Unidentifiable media influencers
By Chang Se-moon
Almost every day, we read media reports on biased opinion surveys favoring a particular political party, foreign intervention in domestic elections, false criticism of celebrities and biased promotion of products.
Manipulation of the media is an especially serious problem when government control is mixed with the heavy dependence of the public on social media for news.
Consider bias in opinion polls. Survey results may be biased in a number of different ways. One such possibility is a biased or leading question. The other is a biased, not random, sample designed to obtain certain preconceived results.
Another may be response bias in which the answers given by respondents do not reflect their true beliefs in such issues as racism or sexism. Response bias is also likely when respondents do not trust surveyors and fear the release of their identity.
Still another, dangerous, bias may well be mobilization of supportive respondents through various financial incentives, especially when poll results are measured in quantity, not quality.
We all feel that these biases need to be corrected. In today's article, I want to touch on one aspect of online media bias that is increasingly prevalent in online social media: the role of influencers.
A person who works with a brand to recommend a product, endorse a candidate, or accuse a political opponent through social media is known as an influencer.
Possible foreign government interference in the domestic political process, and likely North Korea's cyber interference to support a particular party in South Korea that is friendly to North Korea, are two of many examples of how influencers may work.
I have found a document that can be a starter for any organization if it is seriously interested in regulating the role of influencers. The document is “Disclosures 101 for Social Media Influencers” by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (16 CFR Part 255), which was made available on Nov. 5 by Ms. Lesley Fair, who is an attorney for the FTC Division of Consumer & Business Education.
What is obvious, but important enough to repeat, is the statement by Ms. Fair that influencers have an obligation to make clear his or her relationship to the product or person, whether the relationship is a “personal, family, or employment relationship or a financial relationship ― for example, if a brand pays you or gives you free or discounted products.” If they do not, they should be required to do it by law.
Disclosures 101 answers questions you may have about when to disclose, how to disclose and what else you need to know.
Influencers work through various types of endorsement. Endorsement is defined in the Guides as any advertising message that “consumers are likely to believe reflects the opinions, beliefs, findings, or experiences of a party other than the sponsoring advertiser, even if the views expressed by that party are identical to those of the sponsoring advertiser.”
Influencers may make endorsements as individuals, a group, or even an institution.
The work of online influencers, standing alone, may be neither unethical nor illegal. It is unethical, and likely illegal at least in the U.S., if influencers do not identify their relations to the sponsor during endorsement. The Guides present several interesting examples, relating to whether an endorsement by an influencer is legal or illegal.
According to the Guides, “advertisements presenting endorsements by what are represented, directly or by implication, to be 'actual consumers' should utilize actual consumers in both the audio and video, or clearly and conspicuously disclose that the persons in such advertisements are not actual consumers of the advertised product.”
Regarding the liability of endorsers: “An endorsement of a particular automobile by one described as an 'engineer' implies that the endorser's professional training and experience are such that he is well acquainted with the design and performance of automobiles.” If the endorser's field is unrelated to automobiles, the endorsement would be deceptive.
Endorsements by organizations should represent “the judgment of a group whose collective experience exceeds that of any individual member, and whose judgments are generally free of the sort of subjective factors that vary from individual to individual.”
Endorsements by organizations “must be reached by a process sufficient to ensure that the endorsement fairly reflects the collective judgment of the organization.”
When there exists a financial connection between the endorser and the seller of the advertised product, such a connection must be fully disclosed. For example, when a young man signs up to be part of a “street team” program in which points are awarded each time a team member talks to his or her friends about a particular advertiser's products, the incentives “should be clearly and conspicuously disclosed.”
To summarize, sources that are not easily and publicly identifiable should never be allowed to post messages on social media, with severe penalties for any violation.
Chang Se-moon (changsemoon@yahoo.com) is the director of the Gulf Coast Center for Impact Studies.