Advertising in the Age of New Media Media Research Paper

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Advertising in the Age of New Media
A number of media organizations in this era of new media are largely mining users’ personal data to attract advertisers. This is in an attempt to ensure that there is free access to information and articles published by those media companies. Through data mining, media organizations are able to determine what a specific user is more interested in and are thus able to align advertisers with the users’ behavior. New media has presented new opportunities for advertising because as noted by Stafford and Faber (ix), it entails interactive communication that is enhanced by technological advancements. However, this practice of advertising raises some privacy concern because mining of personal data from users is intrusive. While the intention of such media organizations is to increase the number of advertisers so that they can remain free, the privacy of users is paramount and should be respected regardless of the intention. As such, it is more important to protect users’ privacy, even if this will require the introduction of a subscription fee and a limitation to advertising.
Privacy of users relates to the absence of knowledge of users personal information which should be protected using all possible means. Protection of personal information has moral importance in terms of prevention of harm, enhancement of autonomy, promotion of informational justice, and prevention of informational inequality (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). Prevention of harm entails ensuring that personal information is not used to pose any physical, mental or emotional danger to the individual. In line to this, access to personal information in target advertising poses such a threat to users because they are not aware of the type of individual accessing the data. Enhancement of autonomy implies that users are their own individual and they have the ability to make personal decisions in the absence of outside forces (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). However, advertising using personal information, as practiced by media organizations, influences a person’s ability to choose. While that is the aim of advertising, using personal data to do so is in contrary to the autonomy right that every individual of sane mind holds. Informational inequality applies to the concept of maintaining fairness in the use of personal data. Users are not always sure that media organizations using such personal data will uphold their part of terms and conditions and as such, there is always the possibility that the data may be used for other purposes. Finally, informational injustice relates to the use of personal data to discriminate a person. These are the reasons why governments have enacted privacy laws and as such, media organizations should also take a moral ground, regardless of what the law says.
Protection of privacy is important because it allows people to take control over their own lives. Through the protection of privacy, individuals can determine what kind of advertising materials they want to reach them. Further, as noted by Esteve (40) users whose data is mined by media organizations lack control of their information because media companies can access this information and use it to attract advertisers. For instance, Facebook uses personal data from users for advertisement targeting and according to Wagner, the advertising revenues for Facebook are spiking as the number of Facebook users increase. The problem with this is that while Facebook is free and accessible to anyone with access to internet and mobile device, the company is benefitting and increasing its revenue at the expense of their users’ privacy. This is because Facebook is able to analyze data from a user’s news feed and then show them advertisements based on those news feed (Wagner). For instance, if a user’s news feed indicates that they are interested in weight loss activities, Facebook is likely to bring advertisements on online gyms and other similar advertisements related to weight loss. As such, the user gets all types of advertisements and cannot be able to control or determine the kind of information that reaches them through those adverts. Thus it is paramount to enhance the privacy of personal data to eliminate the exploitation of users by companies such as Facebook and to ensure that users can have some level of control on the kind of advertisement materials they receive.
Further, media organizations use personal data to target and attract advertisers yet users might not be willing participants in the whole process. As indicated by Esteve (41), the privacy policies that the media companies use are complex and time-consuming and in most cases, users do not fully realize the implications of the terms and conditions. Online users agree to the terms and conditions or policies not because they understand them but because they want to access the sites and engage with other users. As such, most of them are not interested in the advertisements posted by the media sites but rather, by the content in those sites. Based on this, it is likely that they will be willing to pay a fee to access the content if it means that their privacy will be respected.
Advertisement in online sites also presents the risk of attacks based on users’ personal information. For instance, Vratonjic (14) reveals that attacks on online media sites can be targeted on users who are tricked into clicking a link that presents itself as an advertisement for a product that the user may be interested in. This does not only present an intrusion risk but also affects the advertisers negatively. It is very unlikely that a user who was tricked to click on a certain link will be willing to visit the site for the second time, which presents a setback to the advertiser and the media site itself. This is a risk that can be avoided if those advertisements did not keep popping on the screen when a user visits certain sites so as to access contents. Thus, it is in the best interest of users, media companies and advertisers if media organizations refrained from mining personal data from users in an attempt to remain freely accessible to users.
There is significant evidence that users are not comfortable with how information about them is obtained and worse, they fear losing control of how information about them is being used. For instance, a report by Madden and Rainie of Pew Research Center indicate that a majority of Americans have very little faith on advertisers who track them online and use their personal information to advertise products. The Pew Research further revealed that more than 60 % of Americans are not confident that the information mined by websites, whether media organization websites or social media sites, will remain secure and private. There is always the lingering fear that personal information obtained through data mining will end up in the wrong hands or will be exposed to the public, and this has limited the credibility and trustworthiness of media organizations. While media organizations might feel like they are doing their readers or users a favor by providing them with free access to digital content, the reality is that they are jeopardizing the loyalty of those...