I am going to complete my reflections and analysis on the two chapter’s of Tim Wu’s book ‘The Attention Merchants’.
Introduction
In this chapter Wu’s tells an anecdote of a struggling school who accepted corporate advertising within the school to raise some money. This then sparked Wu’s initial thought’s of advertising state we now live in and a brief summery of his book.
My initial thoughts when reading this chapter was not on advertising but the fact that the local government didn’t provide any support for that school, it is unheard of in a developed western country like the USA to have a school where students have to sit and learn in temperatures like 44 degrees fahrenheit (6 degrees in normal temperature).
In terms of advertising and the overall chapter I found it very inoffensive, but that just might be a bi-product of my incredibly pessimistic mood I currently find myself in sitting at building 9 RMIT at 7.45pm surrounded by people eating KFC. Advertising surrounds us and will increasingly latch onto the media industry and leach from the creations of others. Advertising holds the unique advantage over media practitioners as it is the main source of income for the vast majority of media practitioners not making feature film or have deals with Netflix. I feel that in a way advertising runs the media industry and I don’t really care, like fake news people need have a small amount of resilience and look past it and everyone the world will keep on turning.
Advertising as said in the chapter has become a part of the economy and will continue the industry will continue to grow, as long as we still provide from checks and accountability on the advertising industry I beleive that we (media practitioners/consumers) will continue to survive and strive in this world unscathed.
Epilogue
“The most pressing question in our times is not how the attention merchant should conduct business, but where and when.”
I think I adequately touched on my thoughts on advertising and media in the ‘Introduction’ blog, in this part of the double blog I am going to address this statement which Wu says his overall book is about.
Despite the my utter indifference or maybe defeatist attitude toward advertising I do think that the location and timing of advertising is very important and should be regulated. The timing and placement of advertisements like all media have the ability to persuade people and especially the younger generation. An example of this would be advertising inside a school which literally is an institution built to educate and develop younger people, exploiting this for financial gain is verging on evil, despite the obvious finical gain on prey on children’s whose parents have little time and deep pockets it should definitely be controlled and supervised.
This also applies to a number of other adverts that promote political ideology and risqué products (especially betting, tobacco and alcohol, despite this being a prudish attitude I strongly believe a young person should develop their thoughts and opinions without being coerced by big business.
Despite my prudish attitude I am still very relaxed about advertising in and outside of media, as long as the media industry don’t cross the line when it comes to certain already taboo areas then I truely don’t really see any problem with it.
AG