sutton049

Advertisers are significantly concerned about the value of digital advertising and that concern is leading them to question whether and the extent to which digital advertising will remain in the marketing and advertising mix of their companies. 3 factors are central to the discontent: suspicions about the effectiveness of digital advertising, large amounts of fake traffic, and concerns about the returns on advertising investments. Media companies, platforms, and others providing digital advertising must address these issues if digital advertising is to remain viable. Much of the concern about poor effectiveness of digital advertising is due to poor ad formats, lack of audience attention to ads, and high rates of ad blocking—currently about 40% in U.S. on computers and tablets. Such concerns have forced digital advertising prices downward for the past decade because those factors have reduced demand and because there has been a dramatic increase in advertising inventory that is making...

Social media have now permeated all aspects of life. They have become part of our interactions with family, friends, and our communities. They have been integrated with work and commerce, dating and sex , health and well-being , information gathering, and spirituality. It is an appropriate time to reflect on the extent to which they fulfil their promise improve human interactions and community. Because of their communicative abilities, their institutional arrangement, and the ways we use them, social media produce effects and create issues that cannot be dismissed and ignored. Contemporary events and research are revealing significant effects of social media and the issues they pose for society. The critical issues surrounding social media use and policy efforts involve authenticity of the communication, artificiality of community, individual behavioral and cognitive issues, narcissistic and dangerous behaviors, and anonymity and anti-social behavior. Authenticity of the communic...

Journalists and news organizations in the U.S. and elsewhere are increasingly wrestling with how to deal with alternative facts, untruths, and lies spread by political figures, government officials, and their supporters. These are not merely moral issues for journalists, but also will influence the sustainability of news organizations. Neither accurately reporting false statements, nor reporting and challenging them, are adequate responses to continual misuse of the media and deliberate efforts to use the media to mislead the public. This, of courses, raises the thorny question of when to deny media access and coverage to individuals noted for engaging in those acts. How they are handled depends upon their position. Elected officials should be treated differently than their advisors, aides, and supportive commentators and apologists. This occurs because elected officials and party leaders are accountable to the public through the ballot box, whereas others are not. When elected o...

N ational and international media development and aid programs often embrace the objective of developing independent media as a means of promoting democratic development.  They do so in hopes of reducing political power over media, but fail to acknowledge that all media and communication infrastructures are systemically influenced by economic and social, as well as political power. And they often seem to ignore the reality that the history and cultures of nation states affect how that power is exercised. Media systems and their content, and the degree of freedom of expression and freedom of the press, are reflections of the alignment of the dominant cultural elements in society. Even in the West, most notably within European Union and Council of Europe governing institutions, efforts to promote media independence are gaining significant support—particularly when applied to m edia in Central and Eastern Europe. The term media independence is often used naively and imprecisely, cons...

The current dispute over Sumner Redstone’s competency to make decisions regarding his firms is pitting company executives against family members and family members against each other, diverting significant attention from running the companies and revealing the challenges of governing a firm as its founder ages. Redstone, who is now 92 and allegedly mentally incapacitated, had for many years planned his estate. He created a family trust that would take control over National Amusements after his death. National Amusements holds controlling interest in companies such as Viacom, CBS, Paramount Studios, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon. In recent months Redstone suddenly altered his will and estate gift plan and changed the trustees of the Redstone trust and the members of the Viacom board. This provoked a corporate and family drama about whether he is capable of making the changes or is being manipulated by his daughter Shari Redstone, who serves as President of National Amusements and vice...

The objectives of digital tracking are to identify users so marketers and content providers can know who users are, what their interests are, and how they relate to goods/services and content being promoted or provided. Although it is becoming easier to determine what individuals use digital devices, the ability to establish their identities still remains challenging because people have multiple, not just single, identities. Identity has traditionally been defined by the individual’s relationship to institutions (families, tribes, nations, nation-states, and religions). Even within this conceptualization, individuals had multiple identities: mother, member, citizen, believer. Modernity and the development of global communications and social networks, however, have expanded our conceptualization of identity and give us even more identities, some of which loosen identity bonds previously held and some of which compete with each other. The notion of identity is related to the concepts of ...