Moral Advertising Literacy for Digital Platform Environments: Findings From a Classroom-Based Program

• In Event: Tensions in Practicing and Researching Critical Digital Literacies for/in Platformized Environments

Abstract

Purpose & Framing
Media literacy education (MLE) scholarship has long focused on young people’s understanding of and susceptibility to advertising messages (De Pauw, 2018; Olson et al., 2019; Sekarasih et al., 2016). While understanding the purpose, tactics, aesthetics, and commercial function of advertising (Hwang et al., 2018; Malmelin, 2010) is important, activating advertising literacy also requires moral advertising literacy (reflecting on the moral appropriateness of persuasive tactics used in particular contexts) and attitudinal or affective advertising literacy (approaching advertising content skeptically) (Rozendaal et al., 2011; Sweeney et al., 2022; van Dam & van Reijmersdal, 2019). This is particularly true for young people, who face highly engaging age-targeted advertising while their executive functioning, moral reasoning, and emotional regulation are still developing (Castonguay, 2022; Rozendaal et al, 2011).

And yet, MLE tends to fixate on the ability of individuals to decode and encode media text, thereby largely overlooking the complex interrelations amongst diverse computational, material, and regulatory actors, both human and non-human, that shape the media ecosystem and about which users are largely unaware (Forsler, 2018; Nichols & LeBlanc, 2021; Valtonen et al., 2019). This individual literacy-based framing is evident in previous advertising literacy research (Chan, 2021; De Pauw, 2018; Sweeney et al., 2022). But grappling with the complex interrelations evident throughout the media ecosystem, a crucial component to MLE, is even more important for developing advertising literacy for digital platform environments, where advertisers utilize platform affordances such as algorithmic recommendations and behavior and attention engineering to shape digital advertising (Rozendaal et al., 2011; Valtonen et al., 2019).

Methods & Findings
Our research examines how an ecological approach to moral advertising literacy may impact students’ understanding of their place within the digital advertising system and the range of responses available to them. To do this, we developed a four-session advertising literacy program focused on personalized ads and influencer marketing. During the program, sixth-grade students in a local primary school engaged in role-playing exercises as different actors (e.g. businesses, audiences, social media influencers) and reflected on moral dilemmas introduced by the digital advertising ecosystem.

Data sources for this study include lesson artifacts (e.g. post-it note exit tickets) and classroom video recordings. Preliminary findings from our thematic analysis of these qualitative data (Miles et al., 2020) suggest that student participants identify various opportunities for intervention within the digital advertising system—by either themselves, the platforms, companies selling their products, influencers, or lawmakers—and that students are negotiating the potentials for engaging or disengaging at various moments within the digital advertising process.

Significance
The significance of this study is twofold. First, it introduces the ecological turn in MLE to advertising literacy, an approach less explored in the existing literature. Second, it addresses the need for more research on developing moral and attitudinal advertising literacy in young people, which is crucial in today’s complex digital platform environments, where moral dilemmas involve diverse actors and where opportunities for users to exercise agency may feel limited. Therefore, this study has important theoretical and pedagogical implications for MLE that seeks to empower young people for digital platform environments.

Authors

• Michelle Ciccone, University of Massachusetts - Amherst

• Cecilia Yuxi Zhou, University of Massachusetts - Amherst

• Thomas Underwood, University at Albany - SUNY

• Erica Scharrer, University of Massachusetts - Amherst