{"id":47,"date":"2017-02-10T00:32:15","date_gmt":"2017-02-10T00:32:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.publiconsulting.com\/wordpress\/webliteracy\/chapter\/identifying-sponsored-content\/"},"modified":"2018-01-19T11:37:37","modified_gmt":"2018-01-19T11:37:37","slug":"identifying-sponsored-content","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/www.publiconsulting.com\/wordpress\/webliteracy\/chapter\/identifying-sponsored-content\/","title":{"rendered":"Identifying Sponsored Content"},"content":{"raw":"\n

Our warning to \u201cgo upstream\u201d before evaluating claims is particularly important with sponsored content. For instance, a lot of time on a site you\u2019ll see \u201cheadlines\u201d like these, which I pulled from a highly regarded technology magazine:<\/p>\n[caption id=\"attachment_37\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"1177\"]\"A Figure 10a<\/a>[\/caption]\n

Look at the headline in the upper left corner. Are lawmakers really concerned about this insane military scope? Maybe. But note that Network World<\/em> is not making this claim. Instead, the ZeroTac Tactical Scope company is making the claim.  It\u2019s an ad, served from another site into this page in a way that makes it look like a story.<\/p>\n[caption id=\"attachment_65\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"1483\"]\"A Figure 11a<\/a>[\/caption]\n

Sponsored content isn\u2019t always purely an advertisement. Sometimes it provides helpful information. This piece below, for example, is an in-depth look at some current industry trends in information technology.<\/p>\n[caption id=\"attachment_66\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"2539\"]\"An Figure 12a<\/a>[\/caption]\n

The source of this article is not InfoWorld<\/em>, but the technology company Hewlett Packard, and the piece is written by a VP of Hewlett Packard, with no InfoWorld<\/em> oversight. (Keep an eye out on the web for articles that have a \u201cSponsored\u201d indicator above or below them -- they are more numerous than you might think!)<\/p>\n

You can see how this is not just an issue with political news, but will be an issue in your professional life as well. If you go to work in a technology field and portray this article to your boss as \u201csomething I read on InfoWorld<\/em>\u201d, you\u2019re doing a grave disservice to your company. Portraying a vendor-biased take as a neutral InfoWorld<\/em> take is a mistake you might come to regret.<\/p>\n\n","rendered":"

Our warning to \u201cgo upstream\u201d before evaluating claims is particularly important with sponsored content. For instance, a lot of time on a site you\u2019ll see \u201cheadlines\u201d like these, which I pulled from a highly regarded technology magazine:<\/p>\n

\"A
Figure 10a<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Look at the headline in the upper left corner. Are lawmakers really concerned about this insane military scope? Maybe. But note that Network World<\/em> is not making this claim. Instead, the ZeroTac Tactical Scope company is making the claim.  It\u2019s an ad, served from another site into this page in a way that makes it look like a story.<\/p>\n

\"A
Figure 11a<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Sponsored content isn\u2019t always purely an advertisement. Sometimes it provides helpful information. This piece below, for example, is an in-depth look at some current industry trends in information technology.<\/p>\n

\"An
Figure 12a<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The source of this article is not InfoWorld<\/em>, but the technology company Hewlett Packard, and the piece is written by a VP of Hewlett Packard, with no InfoWorld<\/em> oversight. (Keep an eye out on the web for articles that have a \u201cSponsored\u201d indicator above or below them — they are more numerous than you might think!)<\/p>\n

You can see how this is not just an issue with political news, but will be an issue in your professional life as well. If you go to work in a technology field and portray this article to your boss as \u201csomething I read on InfoWorld<\/em>\u201d, you\u2019re doing a grave disservice to your company. Portraying a vendor-biased take as a neutral InfoWorld<\/em> take is a mistake you might come to regret.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"menu_order":1,"template":"","meta":{"pb_show_title":"on","pb_short_title":"","pb_subtitle":"","pb_authors":[],"pb_section_license":""},"chapter-type":[],"contributor":[],"license":[],"class_list":["post-47","chapter","type-chapter","status-publish","hentry"],"part":39,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.publiconsulting.com\/wordpress\/webliteracy\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/47","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.publiconsulting.com\/wordpress\/webliteracy\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.publiconsulting.com\/wordpress\/webliteracy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/chapter"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.publiconsulting.com\/wordpress\/webliteracy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.publiconsulting.com\/wordpress\/webliteracy\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/47\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48,"href":"https:\/\/www.publiconsulting.com\/wordpress\/webliteracy\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/47\/revisions\/48"}],"part":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.publiconsulting.com\/wordpress\/webliteracy\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/parts\/39"}],"metadata":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.publiconsulting.com\/wordpress\/webliteracy\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/47\/metadata\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.publiconsulting.com\/wordpress\/webliteracy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"chapter-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.publiconsulting.com\/wordpress\/webliteracy\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapter-type?post=47"},{"taxonomy":"contributor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.publiconsulting.com\/wordpress\/webliteracy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/contributor?post=47"},{"taxonomy":"license","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.publiconsulting.com\/wordpress\/webliteracy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/license?post=47"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}