COM Student’s UROP Climate Project Lands Her a Trip to Washington
Emma Longo’s paper on misinformation and native advertising led to a chance to present at a conference this weekend
Emma Longo (COM'24) poses for a photo at CDS on July 31, 2023. She is doing summer UROP on native advertising by fossil fuel companies called greenwashing, which is when an organization spends more time and money on marketing itself as environmentally friendly than on actually minimizing its environmental impact Photo by Jackie Ricciardi for Boston University
A story in the New York Times touts Exxon Mobil’s work growing algae for biofuel as an alternative to oil and gas. A handsomely illustrated story in the Washington Post looks at alternative sources of power for automobiles, with concerned-sounding quotes from a Shell executive.
Just one problem, though. These weren’t actual news stories, but advertisements for the two fossil fuel companies, carefully calibrated to give them an eco-friendly image while climate change ravages the earth.
The casual reader could easily mistake the two stories for real news, missing the small-type disclaimers: “Paid Post” and “WP Creative Group—Content from Shell.”
“So you see a native ad, and you think, oh, my gosh, that’s so great. Exxon Mobil is going clean, they’re going sustainable. As a consumer, you might be excited about that. And it’s in the New York Times, so you might trust that,” says media studies student Emma Longo (COM’24). “But when it comes down to it, you’re being lied to.”
