Popular Sources, Advertising, and Information Literacy: What Librarians Need to Know

What is it about?

This article explains to academic librarians what native advertising is and how it affects the popular sources we recommend to our students. Native advertising (or sponsored content) is a form of advertising that is designed to resemble the content that is "native" to the publication in which it is found. So, for example, native advertising in the New York Times is intended to resemble the newspaper's "real" journalism.

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Why is it important?

In an era of "fake news," articles of questionable value found online are often regarded by students to be real journalism. According to researchers at Stanford University, when middle-school-aged students were asked to differentiate native advertising from actual journalism, "[m]ore than 80% of students believed that the native advertisement, identified by the words 'sponsored content,' was a real news story." They write, "[t]his suggests that many students have no idea what 'sponsored content' means and that this is something that must be explicitly taught as early as elementary school." (https://sheg.stanford.edu/upload/V3LessonPlans/Executive%20Summary%2011.21.16.pdf)