Digital marketing as digital methods
Repurposing Google Ads for controversy mapping
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5260415 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Òscar Coromina (0000-0002-6306-4154), Alexei Tsinovoi (0000-0001-8006-401X), Anders Kristian Munk (0000-0002-5542-3065) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 10 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Publication date | 2023-07-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Big Data & Society (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2053-9517 • E-ISSN: 2053-9517 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/20539517231216955 |
| OpenAlex | W4389492533 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 6 |
| References cited | 39 |
Digital advertising is central to the business models and technological affordances of digital platforms, creating marketplaces for user attention. Despite the keen theoretical attention to the commodification of audiences in critical new media and data studies, there has been little exploration of how digital marketing can also be understood as a methodological lens to study both controversies and the practices involved in the commodification of attention around the issues that animate such controversies. Addressing this gap in knowledge by drawing on the digital methods approach, this article proposes repurposing the tools, data and practices of digital marketing - what we coin digital marketing epistemology - as new methodological points of observation in controversy mapping. Focusing empirically on Google Ads, we scrutinize the building blocks of advertising campaigns on the platform and their metrics and measurements. We then offer a set of methodological 'recipes' for repurposing the Google Ads platform for controversy mapping and illustrate through a series of data sprints how this can contribute not only to a better understanding of the measurement and valuation practices that are involved in converting attention into a tradable asset but also the role these practices play in the unfolding of techno-social controversies
Affordance · Asset (computer security · Commodification · Computer security · Data science · Digital marketing · Digital media · Economics · Human–computer interaction · Lens (geology · Online advertising · Repurposing · Social media · Sociology · The Internet · Through-the-lens metering · World Wide Web · Computer Science · Cultural Industries and Urban Development · Digital Games and Media · Engineering · Media Studies and Communication
Digital Methods for Web Research
Markets in the Making
Digital Methods
The Attention economy
Computational Social Science
Data as asset? The measurement, governance, and valuation of digital personal data by Big Tech
The End of the Virtual
An unexpected journey
After the ‘APIcalypse’
The management of visibility in digital diplomacy
Political Insights
The attention economy and the Net
The Internet Archive and the socio-technical construction of historical facts
Doing Web history with the Internet Archive
Fake news’ as infrastructural uncanny
Opening alternative data imaginaries in urban studies
Google ads and the blindspot debate
Mapping knowledge controversies
Building on faults
Diving in magma
Why Map Issues? On Controversy Analysis as a Digital Method
Big Data, new epistemologies and paradigm shifts
Advancing search engine studies
Visual media analysis for Instagram and other online platforms
Platform affordances and data practices
Three maps and three misunderstandings
Not This One
Interface Methods
Introduction
The economy of attention
Reassembling Social Science Methods
| Unique citing works | 6 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 6 |
| Citation span | 2025 - 2026 (2) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 6 |