Saturday 6 June 2009

The new hidden persuaders

With a nod and a wink to Vance Packard, Wired offer their view (ably assisted by Google Analytics, NetRatings CiteSensus and ShareThis) of contemporary data mining, they describe that, as 'marketers, retailers and governments map your desires in ever-greater detail, your purchasing decisions, your lifestyle choices, even your political preferences are influenced in ways you barely perceive. From the behavioural targeting that seeks to track your online life to the brain scans intended to trigger your purchasing decisions, the modern persuader’s toolkit claims scientific validity as never before'. Article in full here

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I am director of the Media and Persuasive Communication (MPC) network at Bangor University where I also lecture on political-economy of the media. I am currently working on a book provisionally titled Deconstructing Privacy for Peter Lang and leading two empirical projects in connection with privacy perception and the use of new media for smoking cessation. I am author of Creativity and Advertising: Affect, Events and Process (Routledge, 2013); The Mood of Information: A Critique of Behavioural Advertising (Continuum, 2011); and Digital Advertising (Palgrave-MacMillan, 2009). Please contact me at mcstay@bangor.ac.uk if you are interested in Ph.D supervision or consultancy services.