For your eyes only? An eye-tracking experiment investigating microtargeting transparency, visual attention and critical processing

Abstract

By means of their personal data, users on social media platforms get targeted to be persuaded by political advertisers with messages that are specifically tailored to them: political microtargeting. A substantial problem with political microtargeting is that receivers of targeted advertisements are often unaware that they are being targeted. Increasing transparency to improve awareness potentially leads to a more critical way to process information in an advertisement. Moreover, the use of these measures could lead to differences in users’ attention to the advertisement. Therefore, this study investigates whether a disclosure that informs users about targeting practices occurring on Instagram leads to more visual attention to the disclosure, whether this leads to more critical processing of the advertisement, and whether this relationship is mediated by users’ visual attention to the advertisement. In a preregistered one-factorial between-subjects laboratory eye-tracking experiment (N = 134) we exposed participants to an Instagram timeline containing either a sponsorship disclosure (control condition) or a more salient and informative targeting disclosure (experimental condition). Results show that the targeting disclosure did not lead to higher levels of visual attention to the disclosure, but that attention to the disclosure was positively related to more critical processing as well as more visual attention to the ad. Nevertheless, we did not find a mediating effect of attention to the advertisement on the relationship between attention to the disclosure and critical processing. Finally, we believe that these disclosures represent a step forward in improving transparency and shielding users.