Rhyann Green
rg156417@ohio.edu
During election season, it is nearly impossible to escape political advertisements, which now span multiple mediums, including television, radio, and social media. Recent estimates from Kantar place indicates the total amount of money that will be spent on election advertisements this year to be $7 billion, making 2020 the most expensive year yet. A quarter of that spending will be poured into digital media advertisements.
However, the growing presence of political content in online spaces may not be what many voters want to see. A September Pew Research Center study found that over half of Americans believe no political ads should be allowed on social media platforms. This belief holds true across party lines and generational gaps.
Facebook recently announced that it plans to stop running new advertisements the week before the election. The website also detailed its plans to combat misinformation about the voting process and label any early victory claims before the final results are announced. Despite these additional efforts, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg still refuses to take action against advertisements containing misinformation and lies. The New York Times reports in a speech given at Georgetown University, Zuckerberg said Facebook is not in the position to regulate the claims made by politicians.
Facebook is not the sole figure responsible for stopping misinformation. We all have a role in seeking the truth as citizens. As aspiring professionals in the communications field, our responsibility is even greater. While social media websites like Facebook should make active efforts to remove lies and deceptive claims, it's our responsibility to make sure most of those lies never reach Facebook in the first place.
Advertisements are not meant to only serve the clients paying for them. They are meant to communicate with the public and inform the public about a variety of products, services, or issues. Political advertisements should have these same goals in mind. Misinformation does not serve the public. Misinformation is not responsible correspondence with the public.
As communication professionals, we must recognize that this work is important to uplifting and maintaining our democracy. It is our responsibility to provide citizens with the facts they need to make informed decisions about who will be representing their city, state, or country. It is more than possible to make effective and powerful ads without giving into deception. Although it may be easier in the face of today's divided political landscape, we must be honest first and foremost. If we fail to do this, we will fail to rebuild trust in the media.
Rhyann, I like your point about it being possible to create effective and powerful ads without deception. It is scary to go online, especially social media sites like Facebook, where misinformation runs rampant. Sometimes people do not think about how anyone can write anything on the internet and post it, and make it look entirely professional or convincingly real, and it could be completely false and biased information. It would help if everyone took an ethics or mass media course so that they can think about these types of things when deciding what to read on the internet and most importantly what to share. I think Facebook should be held accountable for removing any sort of false advertising or fake news off of their website. I feel that they have community standards that state they do not stand for these types of posts or ads, but yet they do not hold their users accountable and remove posts when they break the standards or guidelines. I try to be active in reporting any sort of posts that I have fact checked and found to be fake news, and also letting someone know they are sharing something that is not true. I would hope that someone would do the same for me if I ever were to post something that was not true or misleading. And you are so right it all ties right into our democracy and it is important that as readers and citizens we stick together and inform each other against any persons or groups who are trying to mislead us through ads politically or however they chose to do so!
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