Tracing the Birth of the Audience Commodity

A Review of Zoe Sherman’s Modern Advertising and the Market for Audience Attention

Dados Bibliográficos

ID14854331
AutoresNora A Draper (0000-0003-0204-3031, autor correspondente)
Ano2021
Volume33
Fascículo3
Páginas444-449
Data de publicação2021-07-03
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoRethinking Marxism (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0893-5696 • E-ISSN: 1475-8059
EditoraInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/08935696.2021.1924472
OpenAlexW3188550291
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas1
Referências citadas5

Scholars in the field of critical political economy of communication have long considered how the media industry’s economic arrangements have influenced modern capitalist systems. Notably, these scholars have argued that the media industry’s primary goal has been the construction of an “audience commodity” that can be sold to advertisers. In Modern Advertising and the Market for Audience Attention: The US Advertising Industry’s Turn-of-the-Twentieth-Century Transition, Zoe Sherman outlines the origins of this idea of the consumable audience. This review highlights the significant contributions of Sherman’s work for communication scholars. Moreover, it considers whether economic models that stress the power of information and data ownership are best suited to challenge the contemporary realities of surveillance capitalism, the roots of which Sherman traces to the professionalization of the advertising industry in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries

Advertising · Business · Commodity · Economics · Market economy · Sociology · Tracing · Computer Science · Cultural Industries and Urban Development · Digital Economy and Work Transformation · Gender, Feminism, and Media