The Mood of Information: A Critique of Online Behavioural Advertising

by Andrew McStay

Overview

The Mood of Information explores advertising from the perspective of information flows rather than the more familiar approach of symbolic representation. At the heart of this book is an aspiration to better understand contemporary and nascent forms of commercial solicitation predicated on the commodification of experience and subjectivity. In assessing novel forms of advertising that involve tracking users' web browsing activity over a period of time, this book seeks to grasp and explicate key trends within the media and advertising industries along with the technocultural, legal, regulatory and political environment online behavioural advertising operates within.
Situated within contemporary scholarly debate and interest in recursive media that involves intensification of discourses of feedback, personalization, recommendation, co-production, constructivism and the preempting of intent, this book represents a departure from textual criticism of advertising to one based on exposition of networked means of inferring preferences, desires and orientations that reflect ways of being, or moods of information.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781441176141
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	04/14/2011
Pages:	200
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Dr. Andrew McStay is Lecturer at Bangor University, UK, and author of Digital Advertising (Palgrave MacMillan, 2009). He maintains a blog at: http://advertising-communications-culture.blogspot.com/

Table of Contents

Acronyms
Chapter 1: Introduction - Setting the Scene
Chapter 2: Exploring the Controversy over DPI and Phorm
Chapter 3: Self-interest, Rationality and Regulation
Chapter 4: Artificial Barriers?
Chapter 5: Controlling the Mood of Information
Chapter 6: Compiling Interiority
Chapter 7: Conclusions
Reference List
Index

Editorial Reviews

The confusing yet omnipresent world of digital media require analysis of specific sites and types of content. One could do no better than turn to Andrew McStay's The Mood of Information to learn about some fascinating yet troubling developments in the region of "behavioural advertising," the tracking of marketing activities by consumers. I endorse this volume for those interested in the reconfiguration of privacy that its topic explores.” —Mark Poster, Professor Emeritus, Department of Film and Media Studies, University of California, Irvine

From the Publisher

The confusing yet omnipresent world of digital media require analysis of specific sites and types of content. One could do no better than turn to Andrew McStay's The Mood of Information to learn about some fascinating yet troubling developments in the region of "behavioural advertising," the tracking of marketing activities by consumers. I endorse this volume for those interested in the reconfiguration of privacy that its topic explores.

Mark Poster