Sharing Native Advertising on Twitter: Content Analyses Examining Disclosure Practices and Their Inoculating Influence

Abstract

ABSTRACT Based upon a 3-year data set of Tweets linking to native advertising from leading U.S. news publications, this study provides human content analyses (n = 1,527) of the practice of native advertising disclosure in the field – both on publisher websites and when shared on Twitter – and explores whether disclosures serve the inoculating function of resistance to persuasion. Leveraging the Persuasion Knowledge Model (Friestad and Wright [1994]. “The persuasion knowledge model: How people cope with persuasion attempts.” Journal of Consumer Research 21 (June): 1–31) and inoculation theory (McGuire [1964]. “Inducing resistance to persuasion: Some contemporary approaches.” In Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, edited by L. Berkowitz, 191–229. New York: Academic Press.), results show a) regular use of disclosures on publisher landing pages, b) the absence of disclosures in over half of publisher Twitter Cards, and c) the presence of disclosures corresponded to an increased likelihood of negatively-valenced Twitter posts.