Native Advertising and the New Meanings of News Content

• In Event: News vs. Native Advertising: Perspectives in Journalism Research

Abstract

Native advertising poses a unique conceptual challenge for journalism studies. Although news and advertising content have shared the same space in the commercial press systems for well over a century, the singular focus of journalism studies on news has generally resulted in advertising being relegated to scholars in other fields. Native advertising belies any such neat segmentation and instead forces scholars to wrestle with the boundaries between what we study and what we neglect or overlook. Most obviously, native advertising raises questions about journalistic ethics and news subsidies. These are not insignificant issues, but I argue we need to engage native advertising on a more fundamental level as to how the practice upends existing understandings of what constitutes news content and how we conceptualize journalism. Only then can the consequences of native advertising be recognized.

Author

• Matt Carlson, Saint Louis U