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An online experiment ( N = 931) assessing recognition of and responses to native advertising sought to explore how disclosures affect behavioral intent in digital news contexts. Findings suggest that resistance to persuasive attempts conferred by native advertising disclosures is explained by both inoculation and reactance processes and demonstrates how a simple, or generic, disclosure can inoculate people against a type of message (covert advertising mimicking authentic journalism) rather than the content of the message. Furthermore, the attenuating effect of a simple disclosure on behavioral intent is fully and serially mediated through advertising recognition, increased perception of threat to freedom, and increased reactance.

This study examined the effects of news use motivations and differing native advertising contexts (hard vs. soft news) on the ability to perceive commercialized content, evaluations of native advertising, and ensuing digital news perceptions. Based upon the framework of the persuasion knowledge model, an online experiment was conducted among a sample of U.S. adults ( N = 684). Engaging with news for informational motivations conditioned perceptions of advertising as did the contextual effects of hard versus soft news. Furthermore, hard-news approaches to native advertising were perceived more unfavorably by audiences and tarnished the subsequent reporting of actual journalists.

In a media environment where political ads influence U.S. news coverage, does the press hold politicians accountable for their ad claims? Using semantic network analysis, four types of reporting styles distinguished the ad coverage of 18 sampled newspapers and online fact-checkers from the 2008 presidential election. Horserace reporting characterized the largest group, whereas other models included partisan, he-said/she-said, and fact-checking. If educating the public about the accuracy of political ad claims is a goal of journalism, this study suggests that high-quality political adwatching following the fact-checking journalistic model did not predominate in the 2008 political ad coverage of newspapers.

To the degree that the American press corps serves as the creator of the first draft of history, it is in a privileged position of shaping not only what we remember but also how we remember it. This article presents a case study of a political advertisement that aired during the 2008 U.S. presidential election. The mainstream media's uncritical consideration of the ad invoking Martin Luther King Jr.'s memory in representing Barack Obama's achievements suggests not only an uncontested version of racial achievements in America but also the power granted to political ads in narrating a naturalized version of memory. As political advertising increasingly drives news coverage in the U.S., the journalistic failure to scrutinize a political message beyond its face value illustrated by this case becomes all the more alarming and is indicative of a concerning disservice to the public interest.

This study examines the agenda-setting power of fake news and fact-checkers who fight them through a computational look at the online mediascape from 2014 to 2016. Although our study confirms that content from fake news websites is increasing, these sites do not exert excessive power. Instead, fake news has an intricately entwined relationship with online partisan media, both responding and setting its issue agenda. In 2016, partisan media appeared to be especially susceptible to the agendas of fake news, perhaps due to the election. Emerging news media are also responsive to the agendas of fake news, but to a lesser degree. Fake news coverage itself is diverging and becoming more autonomous topically. While fact-checkers are autonomous in their selection of issues to cover, they were not influential in determining the agenda of news media overall, and their influence appears to be declining, illustrating the difficulties fact-checkers face in disseminating their corrections.

While fact-checking has grown dramatically in the last decade, little is known about the relative effectiveness of different formats in correcting false beliefs or overcoming partisan resistance to new information. This article addresses that gap by using theories from communication and psychology to compare two prevailing approaches: An online experiment examined how the use of visual "truth scales" interacts with partisanship to shape the effectiveness of corrections. We find that truth scales make fact-checks more effective in some conditions. Contrary to theoretical predictions and the fears of some journalists, their use does not increase partisan backlash against the correction or the organization that produced it.