# New Research on Fossil Fuel Sponsored Content and Media Misleading Practices

An episode of [Drilled](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1439735906), 21 Mar 2025, 19 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/tracking.swap.fm/track/SxlTEPDY7xDg35RXkASs/pdrl.fm/3e5572/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/9a7ab5ee-ce11-48ff-a544-b3ec00ea9b1e/99a629dd-f6f4-4dc0-b821-b3ec00ede54d/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=7f82f371-6316-4ea6-a108-b3ec00ea9b2d

The fossil fuel industry has long shaped public perception through advertorials and sponsored content created by the media outlets themselves. These op-eds, slide shows and videos, and podcasts are produced by media outlets' internal brand studios, not their editorial staffs. But these services are explicitly marketed as a way to make corporate content mirror the editorial content in style and approach, and when it comes to fossil fuel advertisers it often directly contradicts what the editorial staff is reporting. In late 2023, we published a report detailing the many examples of this and delving into the peer-reviewed research that shows how misleading this practice is to readers. One of the researchers who has most contributed to this body of research is Boston University's Dr. Michelle Amazeen, who has published a new study looking at why this practice is particularly misleading on social media, and what media outlets might be able to do to make it less so. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:01] Speaker 1: Welcome back to Drill. I'm Amy Westervelt. I know we've
[0:04] Speaker 1: been away for a little bit. That's for two reasons. First,
[0:10] Speaker 1: I've been working on a book that's done at least
[0:12] Speaker 1: the first draft now. And second, we've been working on
[0:16] Speaker 1: a few different seasons for this year, so we've got
[0:19] Speaker 1: a lot of stuff coming your way today. An update
[0:23] Speaker 1: on something that we've covered a few times in the past, advertorials.
[0:28] Speaker 1: I'm joined by doctor Michelle Amazon from Boston University. Doctor
[0:32] Speaker 1: Amazone has done some of the best research on how
[0:37] Speaker 1: people actually take in information from advertorials, whether they're able
[0:42] Speaker 1: to differentiate between advertorial and editorial content, all that kind
[0:47] Speaker 1: of thing. She's just completed a new study looking at
[0:51] Speaker 1: how different interventions might work to help readers navigate an
[0:58] Speaker 1: information ecosystem that includes lots of advertorials. She particularly looked
[1:04] Speaker 1: at how labeling on social media could help people figure
[1:10] Speaker 1: out what's what, and also whether surrounding these ads could
[1:15] Speaker 1: help people be inoculated to some of the misleading information
[1:20] Speaker 1: that's often included in them. It's a really interesting study
[1:23] Speaker 1: and we had a super interesting conversation to hope you
[1:27] Speaker 1: enjoy it.
[1:39] Speaker 2: I'd love to know just a little bit of the
[1:41] Speaker 2: background on what prompted you guys to undertake this study,
[1:47] Speaker 2: What made you think, Okay, we need to look at
[1:49] Speaker 2: what might be done about this stuff.
[1:51] Speaker 3: Yeah. So, I have been studying persuasion and misinformation for
[1:58] Speaker 3: probably a decade now, and I started looking into native advertisements,
[2:06] Speaker 3: just broadly, not specific to the fossil fuel industry. I
[2:10] Speaker 3: published a number of studies about the use of native advertising,
[2:14] Speaker 3: how difficult it is for the public to be able
[2:18] Speaker 3: to identify native advertising and distinguish it from news reporting,
[2:23] Speaker 3: news articles, and I think at one point I had
[2:26] Speaker 3: a study where I contrasted two native advertisements. One was
[2:34] Speaker 3: from I think it was Colhan, so it was a
[2:38] Speaker 3: fashion designer that ad was kind of imitating, mimicking soft news.
[2:44] Speaker 3: The alternative native advertisement was from Chevron, which was examining
[2:51] Speaker 3: global energy consumption, and that was more hard news oriented,
[2:55] Speaker 3: And so the study looked at the differences between the
[2:58] Speaker 3: two of those how difficult it was for consumers to
[3:03] Speaker 3: recognize that this was commercial content and not genuine news reporting.
[3:07] Speaker 3: And that got me thinking, okay, well, how dangerous is
[3:12] Speaker 3: it for fashion retailers to be using native advertisement compared
[3:18] Speaker 3: to companies such as Chevron and other fossil fuel providers
[3:24] Speaker 3: leveraging it. And so that's what got me thinking about
[3:29] Speaker 3: who is using this type of advertising strategy. And I
[3:34] Speaker 3: live in Massachusetts, and I was aware that in twenty eighteen,
[3:38] Speaker 3: our state Attorney General sued Exxon for the claims they
[3:43] Speaker 3: were making in their advertisements. And I noticed that one
[3:49] Speaker 3: of the exhibits in the lawsuit was a native advertisement
[3:54] Speaker 3: that was created by T Brand Studio, and so I
[3:59] Speaker 3: think that was the impetus. So I've continued to do
[4:03] Speaker 3: more studies on this. I've been working on a book.
[4:07] Speaker 3: I have a book coming out from MIT Press later
[4:11] Speaker 3: this year about native advertising. And it became apparent that
[4:18] Speaker 3: it wasn't just happening in Massachusetts. You know, there's many
[4:23] Speaker 3: states and municipalities who have brought forth these types of lawsuits,
[4:27] Speaker 3: but there's not a whole lot of concrete evidence as
[4:29] Speaker 3: to what exactly the impacts are. And so we decided, well,
[4:35] Speaker 3: let's see if we can tease that out.
[4:38] Speaker 2: It's interesting because I've written about the native advertising stuff
[4:42] Speaker 2: a bit and cited your research, so thank you. And
[4:45] Speaker 2: actually the last time I wrote about it, I talked
[4:48] Speaker 2: to someone that you know, was doing this stuff, but
[4:50] Speaker 2: probably not as much as other outlets, and so the
[4:53] Speaker 2: question was sort of like, why why continue to do it?
[4:55] Speaker 2: And the thing that really resonated with her the most
[4:59] Speaker 2: because a lot of times newsrooms will just sort of say, oh, well,
[5:01] Speaker 2: you know, we have a wall between an edit and
[5:05] Speaker 2: the advertisers aren't influencing our reporting and all that kind
[5:09] Speaker 2: of stuff, And I said, yeah, but that's not really
[5:11] Speaker 2: the concern. The concern is that readers confuse these things
[5:13] Speaker 2: for each other. And I pointed her to the studies
[5:17] Speaker 2: that have been done on that, and that was the
[5:19] Speaker 2: thing where she was like, oh really, Yeah, so it
[5:23] Speaker 2: does seem like something that at least some newsrooms might
[5:27] Speaker 2: be looking for ways to minimize. But I wanted to
[5:31] Speaker 2: ask you about the experiment that you ran, was kind
[5:35] Speaker 2: of mimicking a social media feed?
[5:37] Speaker 3: Right?
[5:37] Speaker 2: Is that accurate to say?
[5:39] Speaker 3: Correct?
[5:40] Speaker 2: Yeah, And maybe I could have you walk through the
[5:45] Speaker 2: two possible interventions that people were seeing in their feed
[5:51] Speaker 2: and why you decided to look at those two things
[5:55] Speaker 2: in particular.
[5:56] Speaker 3: Yeah, so I can preface it with the reason why
[5:59] Speaker 3: we choose to format this as a social media post
[6:07] Speaker 3: is because not only do these native ads live on
[6:12] Speaker 3: the news organizations websites, but oftentimes these news organizations that
[6:20] Speaker 3: are creating these ads, it's not an external ad agency,
[6:25] Speaker 3: it's these in house content studios that are creating it.
[6:30] Speaker 3: Often they are contractually obligated to amplify these native advertisements,
[6:39] Speaker 3: meaning it's not just residing on their websites, but the
[6:42] Speaker 3: news organizations have to amplify these ads on their social
[6:48] Speaker 3: media sites. And what some of my previous research has
[6:53] Speaker 3: shown is that when native advertisements are shared on social media,
[7:00] Speaker 3: frequently the disclosures that are required by the Federal Trade
[7:04] Speaker 3: Commission that distinguish them as commercial content. Half the time
[7:09] Speaker 3: those disclosures disappear. And they are supposed to stick with.
[7:15] Speaker 3: They're supposed to travel with the native advertisement no matter
[7:18] Speaker 3: where it appears oh interesting.
[7:20] Speaker 2: So when it shows up on social that like paid
[7:22] Speaker 2: for by thing there.
[7:24] Speaker 3: Wow, all the time it disappears wow. So that's why
[7:29] Speaker 3: we decided to Okay, well, let's show this in a
[7:31] Speaker 3: social media feed format. I do have to acknowledge that
[7:38] Speaker 3: the New York Times, for the most part, they follow
[7:42] Speaker 3: the rules. They're labeling is good in terms of having
[7:47] Speaker 3: labeling or disclosures, and they generally stay with the content
[7:52] Speaker 3: when it appears on social media, so I want to
[7:55] Speaker 3: be sure that that's clear because in this study we
[7:59] Speaker 3: are focusing on a New York Times creative ad, but
[8:04] Speaker 3: they could make their disclosures more prominent, they could use
[8:08] Speaker 3: more clear language. We adopted the language that the New
[8:12] Speaker 3: York Time uses, which is paid post, So that was
[8:16] Speaker 3: one of the interventions, is the disclosure. The New York
[8:21] Speaker 3: Times uses the language paid post, which not everybody knows
[8:25] Speaker 3: what that means, and that is one of the challenges
[8:31] Speaker 3: of the current regulation of native advertising is that the
[8:36] Speaker 3: FTC does not require any sort of standardization in terms
[8:40] Speaker 3: of what the disclosures say, so the news outlet can
[8:44] Speaker 3: call it whatever they want and they do so that
[8:49] Speaker 3: makes it more confusing for the public when one outlet
[8:52] Speaker 3: is calling it this, another outlet is calling it something else,
[8:56] Speaker 3: and so forth. So one of the interventions we had
[9:00] Speaker 3: was the disclosure, and since this was an experiment, we
[9:05] Speaker 3: had certain people who saw the disclosure and then other
[9:10] Speaker 3: people we did not show them the disclosure, So that
[9:13] Speaker 3: was one of our manipulations. And then the other intervention
[9:16] Speaker 3: we looked at was what we call an inoculation message,
[9:22] Speaker 3: so it was a forewarning about the type of content
[9:28] Speaker 3: that people may see in their social media feeds, and
[9:33] Speaker 3: we had it, We had the source of that message
[9:36] Speaker 3: as the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterrez, and you just
[9:42] Speaker 3: basically talked about what's happening with the climate emergency and
[9:49] Speaker 3: warning people to make sure the information that you see
[9:52] Speaker 3: that you rely on on social media from credible sources
[9:56] Speaker 3: who have relevant expertise and who aren't motivating to greenwash
[10:01] Speaker 3: their activities or to cherry pick data, so essentially encouraging
[10:08] Speaker 3: people to be media literate. So that was the other intervention.
[10:10] Speaker 3: Some people saw those messages, other people did not. Those
[10:15] Speaker 3: were the people in our control group. That people in
[10:18] Speaker 3: the control group, they saw a social media post about sushi,
[10:25] Speaker 3: which sounds kind of random, but in the academic literature
[10:31] Speaker 3: that has been used many times.
[10:33] Speaker 2: Before, that's so funny.
[10:36] Speaker 3: Yeah, And then that was so first there was either
[10:40] Speaker 3: the inoculation message or forewarning or the control message. And
[10:45] Speaker 3: then people then saw the native advertisement from ExxonMobil, So
[10:54] Speaker 3: either the one with the disclosure or the one without
[10:59] Speaker 3: the disclosure. Those were the treatment groups, the two treatment groups,
[11:02] Speaker 3: and then there was a third group that was again
[11:04] Speaker 3: the control group who instead of seeing the native advertisement.
[11:09] Speaker 3: They just saw a social media post about a restaurant review,
[11:13] Speaker 3: which is anonymous, and it was they we blurred out
[11:18] Speaker 3: the name of the.
[11:18] Speaker 2: Restaurant just because it didn't really matter. Do you have
[11:22] Speaker 2: a sense of how well these things work on social
[11:27] Speaker 2: versus on the outlet's own website. I'm just thinking, like, Okay,
[11:32] Speaker 2: I'm a climate reporter, have been for a long time.
[11:34] Speaker 2: My own mother still occasionally sends me native as articles
[11:38] Speaker 2: that she's seen on climate. Yeah, I mean.
[11:43] Speaker 3: I believe that. So I opened my book with a
[11:46] Speaker 3: vignette about me grading my students' papers one of them,
[11:53] Speaker 3: not one of them, a handful of them. We're citing
[11:56] Speaker 3: a native advertisement they saw. Yeah, so I'm shocked, and
[12:02] Speaker 3: I'm trying to figure out how did they how did
[12:06] Speaker 3: this happen? And well, I won't give away the story.
[12:10] Speaker 3: You'll have to get my book.
[12:11] Speaker 2: Yeah, oh wow, that's fascinating.
[12:14] Speaker 3: Yes, So, I mean even you know, it's it's everybody.
[12:17] Speaker 3: It's college students, it's it's senior citizens, it's it's even
[12:22] Speaker 3: college professors who get fooled by this stuff.
[12:25] Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, Okay. On the it sounds to me like
[12:29] Speaker 2: from the results of your study, the inoculation messages work
[12:33] Speaker 2: much better than the like the disclosures are necessary and
[12:37] Speaker 2: should you know and should and could be much more
[12:41] Speaker 2: large and prominent, but the inoculation messages seem to be
[12:44] Speaker 2: much more effective.
[12:47] Speaker 3: Their functions are slightly different the disclosure. The function of
[12:51] Speaker 3: that is to allow people to recognize that the content
[12:56] Speaker 3: is commercial in nature, whereas the inoculation and is supposed
[13:02] Speaker 3: to make people more resilient to influence.
[13:07] Speaker 2: Okay, Okay, So I can see how that would work
[13:09] Speaker 2: on social I wonder how it would work on a
[13:14] Speaker 2: website and whether you've looked at that at all, because
[13:16] Speaker 2: I know sometimes these ads will intentionally be run next
[13:20] Speaker 2: to like legit reporting, and I'm thinking especially around the
[13:26] Speaker 2: potential of carbon capture, Like they'll often run this native
[13:29] Speaker 2: ad that's like very positive about the potential of carbon
[13:32] Speaker 2: capture right next to a reported piece that's like pretty critical,
[13:35] Speaker 2: and it has the effect sometimes I think of people thinking, oh,
[13:38] Speaker 2: like there's two sides to the story or whatever, like
[13:41] Speaker 2: there's the juries out but right.
[13:43] Speaker 3: Or sometimes they'll even sponsor a newsletter, like there's a
[13:46] Speaker 3: lot of environmental newsletters that are sponsored by a fossil
[13:49] Speaker 3: fuel property Yeah, so I don't think I've designed any
[13:54] Speaker 3: studies to test that, but I agree with your conjecture
[13:59] Speaker 3: that that probably muddies the waters for.
[14:03] Speaker 2: Consumers. I wonder if you have talked to any outlets
[14:07] Speaker 2: in your research about how much might they be willing
[14:10] Speaker 2: to do to counteract the potentially negative impacts of these ads.
[14:15] Speaker 2: I don't know if you've heard anything from them on
[14:18] Speaker 2: that front.
[14:19] Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I mean, I guess who were you talking to.
[14:22] Speaker 3: I mean, I've talked to reporters like climate reporters.
[14:25] Speaker 2: Yeah, climate reporters buy and large really want their outlets
[14:29] Speaker 2: to do something about this.
[14:30] Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, many of them are quite a guest at
[14:33] Speaker 3: what's happening, and some of them have actually left their
[14:38] Speaker 3: employer because the employer is accepting fossil fuel money and
[14:45] Speaker 3: creating ads around them. I've also talked to reporters who
[14:52] Speaker 3: have talked to people from the content studio, the people
[14:58] Speaker 3: from the content studio, the product marketers or whatever you
[15:03] Speaker 3: want to refer to them, as they will try and
[15:06] Speaker 3: talk with reporters to coordinate to find out what they're
[15:11] Speaker 3: writing about. So, despite that presumed firewall between the newsroom
[15:17] Speaker 3: and the business side of things, it's very porous, and
[15:22] Speaker 3: you know, the reporters don't have much recourse, right, they
[15:27] Speaker 3: can leave if they don't like it. Yeah, in terms
[15:31] Speaker 3: of them saying to management, oh, we need to make
[15:35] Speaker 3: these more clear, we need to make native advertisements more clear,
[15:39] Speaker 3: I don't know. I mean, Jill Abramson got forced out
[15:43] Speaker 3: of The New York Times because in part she thought
[15:46] Speaker 3: native advertising was a bad idea. And another point is
[15:50] Speaker 3: that years ago, I believe it was the New York
[15:53] Speaker 3: Times they swore off. They committed that they would no
[15:59] Speaker 3: longer take tobacco industry ad dollars any kind. Yeah, but
[16:05] Speaker 3: in twenty twenty one, Philip Morris International came back to them,
[16:11] Speaker 3: came back to a lot of the majors that the
[16:13] Speaker 3: legacy media in the US, and ran a native advertising campaign,
[16:17] Speaker 3: not about cigarettes, but about their what do they call it,
[16:21] Speaker 3: tobacco harm reduction efforts.
[16:23] Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's right. And some people.
[16:26] Speaker 3: Pointed out, wait a minute, the New York Times and
[16:29] Speaker 3: the Boston Globe are carrying this. They had committed that
[16:32] Speaker 3: they would no longer take tobacco money, and how they're
[16:36] Speaker 3: violating it. So I don't know how strong these commitments
[16:41] Speaker 3: are when they make them.
[16:42] Speaker 2: I just have one more question for you. I know
[16:44] Speaker 2: that the social media platforms themselves have been very resistant
[16:47] Speaker 2: to any kind of labeling or content moderation or things
[16:52] Speaker 2: like that. Increasingly so in the last six months, I know,
[16:56] Speaker 2: I've seen people saying that even just the like verifiable
[17:01] Speaker 2: information kind of labels our censorship. So I'm curious for
[17:06] Speaker 2: your take on that. And i know that, you know,
[17:08] Speaker 2: even research like yours is being targeted as sort of
[17:12] Speaker 2: like censorship, So I'm curious what you think about that. Yeah.
[17:16] Speaker 3: So I actually fielded a quick poll in January after
[17:22] Speaker 3: Mark Zuckerberg made his statement about getting rid of the
[17:26] Speaker 3: third party fact checking and found that I think it
[17:30] Speaker 3: was two thirds of Americans do want content moderation on
[17:37] Speaker 3: social media, and the majority of them think that fact
[17:40] Speaker 3: checking is beneficial, and they were significantly us favorable towards
[17:49] Speaker 3: what did he call it, community notes, Right, that's what
[17:53] Speaker 3: he was going to pivot. So, I mean, we have evidence.
[17:56] Speaker 3: I mean, not that there was any question that that
[17:58] Speaker 3: Zuckerberg was doing this for any reason other than to
[18:02] Speaker 3: bend to the new administration. Nonetheless, here's empirical evidence suggesting
[18:10] Speaker 3: that the public wants these sorts of labels. Yeah, you know,
[18:16] Speaker 3: it's not censorship.
[18:18] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[18:19] Speaker 3: Yeah. You can still access the content, right.
[18:22] Speaker 2: You can still read it, you just have some context
[18:25] Speaker 2: for it, all right. Thank you so much for taking
[18:28] Speaker 2: the time.
[18:28] Speaker 3: Well, thank you so much. Amy.
[18:34] Speaker 1: That's it for this week, Thanks for listening. In case
[18:38] Speaker 1: you missed it, last year we did a pretty exhaustive
[18:41] Speaker 1: report on adveritorials, looking at which outlets were making the
[18:46] Speaker 1: most of them for fossil fuel companies, how much money
[18:49] Speaker 1: they were making, and what various researchers had to say
[18:53] Speaker 1: about that, including Doctor Amazine. You can find that on
[18:56] Speaker 1: our website Drilled dot Media, along with lots of other coverage.
[19:01] Speaker 1: Our producer this week is Peter duff Our. Music is
[19:06] Speaker 1: Bird in the Hand by Foreknown. Thanksgin for insting, and
[19:10] Speaker 1: we'll see you next time.

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