Invisible transparency: Visual attention to disclosures and source recognition in Facebook political advertising

ABSTRACT

In an effort to improve transparency, Facebook changed its disclosures on in-feed native political advertisements in 2018 to include language that identifies who paid for the ad to appear. The present study (N = 120) utilized a between-participants eye-tracking experiment to assess the impact of three different disclosure conditions on Facebook users’ visual attention to the disclosure, recall of the disclosure, and the ability to identify the sponsor of the advertisement. Findings suggest that while users do give visual attention to Facebook’s new political ad disclosure, the disclosure language is not effective at enhancing users’ comprehension of who paid the political advertisements.

KEYWORDS:

• Political advertising
• Facebook
• native advertising
• eye tracking
• disclosures

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Matthew T. Binford

Matthew T. Binford is a doctoral student in the Department of Journalism in the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Georgia. His primary research is grounded in political communications and focuses on how visual message characteristics impact attention and attitudes.

Bartosz W. Wojdynski

Bartosz W. Wojdynski is the director of the Digital Media Attention and Cognition (DMAC) Lab and Jim Kennedy Professor of New Media at the University of Georgia. His research focuses on how design of news, advertising, and social media messages affects understanding and persuasion via effects on attention.

Yen-I Lee

Yen-I Lee (Ph.D., University of Georgia) is an Assistant Professor of Strategic Communication in the Edward R. Murrow College of Communication at Washington State University. Her primary research is in the areas of health communication and strategic communication, focusing on the role of messaging content, technology use, visual attention, and emotions in the context of health crisis and risk communication.

Shuoya Sun

Shuoya Sun (M.A. University of Georgia) is a doctoral student in the Department of Advertising and Public Relations at the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Georgia. Her research broadly looks at how media context and message characteristics influence cognitive processing and evaluation of digital advertisements.

Andrea Briscoe

Andrea Briscoe is a Ph.D. candidate in the journalism department at the University of Georgia. Her research agenda is grounded in women’s studies and visual communication, particularly photojournalism.