As more Americans turn to social media for news and political information, campaigns are increasingly turning to influencers to reach highly engaged audiences. But when a social media influencer shares a political opinion online, how can audiences know if their message reflects genuine support or if it’s a paid ad?
That question is at the center of new research from faculty fellows in the College of Communication and Information (CCI). These fellows, who are part of the college’s Information Integrity Institute, published their study, “Antecedents of Disclosure: What Transparency Measures Social Media Users in the United States Want from Paid Political Influencers,” in the journal Social Media+Society. Their research examines Americans’ attitudes toward disclosure when influencers are compensated to promote political organizations, parties, or campaigns.
Led by Assistant Professor Martin Riedl and Associate Professor Benjamin Horne, and the institute’s director, Professor Catherine Luther, this study explores whether social media users believe influencers should be transparent when promoting paid political messages. While the Federal Trade Commission regulates the disclosure of paid ads and sponsored content for retail products and services on social media platforms, no such regulations exist for paid political messaging.
“Most of my research in the past examines false and misleading political information in news and various interventions to reduce trust in that false information,” Horne, who is in the School of Information Sciences, said. “For me, this paper moves to sort of an adjacent space where we’re exploring the motive behind the content and consumers’ perceptions about that motive. In this case, payment for creation of content that’s political.”
For Luther, whose research has also examined the spread of false and misleading information on social media, understanding who is behind a political message is just as important as determining whether the message itself is true. Audiences may struggle to distinguish between opinions that reflect an influencer’s genuine views and those shaped by outside interests or financial incentives.
An Interdisciplinary Approach
Established in 2023, the Information Integrity Institute facilitates interdisciplinary research focused on areas of growing importance in the age of information. More broadly, the Research and Innovation Center is the College of Communication and Information’s arm that supports research and innovative activities addressing information and communication problems, with an emphasis on collaboration across disciplines.
That interdisciplinary mission brought together faculty fellows from across CCI, including researchers in communication studies, journalism, and information science, to explore shared research interests and identify opportunities for collaboration.
The idea began taking shape in fall 2024, Horne said, when the group started looking for a collaborative project that could draw on their different areas of expertise. Social media influencers emerged as a natural intersection.
The group envisioned multiple research projects using data from a national survey, with the study on paid political influencers becoming the first. The topic also aligned with the institute’s focus on information integrity, particularly as questions about authenticity, transparency, and sources of information continue to grow in importance.
For Riedl, the project also built on years of research examining the relationship between influencers and politics. His earlier work explored why influencers choose to associate themselves with political causes and candidates, including the role of personal beliefs, pressure from followers, and other motivations.
Riedl also became interested in the growing use of influencers by political campaigns.
“Political campaigns started tapping influencers to promote their causes,” Riedl said. “It was interesting to me to see creators being sort of co-opted in these causes, but also the professionalization of the political machines that tap into new forms of communication.”
The issue is particularly significant because disclosure requirements differ between commercial and political influencer content, Riedl said. While commercial influencers operate under federal disclosure requirements for sponsored content, political influencers who receive payment or in-kind compensation from political organizations, parties or campaigns are not currently required to disclose that compensation to their followers.
For Riedl, that raises a fundamental question about what audiences should know when evaluating political messages online.
“Should we have the possibility to know whether someone is speaking to us because they got paid for it or because they genuinely believe in something?” Riedl said.
Studying Attitudes Toward Disclosure
To conduct the study, researchers recruited approximately one thousand US. social media users through the survey platform Prolific. The sample was matched to the US population across political affiliation and ethnicity, and researchers then focused on participants who reported following social media influencers. That resulted in a final sample of 906 participants.
Rather than attempting to place content creators into a strict category of who is or is not a “political influencer,” the researchers examined whether participants consumed political content from influencers or other social media content creators. The survey included topics ranging from voting to other political issues, recognizing that many creators may discuss politics alongside other types of content. Because the study was based on a cross-sectional survey, the researchers could identify relationships between these factors but could not determine whether one caused another.
One finding stood out to Horne: People who consumed more political influencer content were less likely to support disclosure of payments for that content.
While previous research suggested this relationship could occur, Horne said the finding raises concerns about the potential normalization of paid content online.
“The more political influencer content that someone consumes, the less likely they are to support disclosure of payments for that content,” Horne said. “It suggests there’s some sort of normalization of paid content online that people are just okay with not being disclosed. I find that interesting and concerning.”
The study also found differences based on age. Older participants were slightly more supportive of disclosure requirements, while participants who consumed more political influencer content were less supportive of disclosure.
Riedl said one possible explanation is that compensation has become increasingly normalized online. For users who assume that many content creators are already being paid in some form, a formal disclosure may seem less important.
The research also found that authenticity matters. Participants who placed a greater value on authenticity were also more likely to support disclosure when political content was paid for.
“One of the more real problems is not just you see something that’s completely false or you see something that’s completely true, but you see inauthentic or misleading propagandist-type opinions pushing people’s perspectives in different directions,” Horne said.
Riedl said the findings point to the need for audiences to approach political content online with a degree of caution.
“Not all political support that we see online is organic,” Riedl said. “Some of it is paid for, and we don’t know, or might not know, that it was paid for.”
Campaigns that appear to have developed organically, he said, may instead be fueled by campaign money, making it more difficult for audiences to understand the origins of the messages they encounter.
The research team sees transparency as one potential way to help audiences better understand the information they encounter online. Clear disclosure of paid political content could provide important context about who is behind a message and why it is being shared.
For Luther, greater transparency could have broader implications for the online information environment.
“Any movement towards transparency in online information is a good thing,” Luther said. “I think it can only be beneficial for democratic societies.”
She said progress toward greater transparency could come through legislation or policies adopted by technology companies, though establishing requirements is only part of the challenge. Ensuring that disclosure rules are consistently followed and enforced would also be critical.
Riedl said clearer rules could also help establish standards for the growing field of political influencing. Disclosure requirements could encourage greater professionalization, clearer ethical expectations, and a stronger commitment to transparency among influencers, campaigns, and the companies that work with them.
However, he noted that regulations alone would not solve the problem. Effective disclosure requirements would also need enforcement, while platforms could play a role by providing creators with clear and standardized tools for labeling paid content.
Looking Ahead
The study is also only the first step.
For Riedl, the next step was to move beyond asking people what they say they want and examine how disclosure labels actually affect their responses.
“It’s one thing to ask people about their attitudes and opinions, but it’s another thing to actually see whether being exposed to content that is either labeled or unlabeled has an impact on people’s perceptions of trust,” Riedl said.
Riedl and Horne have already conducted a follow-up experiment designed to examine whether people’s stated support for disclosure matches how labels actually affect their perceptions of political content. Researchers created a YouTube-like experimental platform where participants viewed short videos from political content creators with different types of disclosure labels.
The experiment examined how factors such as whether a platform or other users provide the label and who is identified as paying for the content affect trust and credibility. Participants were asked about their trust in the content after viewing the videos, while researchers also tracked interactions within the experimental environment.
The team has completed the experiments and conducted preliminary analysis, with plans to continue examining the findings.
For Luther, that question also connects directly to the Information Integrity Institute’s broader mission and its emphasis on authentic and trustworthy information. Research like this can help advance understanding of the evolving information ecosystem and encourage audiences to think more critically about the sources behind the messages they encounter.
Their research illustrates how CCI faculty can bring together expertise across disciplines to address evolving challenges surrounding information, authenticity, and trust.