News Article or Big Oil Advertisement?

A BU-led study shows how advertisements, formatted like journalism, are being used by oil giants to influence public opinion. The researchers reveal strategies to help readers recognize ads and reduce their susceptibility to misleading claims.

By Alison Gold

In the battle against climate disinformation, native advertising is a fierce foe. A study published today in npj Climate Action led by Boston University (BU) researchers, in collaboration with Cambridge University colleagues, evaluates two promising tools to fight misleading native advertising campaigns put forth by big oil companies.

Many major news organizations now offer corporations the opportunity to pay for articles that mimic in tone and format the publication’s regular reported content. These ‘native advertisements’ are designed to camouflage seamlessly into their surroundings, containing only subtle disclosure messages often overlooked or misunderstood by readers. Fossil fuel companies are spending tens of millions of dollars to shape public perceptions of the climate crisis.

“Because these ads appear on reputable, trusted news platforms, and are formatted like reported pieces, they often come across to readers as genuine journalism,” says the study’s lead author Michelle Amazeen, Associate Professor of Mass Communication and Director of the Communication Research Center at BU’s College of Communication, Faculty Affiliate of Hariri Institute for Computing, and Core Faculty at BU’s Institute for Global Sustainability  (IGS).

“Research has shown native ads are really effective at swaying readers’ opinions,” adds Amazeen.

The new study is the first to investigate how two mitigation strategies — disclosures and inoculations — may reduce climate misperceptions caused by exposure to native advertising from the fossil fuel industry. The authors found that when participants were shown a real native ad from ExxonMobil, disclosure messages helped them recognize advertising, while inoculations helped reduce their susceptibility to misleading claims.

“As fossil fuel companies invest in disguising their advertisements, this study furthers our understanding of how to help readers recognize when commercial content is masquerading as news and spreading climate misperceptions,” says study co-author Benjamin Sovacool, Professor of Earth and Environment in the BU College of Arts & Sciences, Director of BU’s Institute for Global Sustainability (IGS), and Faculty Affiliate and Steering Committee Member of Hariri Institute.

This study is part of the Boston University Climate Disinformation Initiative, interdisciplinary research on how climate lies spread, who they mislead, and how to stop them. The initiative launched in 2022 with a year-long Focused Research Program study titled Data and Misinformation in an Era of Sustainability and Climate Change Crises, jointly funded by the Institute for Global Sustainability and the Rafik B. Hariri Institute for Computing and Computational Science & Engineering.