Hot Dogs and Politics
In Upton Sinclair’s Jungle, a book that exposed the horrid conditions of meat processing, Sinclair writes:
The meat would be shoveled into carts, and the man who did the shoveling would not trouble to lift out a rat even when he saw one—there were things that went into the sausage in comparison with which a poisoned rat was a tidbit. There was no place for the men to wash their hands before they ate their dinner, and so they made a practice of washing them in the water that was to be ladled into the sausage.
After Sinclair and other muckrakers revealed that our hot dogs contain some undesirable ingredients, Americans called for regulation. And they got it—the FDA was formed and the government mandated nutrition labels which listed all ingredients and other nutritional information.
Today, our hot dogs may be 100% beef (with some added nitrates), but our advertisements are not as clearly labeled. In particular, political advertisements in the 2016 election cycle often made use of native advertising techniques on platforms like Facebook and Reddit. In some cases, paid actors would pose as real members of these platforms and promote candidates without disclosing that they were paid.
We need to start labeling our advertisements. We need the government to mandate this labeling. We need platforms to buy in and better inform users about the sources of their content.
What I’m imagining is something like a nutrition label for advertisements, showing who has financed the advertisement and clearly labeling ads. I think that people would be shocked to discover how much of the content that they perceive to be organic is actually sponsored.
In class we discussed the possibility of labeling fake news, but I don’t think that this is necessary or feasible. There is inherent bias involved with parsing the “real” from the “fake,” which can lead dangerously down the path of corporate and government censorship. The issue of fake, unsponsored news is different from that of fake, sponsored content, which I believe is the larger issue and represents a larger portion of politically driven content.
We must start with labeling political ads and take steps from there—nobody likes rat-flavored hot dogs.
Mike Smith
November 4, 2017 @ 7:36 pm
Wonderful post, thank you. So, what would this label look like? Are there any examples out in the real world that you could use as guide of something already successful (i.e., in the funder labeling space rather than the nutrition space)? Where would you put this on posts? How about on graphical, sponsored content? I’m not asking because I don’t think it’s possible, but because I’d like to know how we might move this idea forward. I’m not sure who or what agency created the nutritional label, but why wait?