Response to Book Symposium Commentaries on Modern Advertising and the Market for Audience Attention

Abstract

The key question I attempted to answer with my book Modern Advertising and the Market for Audience Attention. was the question of how the commodification of attention happened. In turn, three scholars – Shahram Azhar, Nora Draper, and Daniel Pope – raised important questions about my book. They raise interrelated interpretative questions about the agency and consciousness of audiences and the relation between mass appeals and narrowly targeted marketing. They also raise the philosophical, ethical, and political question of how to respond to attention commodification. In this response I engage their questions, though with few definitive conclusions (especially on the last point).