Advertising is ubiquitous in children's everyday life – and on the Internet. The manifestations of online advertising are not only diverse but also very dynamic, increasingly personalised and therefore challenging for young online users in multiple respects. From the perspectives of both law and media education, the central question arises whether children are able to identify online advertising as such and to understand its intention. A basic understanding of advertising and reliable labelling of advertising material is seen as fundamental requirements for children to identify advertising as such and to be able to handle it appropriately and competently. Concerning the question of advertising literacy, we present findings of an interdisciplinary study in which we investigate the concept of online advertising of primary school age and how they deal with advertising online. The results show how challenging online advertising is for children and at which points they have difficulties in transferring their concept of advertising to online content. Against the background of the study, we discuss the idea of advertising literacy and the methodological challenges about current and future forms of online advertising and persuasive messages.

The aim of this article is to more precisely define the field of research on the automation of communication, which is still only vaguely discernible. The central thesis argues that to be able to fully grasp the transformation of the media environment associated with the automation of communication, our view must be broadened from a preoccupation with direct interactions between humans and machines to societal communication. This more widely targeted question asks how the dynamics of societal communication change when communicative artificial intelligence—in short: communicative AI—is integrated into aspects of societal communication. To this end, we recommend an approach that follows the tradition of figurational sociology.

Can the Terms of Policies of social media platforms be made more comprehensible, transparent, and consumer-friendly? Dreyer and Ziebarth suggest that “participatory transparency,” based in the community of users, can help overcome contractual complexity and legal jargon while increasing user awareness. They recommend the use of autonomous bodies of third-party users to crowd-source platform-specific suggestions for improvements, and to translate terms and provisions into practical pointers. Implementation may be slow because platform providers may resist this approach, but the authors argue that the process has many benefits for the providers as well.

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