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This study investigates which intervention strategies most effectively increase privacy protection behavior. Drawing upon Protection Motivation Theory, we examine the short- and long-term effects of (combinations) of three strategies: (1) increasing awareness of the threat to privacy, (2) training effective privacy protection behavior, and (3) addressing and combating privacy fatigue. We conducted a longitudinal experiment in the Netherlands with three waves (Nwave1 = 1,000, 2 weeks later Nwave2 = 799, 2 months later Nwave3 = 465) and eight between subjects conditions (no strategy and all possible combinations of the strategies). Results show that the training strategy increased self-efficacy and response efficacy, immediately increased all privacy protection behaviors, and positively impacted tracking blocking behavior in the short- and long-term, actual cookie rejection in the short-term (2 weeks later), and deletion behavior in the long-term (2 months later). The threat and fatigue strategies did not have their anticipated effects, but the threat strategy did immediately increase tracking blocking intentions, and the fatigue strategy had a positive, short-term effect on cookie rejection behavior.

This study investigates the effect of different types of blockchain-based timestamp disclosures in advertising on ad and brand attitude and trust, in a two-wave online experiment.

Synced advertising is one of the most recent developments in the advertising practice and concerns personalizing messages based on people’s current offline media behavior. While this strategy promises to enhance advertising efforts, it comes with a number of threats as it raises ethical questions and may lead to unintended side-effects for consumers. In particular, data collection techniques used for synced advertising purposes require further attention since they extend the so-called corporate surveillance to consumers’ offline sphere. The current study investigates to what extent data collection for synced advertising causes so-called chilling effects, i.e. a change in consumers’ media diet. To explore the mechanisms behind such chilling effects, the current study builds on personalized advertising theories and focuses on type of data collection, consumer control and location.

Description Synced advertising is one of the most recent developments in personalized communication and concerns personalizing messages based on people's current offline media behavior. While this strategy promises to enhance online communication efforts, it comes with a number of threats as it raises ethical questions and may lead to unintended side-effects for media users. In particular, data collection techniques used for synced advertising purposes require further attention since they extend the so-called corporate surveillance to users’ offline sphere. The proposed study aims at investigating to what extent data collection for synced advertising causes so-called chilling effects, i.e. a change in users’ media diet. While such effects have been concluded as a result of government surveillance of users’ online behavior, the effect of corporate surveillance on media users' behavior remains unknown. Considering differences in privacy regulations between the United States and Europe, we first conduct exploratory research into cross-national differences when it comes to chilling effects and their antecedents.

While data-driven personalization strategies are present in all areas of online communication, their impact on individuals and society is still not fully understood. Ongoing debates about online targeting are often emotion-driven and based on assumptions what algorithms might and could do in terms of impact on users. The proposed project focuses on targeting mechanisms on Facebook and investigates their impact on different types of users. Drawing on theories of digital vulnerabilities, we investigate if social media targeting may lead to vulnerability exploitation, and whether this differs between certain user groups for example due to different coping strategies applied by individuals.

Synced advertising is one of the most recent developments in personalized communication and concerns personalizing messages based on people's current offline media behavior. While this strategy promises to enhance online communication efforts, it comes with a number of threats as it raises ethical questions and may lead to unintended side-effects for media users. In particular, data collection techniques used for synced advertising purposes require further attention since they extend the so-called corporate surveillance to users’ offline sphere. The proposed study aims at investigating to what extent data collection for synced advertising causes so-called chilling effects, i.e. a change in users’ media diet. While such effects have been concluded as a result of government surveillance of users’ online behavior, effect of corporate surveillance on media users' behavior remains unknown. Considering differences in privacy regulations between the United States and Europe, we first conduct exploratory research into cross-national differences when it comes to chilling effects and their antecedents.

With the increase of data collected by companies, we observe the rising popularity of personalized marketing communication. Developments in data science and technology have created opportunities for organizations not only to use data collected online for personalization, but to move offline. An example of this is synced advertising, which involves personalizing messages based on people’s concurrent online and offline media behavior in real time . For example, media users receive a mobile message targeted based on the TV content they are watching simultaneously. While synced advertising promises to enhance communication efforts for practitioners, the way personal data is collected for it raises ethical concerns for the media user and subsequently, to unintended consequences, such as chilling effects. Chilling effects refer to the self-surveillance practices of media users as a result of external surveillance. The aim of this project is to build our understanding of chilling effects of corporate surveillance in everyday life.

This study aims at understanding how consumers cope with Br-UGC in visual social media for several reasons: (1) when consumers’ persuasion knowledge is not activated when seeing Br-UGC unwanted persuasion effects could occur. Consumers do not get a chance to cope with these persuasion attempts, and this results in not having a protection mechanism against persuasion, which is highly undesirable. (2) it is unknown how consumers cope with Br-UGC in social media. And (3), previous research has shown that persuasive strategies are present in brand-related posts from users (Fakkert, 2022). However, how consumers cope with these persuasion attempts in brand-related posts from users remain unexamined and is therefore crucial to examine. Drawing upon the PKM, coping with persuasive strategies can be defined as (1) recognizing the persuasive attempt, (2) understanding the persuasive attempt (together conceptual persuasion knowledge (Boerman 2018, Lee 2022)), and (3) developing an ‘evaluative attitude’ (Lee, 2022). Hence, we investigate consumer coping with Br-UGC looking into these processes. To study this, we make use of in-depth interviews with consumers to capture the complexity of the phenomena and because of the lack of research on coping with Br-UGC in visual social media.

An experimental investigation to harness the global Corona response momentum in the fight against climate change

Synced advertising is one of the most recent developments in the advertising practice and concerns personalizing messages based on people’s current offline media behavior. While this strategy promises to enhance advertising efforts, it comes with a number of threats as it raises ethical questions and may lead to unintended side-effects for consumers. In particular, data collection techniques used for synced advertising purposes require further attention since they extend the so-called corporate surveillance to consumers’ offline sphere. The current study investigates to what extent data collection for synced advertising causes so-called chilling effects, i.e. a change in consumers’ media diet. To explore the mechanisms behind such chilling effects, the current study builds on personalized advertising theories and focuses on advertising- (control over data used for synced advertising), context- (location) and consumer- related (need for self-presentation) factors.

An experimental investigation to harness the global Corona response momentum in the fight against climate change

In this study, the Interpersonal Trust Model is applied to passive data sharing online. More specifically, we investigate why consumers prevent Google from collecting and processing their data online.

This study explores perceptions of blockchain experts and online advertising stakeholders on the opportunities and challenges of blockchain technology to address the issue of fake advertising. It also investigates the factors affecting blockchain technology (non-)adoption in the online advertising ecosystem, and collects existing use cases of blockchain technology for authentic advertising.

Which legal, ethical and societal conditions need to be fulfilled for the use of digital solutions in managing the COVID-19 exit-strategy? This was the central question of this research. Digital technologies can be part of solutions to societal challenges, for example to manage the pandemic and lead the Netherlands out of the COVID-19 crisis. One set of technologies that figured particularly prominently in that debate was the use of contact tracing apps like the CoronaMelder, as well as digital vaccination passports (CoronaCheck app).In the Netherlands, Europe and worldwide, the introduction of apps such as the CoronaMelder or the CoronaCheck app was met by criticism from experts, politicians, civil society and academics. Concerns range from the lack of evidence for the effectiveness of such apps, uncertainty about the conditions that need to be fulfilled to reach their goal, our growing dependency on technology companies up to worries about the fundamental rights and adverse effects for vulnerable groups, such as elderly or users without a smart phone.The overall goal of the research was to monitor the societal, ethical and legal implications of implementing apps like the CoronaMelder, and from that draw lessons for the future use of ‘technology-assisted governance solutions’. One important conclusion from the report is that ‘there are no easy technological fixes, and in order for a technological solution to work, it needs to be part of a broader vision on what such a solution needs to function in society, achieve its intended goals and respect the fundamental rights of users as well as non-users.’ The report also offers critical reflections on the need for democratic legitimisation and accountability, the role of big tech and insights on the societal impact of the CoronaMelder and other technological solutions.

While data-driven personalisation strategies in marketing offer consumers several benefits, they potentially also create new disparities and vulnerabilities in society, and in individuals. This article explores in what ways application of so-called personalised marketing communication may lead to exploitation of vulnerability of consumers and builds on empirical findings on the issue by investigating if consumers are protected against such vulnerabilities under EU consumer protection law. We show a number of ways in which personalisation may lead to exploitation of internal and external vulnerabilities and that EU consumer law contains significant barriers to effectively address such exploitation.

Supplementary_File_nms_(1) for Vulnerability in a tracked society: Combining tracking and survey data to understand who gets targeted with what content by Nadine Bol, Joanna Strycharz, Natali Helberger, Bob van de Velde and Claes H de Vreese in New Media & Society