Time for transparent targeting: an investigation of targeting disclosures, coping mechanisms, credibility, and political attitude

Abstract

A major problem with political microtargeting (PMT) is that users are often unaware that they are being targeted, whereas current transparency approaches fail to inform users. Therefore, the current work investigates two types of disclosures on a political advertisement, one that is currently used by platforms: a light gray sentence stating that content is sponsored, and a salient and dynamic disclosure that informs users about the parameters and data points used to target them. This work investigates whether these disclosures, as a means of transparency to counter the potential negative effects of PMT, affect users in terms of persuasion knowledge, resistance, source credibility, and attitude towards the advertised politician. In a preregistered online one-factorial between-subjects experiment (N = 547), we found no evidence for the claim that a more elaborate, salient targeting disclosure increases users’ persuasion knowledge. However, our results show that persuasion knowledge is related to cognitive resistance, which, in turn, is related to both source credibility and users’ attitude towards the advertised politician. Our results further indicate that this process is cognitive, rather than affective. Finally, most participants seemed to recall a disclosure, although it was not always the correct one.