Only a fifth of sixth-graders are able to recognize sponsored content on the Internet and just half are able to take a critical approach to information in it, a study in Finland found.
Previous studies by Chartbeat and CivicScience found that less than 5 percent of US adults generally trust sponsored content and 61 percent believe that it hurts the trustworthiness of news outlets. The new findings, which confirm that the trust is correlated with lower education levels, could also mean difficulties for news outlets which use sponsored content as a source of funding.
"A democracy can’t survive on the click-bait 'listicles,'…and 'sponsored content' that fill so many web pages." https://t.co/DAtW5mebed
— Lisa Ann Jacobs (@lisaannjacobs) April 21, 2015
On Monday, journalists in southern California were awarded the Pulitzer Prize for their analysis of corruption in the local school district. However, the journalist who broke the story left the newspaper six months before the award due to low pay.
"Many of the students’ emails resembled instant messages," researcher Carita Kiili told Finnish broadcaster YLE.
