The Resignation Industry and the Future of Media Studies

Public lecture by Professor Joseph Turow, the Annenberg School of Communication, University of Pennsylvania.

Abstract

A “resignation industry” is developing in tandem with—and overlapping with—the growth of the digital interactive media system. The resignation industry carries out pervasive and purposeful corporate activities that have the potential of corroding political and cultural democracy. We need a sociology of digital resignation to understand the industry. Research in this area is best carried out with a new understanding of the meaning and nature of “media research.”

Bio

Joseph Turow is the Robert Lewis Shayon Professor of Communication at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a leading international scholar in marketing, new media and privacy. Turow is the author of several important 10 books and articles on media industries, digital resignation and advertising infrastructures. Among these are The Aisles Have Eyes: How Retailers Track Your Shopping, Strip Your Privacy, and Define Your Power (Yale University Press, 2017), The Daily You: How the New Advertising Industry is Defining Your Identity and Your World (Yale, 2012),[ and Niche Envy: Marketing Discrimination in the Digital Age (MIT Press, 2006).