Graphic image in which a large billboard looms over a street as people flee before it. The billboard reads "Bad publicity: an Adfree Cities blog series on how omnipresent advertising shapes our lives"

The commodification of life itself: how advertising promotes endless growth, and how it could be otherwise

James

In this guest blog, part of the Bad Publicity series, Dr Simon Mair from the university of York examines the role advertising plays in normalising and reproducing the cycle of capitalist Growth that drives ecological destruction. He ends with a call to reimagine advertising as something more than a tool of consumerism. …Continue reading The commodification of life itself: how advertising promotes endless growth, and how it could be otherwise

Graphic image in which a large billboard looms over a street as people flee before it. The billboard reads "Bad publicity: an Adfree Cities blog series on how omnipresent advertising shapes our lives"

Advertising, public health and the pollution of discourse 

James

In this blog, part of the Bad Publicity series, Dr Nason Maari, Lecturer in Inequalities and Global Health Policy at the University of Edinburgh, examines how outdoor advertising pollutes our environment and health. Moreover, advertising effects even the way we talk about health and our expectations of what it means to be healthy at all, as the example of smoking ads makes clear. …Continue reading Advertising, public health and the pollution of discourse 

Graphic image in which a large billboard looms over a street as people flee before it. The billboard reads "Bad publicity: an Adfree Cities blog series on how omnipresent advertising shapes our lives"

Plugged in: how outdoor advertising and surveillance technology promote commercial behaviours

Adfree Cities

In this blog, part of the Bad Publicity series, we draw on Dr Thomas Dekeyser’s 2018 essay ‘The material geographies of advertising’ to understand how surveillance technologies enable outdoor advertising to more effectively integrate into the urban environment, increasing its capacity to affect our behaviours in line with advertisers’ intentions. …Continue reading Plugged in: how outdoor advertising and surveillance technology promote commercial behaviours