In June 2024, IN/LAB invited young students to the co-creation program Summer Sprint, exploring how news media can strengthen trust and relevance for younger audiences. The students collaborated with news professionals to develop prototypes of product features and experiences aimed at making journalistic content more credible, transparent, and useful. During the sprint, one team came up with an idea for how to help users better understand the journalistic process and certain editorial decisions. We decided to explore this idea further through an experiment in collaboration with Aftonbladet. We called it the Ethics Box (Etikmotiveringsboxen).
This is an example of the ethics box in an Aftonbladet article.
What is the Ethics Box?
The Ethics Box was an experiment designed to increase transparency in news reporting by explaining key editorial decisions to readers. In selected Aftonbladet articles, an explanation box with three bullet points was included, explaining why the name and/or image of a person was published or not. The articles were often on crime-related topics, since these editorial decisions often raise reader questions.
How did we test this?
To assess the impact of the Ethics Box, Aftonbladet conducted an A/B test with two audience groups. Half of the group read articles that featured the box, while the other half saw the same articles without it. Some then received a short survey asking if they understood and agreed with the editorial decisions and if they trusted the content. Aftonbladet then analysed the responses alongside engagement metrics. The experiment was conducted during the fall.
Why focus on increasing transparency?
The experiment was developed as part of IN/LAB’s ongoing work to explore solutions to media trust challenges—an effort that was built on insights from Schibsted Media’s study on media trust. The study shows that people are more likely to consume, trust, and pay for news when they understand how it is produced and by whom. Greater transparency around the journalistic process, and particularly around editorial decisions, is therefore an important part in strengthening the relationship between the news media and audiences.
The Ethics Box was one way to test whether providing a direct, accessible explanation of editorial choices could improve trust in news media. Our hypothesis was that when readers understand how and why journalists make decisions, they are more likely to trust the final product. With the experiment, our ambition was also to encourage journalists to effectively communicate their decision-making to the audience.
What did the experiment show?
Many users who encountered the Ethics Box wanted to click on it and read the information.
Those who clicked on the Ethics Box were more likely to understand and agree with the editorial decisions made in the article, compared to those who didn’t.
Interaction with the box was connected to users perceiving the content in the news article as credible.
What’s next?
We are very happy that Aftonbladet, after the experiment, decided to incorporate the Ethics Box feature as an element in selected articles! The original idea from the co-creation process and the Ethics Box experiment is not a silver bullet for building trust, but it’s one small step towards a more open and transparent journalism. A big thanks to the people involved in the experiment and to the Summer Sprint team for creating the foundation for this idea! Do you have questions about this work? Please contact Belenn Bekele (belenn.bekele@schibsted.com) or Molly Grönlund Müller (molly.gronlund.muller@schibsted.com) from IN/LAB, or Martin Schori (martin.schori@schibsted.com) from Aftonbladet.