Camouflaging Church as State

Abstract

This paper explores the increasing trend of adopting native advertising in the digital editions of traditional news media outlets. Native advertising is defined here as a form of paid media where the commercial content is delivered within the design and form of editorial content, as an attempt to recreate the user experience of reading news instead of advertising content. Methodologically, this study examines 12 news websites of legacy newspapers from Sweden, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States, and analyzes the adoption of native advertising during the span of January 2015. Subsequently, these advertisements are analyzed in terms of type, form, function, integration, measurement, disclosure, and authorship. The results show that while the degree of implementation is still modest, the way in which it is implemented is uneven across countries.

KEYWORDS:

• autonomy
• commercialization
• digital journalism
• journalism values
• native advertising
• sponsored content

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.