Commercial Communication and Its Consequences
What follows when the values of communication are fused to the market? That is, what are the cultural ramifications of the commodification of discourse? Consider the following:
(1) The logic of discourse changes as commercial communication moves further and further away from the informational format.
(2) By commercially recontextualizing images and ideas, mass advertising debases the normative values once associated with them.
(3) Insofar as advertising succeeds, the identity of the consumer is continually reshaped by a relationship to goods and services; indeed, the identities of goods and services themselves are reshaped as they are invested with fetishistic powers far exceeding their normal utility.
(4) Because of mass media's heavy reliance on advertising revenues, advertisers can directly influence the content of communication and indirectly reshape the media in their own images.
(5) A primary constant in mass advertising is the message to change products and services constantlya discourse in the service of waste.
(6) When messages are disseminated largely because of their market value, the ideals of citizendemocracy succumb to those of consumerdemocracy.
(7) As politicians mimic the strategies of mass marketing, the line between important political discourse and advertising blurs.
Having summarized these consequences, we now probe each in turn.
