Balancing perceptions of targeting: An investigation of political microtargeting transparency through a calculus approach.

Publisher: Public Library of Science Country of Publication: United States NLM ID: 101285081 Publication Model: eCollection Cited Medium: Internet ISSN: 1932-6203 (Electronic) Linking ISSN: 19326203 NLM ISO Abbreviation: PLoS One Subsets: MEDLINE

Original Publication: San Francisco, CA : Public Library of Science

Privacy* ; Social Media*; Humans ; Disclosure ; Self Disclosure

Over the last few years, political advertisers have moved with their audiences: to social media platforms. Advertisers on these platforms aim to persuade voters by sending messages tailored to them based on their own data: political microtargeting (PMT). A considerable problem with PMT is that users are often unaware that they are being targeted, while current transparency advances do not seem to suffice in informing users. However, increasing transparency may have consequences on users' privacy perceptions. Thus, the current work investigates whether disclosures, as a measure to increase transparency, increase users' recognition of a microtargeted ad, and subsequently what this means for their perceived benefits, privacy concerns, and their likelihood of engaging in privacy protection behavior, based on the privacy calculus. In a preregistered online one-factorial between-subjects experiment (N = 450) we exposed participants to either an Instagram post containing a currently used disclosure or a more salient disclosure. Our results show that exposure to this disclosure increases recognition of the ad being microtargeted, and that this relates to perceived benefits but not privacy concerns. However, the results show that users' privacy concerns are related to their increased privacy protection behavior. Finally, we found that over four-fifths of our participants who were exposed to the more salient disclosure recalled it correctly.
Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
(Copyright: © 2023 Jansen, Krämer. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

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Date Created: 20231207 Date Completed: 20231216 Latest Revision: 20231217

20231218

PMC10703312

10.1371/journal.pone.0295329

38060467