Doctoral Dissertation Research: Digital advertising and commercial conceptions of attention space

University Of Kentucky Research Foundation, Lexington KY

Investigators

Abstract

This doctoral dissertation research project examines the role of the advertising industry in shaping the attention economies of digital media. Advertising revenues are vitally important to the digital media industry, where many free-to-use platforms generate profit from the attention of their users. This research asks how the advertising industry conceptualizes the attention of consumers such that it can be measured, valued, and exchanged as a market good. This project focuses particularly on the spatial contexts for the valuation of attention across diverse forms of media, ranging from digital media to printed media to outlets that are geographically located (e.g., roadside billboards). By situating advertisers' understandings of attention within their historical and spatial contexts, the project advances a holistic perspective on the multifaceted economics and experiences of commercial media. This perspective allows for new insights regarding the consequences and possibilities of digital media for individual and collective well-being. Among other contributions, the findings assist efforts to mitigate the potentially harmful effects of social media advertising and trains a graduate student. The project draws throughlines between historical and contemporary advertising knowledge and practices of attention via discursive analyses of a wide range of materials from within the advertising industry. The researchers analyze archival materials from advertising agencies, professional organizations, and researchers to establish the historical relationships between attention measurements and commercial media. They combine this analysis with an examination of technical documents from advertising technology and social media platforms to determine the continuities and novelties of digital media with respect to attention measures. Finally, the researchers conduct observations at industry conferences and expert interviews with advertising professionals to investigate how modern advertisers apply practical knowledge of attention. Through its focus on the spatial and historical contexts of media, the project brings together disparate scholarship from geography, media studies, science and technology studies, psychology, and economics to speak to pressing concerns about the encroachment of digital media technologies into the spaces of Americans’ everyday lives. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.