The Daily You
How the New Advertising Industry Is Defining Your Identity and Your Worth
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
The Internet is often hyped as a means to enhanced consumer power: a hypercustomized media world where individuals exercise unprecedented control over what they see and do. That is the scenario media guru Nicholas Negroponte predicted in the 199s, with his hypothetical online newspaper The Daily Me—and it is one we experience now in daily ways. But, as media expert Joseph Turow shows, the customized media environment we inhabit today reflects diminished consumer power. Not only ads and discounts but even news and entertainment are being customized by newly powerful media agencies on the basis of data we don’t know they are collecting and individualized profiles we don’t know we have. Little is known about this new industry: how is this data being collected and analyzed? And how are our profiles created and used? How do you know if you have been identified as a ̶target” or ̶waste” or placed in one of the industry’s finer-grained marketing niches? Are you, for example, a Socially Liberal Organic Eater, a Diabetic Individual in the Household, or Single City Struggler? And, if so, how does that affect what you see and do online?
Drawing on groundbreaking research, including interviews with industry insiders, this important book shows how advertisers have come to wield such power over individuals and media outlets—and what can be done to stop it.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
University of Pennsylvania professor Turow analyzes the relationship between Internet media, advertising, and target demographics. His position on the digital age is generally positive, but the ethical and social implications of personal information being used by companies to determine who is a "target" and who is "waste" have him worried: "We have a serious social problem,." Turow (Niche Envy) says, refers refering to the results of this new media information gathering phenomenon as "social discrimination," since its effectiveness is based on valuating an individual's potential worth to a particular company or political campaign. Turow examines the psychological consequences of this surreptitious information gathering, and asks the crucial question: "hat, if anything, can you do about it?" While Turow's thesis intrigues and is both socially and politically relevant, at times his writinghe gets bogged down by facts and figures. Nevertheless, he has produced an important and insightful book.
