage about political polarisation may in itself increase perceptions of polarisation and contribute to increased dislike for the opposition (Levendusky and Malhotra 2016).

Work in the United States stresses that these factors are sometimes asymmetrical, in terms of the degree to which individual political leaders actively seek to polarise the public, and in terms of the role of individual news media - there is a growing literature documenting the impact of Fox News specifically (DellaVigna and Kaplan 2007; Hopkins and Ladd 2013). Furthermore, broader changes in both news supply and media use, suggesting a relative decline in coverage of and attention to local politics and more focus on often more divisive national politics, also seems to be a possible contributor to polarisation in the United States (Martin and McCrain 2019).

There is much less work from outside the United States and no clear overall set of convergent findings. Experimental work from the Netherlands, for example, has found that while people might have a tendency to engage in selective exposure, this does not necessarily polarise people's attitudes (Trilling et al. 2017). Yet Wojcieszak et al. (2018), analysing panel survey data in the Netherlands, found that people with strong opinions about the EU polarised in their views after being exposed to news about the EU.

In summary, the picture on polarisation is complex and research is often limited outside the United States. Overall, ideological polarisation has, in the long run, declined in many countries, but affective polarisation has in some cases, but not all, increased. News audience polarisation is much lower in most European countries, including the United Kingdom. Much depends on the specifics of individual countries and what point in time one measures change from, and there are no universal patterns, suggesting country-specific factors drive national developments, including most importantly the behaviour of political elites and social dynamics.

When it comes to media, there is limited research outside the US and this work does not always find the same patterns as those identified in the US but, at least in the specific context of the United States, it seems that exposure to like-minded political content can potentially polarise people or strengthen the attitudes of people with existing partisan attitudes, and that cross-cutting exposure can potentially do the same for political partisans.

Digital media and public discussions around science ↑

Virtually all the studies reviewed above on echo chambers, filter bubbles, and polarisation are concerned with the interplay between politics, news, and media use.

This work provides a set of basic findings about the dynamics of contemporary news media use, the relative importance of algorithmic ranking versus self-selection in shaping it, and how engagement with some forms of information can further strengthen already strongly held beliefs.

Many of these dynamics may also be relevant for understanding the role that digital media play in public discussions around science topics. But research in this area is largely separate from the political communication and media research traditions discussed above that have usually focused on politics specifically, or news and media use as a whole, rather than specific topics. And while terms like echo chambers, filter bubbles, and the like are beginning to feature in discussions among scientists and science communication scholars, these discussions, when research- based, are generally based on the research reviewed above (see e.g., Scheufele et al. 2017; Scheufele and Krause 2019; West and Bergstrom 2021). Empirical research specifically on the possibility of echo chambers and the like in online scientific discussions is still very limited.

There are different strengths and weaknesses of either looking at media use as a whole or focusing on discussions around different topics - and this can sometimes lead to different results and interpretations. Scholarship on selective exposure and polarisation around various science issues illustrates how the concepts, theories, and methods the research reviewed so far relies on can also shed light on science discussions but also underlines that dynamics are not always the same with these topics as with, say, party politics.

In the US, some studies have examined selective exposure around various science issues like genetically modified foods, nanotechnologies, stem cell research, and fracking (Jang 2013; Knobloch-Westerwick et al. 2015; Yeo et al. 2015). These studies have found evidence of selective exposure for some topics but, in general, the preference for like-minded information is less clear than it is for partisan political topics, it varies by subject, and sometimes shows opposite patterns in which people seek out opposing views (see Stroud 2017 for a review). Indeed, in the US, "not all science topics cohere with partisan perspectives" (Stroud 2017, p. 379) and it is likely that the strength and direction of these associations varies not only by topic but also from one country to the next.

That said, there are growing concerns about selective exposure in scientific domains that have become politically aligned, emotionally loaded, and more explicitly and actively politically polarised in some countries (e.g., Nisbet et al. 2015).

Elite cues seem critically important here. In making sense of how climate change became a more ideologically polarised issue in the United States over time, even as the scientific consensus grew stronger, Merkley and Stecula (2018) analysed news items over more than three decades and found that while Democratic politicians consistently acknowledged climate change in the media over time, Republican messages were ambiguous - and polarisation increased as more Republican-elected officials began actively and publicly denying climate change. They suggest that Republican voters' rejection of climate science may have been in part a direct response in opposition to cues from Democratic elites these voters regard with scepticism, a proposition they provide further evidence for in a separate study based on more than 200 surveys between 1984 and 2014 (Merkeley and Stecula 2020).

Similarly, Brulle et al. (2012, p. 185) argue "the most important factor in influencing public opinion on climate change [is] the elite partisan battle over the issue," and they show how US public opinion on the threat of climate change has been moved more by elite cues - in particular, Republican politicians' opposition to climate change bills - than by media coverage, which by and large mirrored those cues while also presenting the Democrats' position.

Analogous arguments have been made in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, where research in the US has shown polarisation in elite communication about the issue, with Democrats emphasising threats to public health and American workers, and Republicans placing greater emphasis on China and businesses early on in the pandemic (Green et al. 2020; see also Hart et al. 2020). Hamilton and Safford (2021) used survey data to show that trust in science agencies like the CDC declined rapidly among Republicans in the US but not Democrats, following Donald Trump's changing views toward the CDC, views that were in turn amplified by conservative media including Fox News. This further underlines how top-down cues from political elites, including most prominently the President, were crucial to the deep partisan divide that formed around the subject.

The relative absence of similar levels of polarisation in discussions around and public opinion on issues such as climate change and the coronavirus in many countries where political elites have behaved differently is a reminder of how important country-specific factors are, even as wider changes in the media system may be broadly similar. Content-analysis based research has in the past shown how, for example, news coverage of climate change is broadly based on the scientific consensus in countries where most elected officials recognise it but features climate change deniers and their views more prominently in countries where some politicians or even whole political parties have embraced these views (Painter and Ashe 2012). Work from Canada (Merkley et al. 2020) demonstrates the importance of cross-party consensus elite cues in shaping the public's perception of and response to COVID-19, just as work from Brazil (Gramacho et al. 2021) shows how very differently things developed in Brazil as Jair Bolsonaro's most avid supporters took their cues from the President.

A growing body of research has also sought to better understand the dynamics of public discussions around science online. Much of this work is not concerned with echo chambers, filter bubbles, and polarisation as defined here, but it can help us understand some of the ways in which digital media are used to discuss science.

In general, much of this research has documented a tendency for social media groups that actively discuss scientific issues to be made up of somewhat homogenous, segregated, and often polarised communities of interest with limited intersections between groups holding opposing views, and the vast majority of users on any given platform not taking any active role in any of these discussions of science. This is similar to broader dynamics online where communities of interest tend to coalesce, often around perfectly benign shared interests but sometimes around more ambiguous activities and, of course, in some instances, around shared interest in views that are demonstrably false and activities that are potentially harmful (Philips and Milner 2017).

Some of this research has compared differences between groups that form around science versus conspiracy news (Del Vicario et al. 2016a; Del Vicario et al. 2016b), whereas other research has focused on specific topics like vaccines (Cinelli et al. 2021; Cossard et al. 2020; Dunn et al. 2015; Schmidt et al. 2018), abortion (Cinelli et al. 2021), climate change (Williams et al. 2015), and most recently COVID-19 (Wang and Qian 2021).

In line with studies of political discussions online, people identified as active in these online discussions are often relatively small minorities who have strong attitudes on the subject (Williams et al. 2015), potentially skewing the online debate toward the more extreme attitudes of these active, vocal, opinionated minorities. In their analysis of the Italian vaccination debate on Twitter, Cossard et al. (2020) found differences in the structures of the polarised groups. Vaccine sceptics tended to form smaller but louder groups that were more tightly connected, whereas vaccine advocates tended to organise in a more hierarchical fashion around certain authoritative actors. Elsewhere, scientists have studied alternative media ecosystems involving websites and various other actors who repeatedly share the same disinformation, often across a wide variety of issues and topics, advancing political conspiracies alongside content such as climate science denial, anti-vaccine pseudoscience, and flat earth theory and trying to promote these on social media platforms such as Twitter to reach beyond those already actively involved in the communities in question (Starbird 2017; Starbird et al. 2019).

These studies are important and valuable for understanding online social dynamics and well-suited to provide evidence for self-selection, homophily, and polarisation dynamics between groups that focus on controversial topics (and how they may vary from one platform to another), but they are less helpful in examining the phenomenon of echo chambers as understood here - despite the occasional use of the term "echo chambers" in a broader sense of people being actively engaged in an online community of like-minded people. Because many of these are single- platform studies based on data from one social network, and often deliberately study already highly engaged and therefore unusual communities (rather than nationally representative samples or exhaustive studies of all users), we should be cautious about (a) generalising to the population at large, (b) generalising to discussion of other less divisive topics, and (c) whether they accurately describe the vast majority of social media users who are not engaged in these discussions, or have only the most peripheral contact with them.

In summary, public discussions around science online may exhibit some of the same dynamics as those observed around politics - with an important role for self- selection, elite cues, and small highly active communities with strong views in explaining the dynamics of these debates - but fundamentally, while important studies have been published, mostly from the US, there is at this stage limited empirical research on the possible existence, size, and drivers of echo chambers in public discussions around science. More broadly, years of research document the role political elites play in shaping both news coverage and public opinion around science issues as well.

Conclusion ↑

In this review, we have examined evidence concerning the existence, causes, and effects of online echo chambers and have considered what related research can tell us about scientific discussions online and how they might shape public understanding of science and the role of science in society.

There are a number of areas where our review suggests that there is a clear majority view in academic research, including most notably:

Politically partisan online news echo chambers are generally small - much smaller than is often assumed in public and policy debate.

Automated serendipity and incidental exposure mean that relying on search engines, social media, and other digital platforms using algorithmic ranking leads people to slightly more diverse news - the opposite of what the filter bubble hypothesis posits.

Self-selection, both along partisan lines and, importantly, in terms of levels of interest, plays a significant role in shaping news and media use.

There is no single uniform trend towards greater polarisation - ideological polarisation has declined in some countries, affective polarisation has increased, news audience polarisation varies greatly, and in every case, country-specific factors seem decisive, not a single global trend like the rise of the internet.

Elite cues continue to play an important role in shaping both news coverage and public opinion, with the behaviour of political parties and individual prominent politicians often contributing to polarisation, whether around ideological issues or science issues such as climate change.

Given the amount of research on these issues arriving at broadly similar conclusions, the burden of proof now, in our view, is on those arguing for alternative interpretations to provide systematic evidence.

Furthermore, there are several areas where there are some empirical studies but not necessarily convergent interpretations, or only convergent interpretations supported by data from a single or a few countries. These areas include, most notably:

News audience polarisation is higher online than offline in some but not all countries.

Engagement with partisan news and media can increase polarisation.

Cross-cutting exposure may also increase polarisation among partisans.

Relatively small minorities of unusually active and opinionated individuals often animate online debates, even as the vast majority of internet users pay little or no attention to these partisan discussions.

There is evidence for all these, but it is either mixed or exclusively from one country, so we cannot necessarily assume these findings apply everywhere.

Finally, there are many areas where there is at this point little empirical research to help us understand a situation that is rapidly evolving. These include, among other things:

Whether echo chambers and the like work broadly in the same ways around science issues as around more conventionally political issues.

How self-selection driven by forms of opinion other than political ones operate and how self-selection based on partisanship and/or interest shapes engagement with news and information around science.

The extent to which dynamics identified in studies of online news sites/apps and established digital platforms including search engines and social media are similar on less studied but potentially important platforms including messaging applications, video sites, and new social media platforms.

In closing, let us make three final points.

First, a large number of empirical studies documenting that echo chambers are smaller than commonly assumed, and a growing amount of research rejecting the filter bubble hypothesis should not be confused with a Panglossian belief that we live in the best of all possible worlds or that our increasingly digital, mobile, and platform-dominated media environment does not come with any serious societal challenges. There are many, including the frequently overlooked fact of pronounced inequality in news and information use documented by many of the studies reviewed here, as well as a multitude of others, such as widespread online harassment and abuse, various kinds of misinformation, often invasive data collection by dominant platforms, a serious disruption of the established business of news and market concentration, and many more issues beyond the scope of this review.

Second, the risks associated with people primarily seeking out attitude-consistent information, let alone living in bounded media spaces where their pre-existing views are rarely challenged, can be much smaller than many believe while still being present, and it is clearly possible for people to come to hold very polarised views - sometimes views that are contradicted by the best available scientific research - without living in echo chambers or filter bubbles. Sometimes minorities, however small, play an important role in driving public and policy debate and decision making. (As Guess (2021, p. 12) puts it, in the US context, "even if most Americans do not exist in online echo chambers, they are subject to the political influence of those who do.") And sometimes confirmation bias, motivated reasoning, and social reinforcement from the communities we spent most of our offline lives with will mean we have very strong views, even as we also see a wide range of different kinds of information via news and media.

Third, research in this area is extensive in some respects, almost non-existent in others. Among other things, there is often a dearth of research outside the United States, much less research on scientific issues specifically than on politics and media use more generally, and little work on several important established platforms and many newer and smaller platforms - and all this work could be greatly facilitated if academic researchers had better access to data in a privacy compliant and secure way from platform companies.

Footnotes

Beyond the definitions we rely on here, the terms "echo chamber" and "filter bubble" are used in a variety of other often broad and ambiguous ways, both by academics and in public debate, and there is limited consensus on singular clear definitions.

And indeed, evidence from the US has shown that some who experience little or no cross-cutting exposure on Twitter still encounter opposing views via television news - suggesting that analysis of echo chambers based on Twitter data alone will overestimate their size (Eady et al. 2019).

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This literature review was published with the support of the Royal Society.
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Echo chambers, filter bubbles, and polarisation: a literature review

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DOI: 10.60625/risj-etxj-7k60 Terms like echo chambers, filter bubbles, and polarisation are widely used in public and political debate but not in ways that are always aligned with, or based on, scientific work. And even among academic researchers, there is not always a clear consensus on exact definitions of these concepts.

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