Director of research in communication sciences at the CNRS and director of the international journal Hermes (CNRS), Chairman of the Advertising Ethics Council of the Professional Advertising Regulatory Authority, Dominique Wolton publishes To communicate is to negotiate (CNRS editions, 192 pages, 8 euros). He defends the place of advertising creation, while calling for a rebellion against technological fascination.
The large communication groups have survived by equipping themselves technologically. Wasn’t this done to the detriment of the priority given to advertising creation?
It was logical for communication agencies to adapt, and this adaptation must be done by associating creation, industry, trade and freedom. But with one essential element: commerce must not prevail over advertising creativity in the name of the challenges of a globalized and standardized market. We know that advertising resulting from extensive segmentation and based on purchasing behavior is poor from a creative and human point of view. However, like television, the press and radio, advertising is not a trivial industry and constitutes a political issue.
New technologies and social networks have opened up an unprecedented field of expression. How is this a threat?
The data industry pretends to believe that communication is easy and immediate, while human and political relations illustrate, every day, the weight of “incommunications”, the difficulties in understanding each other, and “acommunications”, c ie the defeat of communication, violence and war. The other paradox is to see individuals have always been wary of television, the press and radio because of the risk of manipulation, but show a lack of critical judgment with regard to what is published on so-called “social” networks. Not to mention that these greedy technologies lead to a disproportionate consumption of resources, given the social utility of advertising or economic and political targeting.
However, it is the dictatorships that control, censor, even ban the Internet…
Just because dictatorships exercise control over the Internet does not mean that the Internet is synonymous with freedom in democracies. On the contrary, it can pose formidable threats – privacy, speculation, dark web, harassment… These are the Gafam [Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft] who develop this argument, while, moreover, they manage and are at the head of the greatest financial, economic and political power in the world.
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