ABSTRACT
Before the widespread take up of the internet, and social media in particular, a chapter on current trends in advertising, media and society would have concentrated on the ideological messages in advertisements – notably TVCs, glossy magazine ads and billboards – and their presumed social impact. As outlined in Chapter 1, such advertising was seen as a ‘sign of the times’, and semiotic analysis, that is, treating advertising as a system of signs, was believed to be the means by which the functioning of the society behind that system could be revealed (Cronin 2004b: 354). Such analysis rested on what branding academic Douglas Holt calls a ‘cultural authority’ theoretical model in which ‘Omnipotent corporations use sophisticated marketing techniques to seduce consumers to participate in a system of commodified meanings embedded in brands’ (2002: 71).
