Seeing through the ad? An investigation of persuasion awareness, coping mechanisms, and credibility for targeted political advertisements

A major problem with political microtargeting is that users are often unaware that they are being targeted, while current transparency approaches apparently fail to inform them. This is problematic because users are more vulnerable to manipulation when they fail to recognise persuasive messages, as they do not critically reflect on the content. Disclosures can be used to offset these effects by improving transparency and informing the public. Therefore, the current work investigates whether a more salient disclosure has the potential to increase users’ persuasion knowledge which might, in turn, enable them to resist the message and lower source credibility and attitude towards the advertised politician. In a preregistered online between-subjects experiment 547 German Facebook users were exposed to either the disclosure that is currently used by platforms, or a salient and dynamic disclosure informing users about the parameters and data points used to target them. Results showed no evidence that a more salient disclosure increased users’ persuasion knowledge. However, results showed that if people are aware that a political message is an advertisement, they question the content of the message, which, in turn, relates to lower credibility perceptions towards the source and less favourable attitudes towards the politician.