Boosting political advertising literacy? An ad training intervention to detect and evaluate political microtargeting during the 2023 Dutch parliamentary elections

The way politicians communicate with citizens has fundamentally changed through the rapid growth of data-driven techniques. Political messages are increasingly matched to individual voters, enabled by large databases containing personal information that voters leave online, such as individual characteristics, preferences, and behaviors. This phenomenon is known as political microtargeting, which can be seen as a form of political behavioral advertising where citizens receive targeted messages and advertisements to influence their political attitudes and behavior (Zuiderveen Borgesius et al., 2018). When successfully and repeatedly targeted, it is expected that these messages have robust and long-term effects on citizens and most notably on their electoral preferences. Potential benefits of political microtargeting include increased political participation and political knowledge and more informed voting choices among citizens. Moreover, targeted online messages have the potential to inform, interest and mobilise citizens who are difficult to reach with traditional media (Zuiderveen Borgesius et al., 2018). However, others worry microtargeting might invade citizens’ privacy, may lead to voter manipulation and a biased view of politics. Not everyone has access to the same political information, which could possibly amplify information asymmetries among citizens. In this sense, political microtargeting could harm the democratic process of deliberation (Bayer, 2020). Yet, citizens are often unaware of being targeted and face difficulties recognising and understanding political microtargeting. However, previous studies have shown that boosting interventions provide a means to enhance citizens’ understanding, conscious evaluations, and skills with regard to targeting (Kozyreva et al., 2022). A boost is an intervention that enlists human cognition, the environment or both in order to strengthen (digital) competencies, for example through literacy tips. The current study aims to test such a boost aimed at fostering citizens’ competencies with regard to microtargeting, as we set up an educational training that would help people recognize and evaluate online political advertisements. Together with a panel company (I&O Research), we collected data in the run-up to the Dutch general elections in November 2023. Using a mobile Experience Sampling Method (mESM), we asked respondents to upload political advertisements they encountered online. Before their first upload, respondents received an instruction on how to detect political ads through labels, after which two-thirds of the respondents completed an ‘ad training’ (N=100). This training had two components: (1) respondents were asked if they thought the shown picture was an online political ad (recognition), and (2) they were asked to explain why (evaluation). This training will give us insights into how people evaluate political ads and what elements or associations lead to the (correct) detection of political ads. Moreover, we will use a matching design to test whether there were differences with prior mESM data from the 2021 Dutch general elections. Data has been collected and will be analyzed in January 2024.