Nudging – a Media Ethics Concern

This is another college essay, by me, initially titled, The Ethics of Media Nudging, submitted 8/28/25

              “Of course people have always tried to influence one another. Sometimes this has been done through blandishments or discussion, sometimes through commercial sponsorship, highway billboards or religious sermons” (Katz et. al. 2023). Commercial sponsorship, whether by an individual or entity, of media influence over the thoughts and behaviors of others is the “nudging” in question.

What of nudging on a massive scale? Katz and the team of authors behind Nudging Choices Through Media : Ethical and philosophical implications for humanity ask, “what happens to us as unique individuals as we become ever more funneled into directions set by seldom-seen if not entirely unknown others? Are we still ourselves, or are we becoming transformed into a product of massive social engineering? And who determines the overall architecture of this massive engineering product? Presumably it will be designed, and evolve, far from democratically.”

Nudging is legal, but is it ethical? Ilan Fuchs, Ph.D. notes the difference in her 2024 article, Law vs. Ethics: The Debate Over What’s Legal and What’s Right: “While the law functions as a system of rules backed by political authority to maintain order, ethics is a broader concept grounded in personal, cultural, and societal values.”

Highway billboards, though antiquated, are but one form of a long history of media nudging:      

“We should remember that the process of “nudging” people to make decisions or act in a certain way has a long and hoary history that continues into the present. We have records from ancient Greece explaining how talented orators moved crowds to vote in support of certain policies or politicians and on occasion persuaded retreating soldiers to turn about and face destruction at the hands of enemies. Placards, billboards and broadsheets have continued this tradition.” (Katz et. al. 2023)

And today, it looks more like a “growing array of gadgets, ‘smarter’ smartphones, intelligent networks and sensing devices … all of which affect every level of our experience. We have more choices of what to do with our media, and what we can have our media do to us.” (Katz et. al. 2023)

              “Do to us?!”  If an ancient orator could move men to die in battle, how does that compare to the ultra-powered algorithmic capabilities of today’s media influence? “Algorithmic nudging, as its name implies, uses algorithms to collect information and guide choices of the user audience members, generally in a dynamic way” (Katz, et. al. 2023). The dynamism warrants some exploration:

“We wish to explore forms of life under ever-expanding media tools that are becoming extensions of ourselves, but equally extensions of remote others, including algorithms, which wield increasing degrees and intensity of influence and power over us. To what extent do these tools become part of our decision-making processes and routines, both explicitly and implicitly, and with what consequences? To what extent do the choice architectures designed by those who set up the choices we encounter through our communication media lead us to act in a certain ways?” (Katz, et. al. 2023).

              When it came to nudging their readers toward anti-war sentiments, Serge McCabe, photo director, The (Portland) Oregonian, said in a survey about his justifiably ethical decision to use graphic Pulitzer-winning media in his newspaper: “We have to use some of these photos sometimes or else nothing ever changes. The war in Vietnam really didn’t start drawing to an end or start drawing a lot of protest until those images started coming in.” (O’Brien, et. al.) The media in question were a series of six photographs, which “Freelance photographer Gregory Marinovich captured … in Soweto on September 15, as a mob savagely murdered a man suspected of being a spy. ‘They told me to stop taking pictures,’ Marinovich told his editors. ‘I said I would stop shooting when they stopped killing him.’” (O’Brien, et. al.)

              Meanwhile, Lams, another ethicist, is asking, “should music media outlets like Billboard and Rolling Stone continue to cover music leaks, consequentially perpetuating the cycle, or should they cease to cover these occurrences entirely, as a way to quell the illegality with silence?” Lams notes that the leaking of music itself is unethical, but debates the merits of linking to the music in further media publication. Ultimately, while the music leaks aren’t life-and-death media material, “media outlets like Rolling Stone and Billboard, a music industry publication which covers all breaking music news, are not helping the situation,” Lams says, by pushing out media of several types when a leak occurs. “As collections of songs, studio recordings from an upcoming album or merely unreleased demos, are leaked online, these outlets cover the leak with a breaking story or a blog post. But they don’t stop there. Rolling Stone and Billboard often also will include a link within the story to listen to the songs that were leaked” (Lams). Are these media giants nudging their audience to perpetuate illegal leaks?

              Like the rock band whose music prompted Lams’ article, “Critics are quick to point out the paternalistic and surveillance aspects of nudging and the morally unhappy situation that this process can lead to. Yet, even more, they often contest the claims of special insight and unadulterated beneficence that the technocratic designers of the systems claim for themselves” (Katz et. al. 2023). Media nudging is happening, and it is happening at scale. Katz et. al. go into detail about the way this is manifesting in the People’s Republic of China, which “has been continually pioneering what is possible in terms of social control over populations in terms of communication and technology.”

              The Katz team of ethicists warns that their research exposed a “theme” in “the way nudges erode our sense of personhood and freedom, and even limit the freedom of information to which we are exposed.” While media nudging is legal, widely studied, and occasionally pitched as benevolent, Katz et. al. ultimately conclude, “it is essential that humans maintain vigilant control over the algorithmic universe they are constructing and never allow themselves to fully delegate responsibility to machines.”