Tell the Truth or Keep Silent: A Critical Study of Ethical Advertising Through Malaysian Advertising Self-Regulation System

Abstract

Consumers are often subjected to various forms of non-ethical content, such as over-claiming, misleading facts and advertisers' misleading promises. When advertising contains offensive information, it may cause harm to the consumers relying upon it. Moral conflicts arise when advertisements lose their informative value and become merely propaganda for the profit of products and services. Advertisers easily produce advertisements displaying a culture that is not appropriate according to the morality principles of the nation. This paper discusses Malaysia's framework for self-regulation to control the safety of consumers and the obligation of professionals to help consumers from the perspectives of the truthfulness value of the advertising content and authenticity values of the advertisers. This study aims to examine how Malaysia's self-regulation system embraces the principles of truthfulness and authenticity in their messages. The data were obtained from five (5) Malaysian Advertisement Self-regulations (MASR) model through content analysis. The software NVivo 12 is used to conduct themes and sub-themes. The findings indicate an increasing prevalence on the values of truthfulness but do not stress the authenticity values when assessing the concepts that must be considered in the advertising field to reduce adverse commercial issues.