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The post-Citizens United election environment has allowed more actors with deep pockets to sponsor political advertising, exposing many voters to a barrage of ads from a multitude of new groups. Particular concern has been focused on so-called ''dark money'' groups, which have the ability to solicit unlimited and undisclosed donations-most of which pay for television ads. Research suggests that unknown group-sponsored ads are more effective than ads sponsored by candidates. This analysis examines whether the effectiveness of unfamiliar dark-money ads can be mitigated by disclosing to viewers that the ad was paid for by a ''dark money'' group. To understand the impact of these factors, we conducted a series of experiments that manipulated the involvement of the groups and whether the groups were specifically partisan in nature. We find that, in the absence of a partisan cue, disclosing that a candidate benefits from dark money tends to reduce support for that candidate. When partisan cues are given, however, people ''punish'' candidates of the opposing party.

Purpose Political polarization and incivility manifested itself online throughout the 2016 US presidential election. The purpose of this paper is to understand how features of social media platforms (e.g. reacting, sharing) impacted the online public sphere during the 2016 election. Design/methodology/approach After conducting in-depth interviews with politically interested young people and applying deductive coding procedures to transcripts of the interviews, Dahlberg’s (2004) six normative conditions for the public sphere were used to empirically examine this interview data. Findings While some participants described strategies for productive political discussion on Social Networking Sites (SNS) and a willingness to use them to discuss politics, many users’ experiences largely fall short of Dahlberg’s (2004) normative criteria for the public sphere. Research limitations/implications The period in which these interviews were conducted in could have contributed to a more pessimistic view of political discussion in general. Practical implications Scholars and the public should recognize that the affordances of SNS for political discussion are not distributed evenly between different platforms, both for the sake of empirical studies of SNS moving forward and the state of democratic deliberation. Originality/value Although previous research has examined online and SNS-based political discussion as it relates to the public sphere, few attempts have been made understand how specific communicative practices or platform-specific features of SNS have contributed to or detracted from a healthy public sphere.

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