Author Meets Critics— The Aisles Have Eyes

Abstract

Author Meets Critics— The Aisles Have Eyes Joseph Turow (bio), Matthew P. McAllister (bio), Inger L. Stole (bio), and Edward Timke (bio) Keywords advertising history, data, democratic capitalism, digital advertising, hidden curriculum, privacy, retail marketing, smartphones, surveillance, technology Video 1. Author Meets Critics— The Aisles Have Eyes. Click to view video Advertising & Society Quarterlyis now bringing books to life through a new review format called “Author Meets Critics” (AMC). Pulling from a tradition that the journal’s editors have seen at academic meetings and book talks on university campuses, AMC records a conversation with a book author and academic and industry experts (serving as the “critics”) who discuss the book and how it helps us understand advertising’s place in society, culture, history, and the economy. The first AMC segment discusses Joseph Turow’s book The Aisles Have Eyes: How Retailers Track Your Shopping, Strip Your Privacy, and Define Your Power(Yale University Press, 2017). As is revealed in the discussion, Turow’s book covers the history and logic behind the technologically-advanced, data-driven retail marketing and advertising that many consumers take for granted today. Most consumers are unaware of how marketers and advertisers are carefully surveilling them when they elect to download a smartphone app or use a store’s in-house Wifi. Turow contends that culling consumer data is more than a threat to privacy. Marketing and advertising firms’ use of an array of consumer information undermines capitalistic democracy, which asserts that consumers have equal footing to learn about and buy products and services. Joseph Turow Joseph Turow is Robert Lewis Shayon Professor of Communication in the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. Professor Turow’s research focuses on digital cultural industries, especially at the intersection of the internet, marketing, and society, as well as studies on database marketing, media and privacy, digital out-of-home media, the process of innovation in the mass media, and the relationship between media and the medical system. He has authored ten books, edited five, and written more than 150 articles on mass media industries. His other most recent books are Media Today: Mass Communication in a Converging World(Routledge, 2016) and The Daily You: How the New Advertising Industry is Defining Your Identity and Your Worth(Yale University Press, 2012). Professor Turow is an elected Fellow of the International Communication Association and was presented with a Distinguished Scholar Award by the National Communication Association. Matthew P. McAllister Matt McAllister is Professor of Media Studies and Chair of Graduate Programs in the College of Communications at Pennsylvania State University. His research interests include advertising criticism, popular culture, and the political economy of the mass media. He is the author of The Commercialization of American Culture: New Advertising, Control and Democracy(Sage, 1996), and the co-editor of Comics and Ideology(Peter Lang, 2001), The Advertising and Consumer Culture Reader(Routledge, 2009), and The Routledge Companion to Advertising and Promotional Culture(Routledge, 2013). Matt has also published in such journals as Critical Studies in Media Communication, Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, and Journal of Communication. Inger L. Stole Inger L. Stole is Professor of Communication in the Department of Communication at the University of Illinois. Inger’s work explores the history of advertising, commercial propaganda, and consumer culture. Her first book, Advertising on Trial: Consumer Activism and Corporate Public Relations in the 1930s, was published by the University of Illinois Press in 2006, and followed by Advertising at War: Business, Consumers, and Government in the 1940sin 2012. In 2011, Professor Stole co-edited A Moment of Danger: Critical Studies in the History of U.S. Communication since World War IIwith Janice Peck. Her most recent work explores European/Scandinavian advertising during the Cold War. Edward Timke Edward Timke is Lecturer in Media Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also Associate Editor of Advertising & Society Quarterlyand contributor to ADTextOnline.org. His work centers on understanding the role of media in international relations...