Did you have a magazine when you were younger that captivated all your attention and shaped your ultimate aspirations? If so, you have something in common with Dr. Joseph Turow, who loves reading Ad Age just as much as when he got his first copy at the Brooklyn Library. Ad Age left its mark on Turrow's life; he has spent over 50 years researching advertising, media, and their influence on society. This year marks the advertising expert's final year after a long stretch at Penn—Turow completed his bachelor's, master's, and Ph.D. on this campus. Currently, he is a professor of Media Systems & Industries and is planning to retire this year.
As a student, Turow’s interest in advertising remained strong despite developments in the field over the past half–century. Although professors largely discouraged the young Penn student from pursuing a career in advertising, and Annenberg had yet to offer undergraduate classes at the time, Turow was determined to follow his own path. The path, however, wasn’t straightforward. Initially planning to become an advertising copywriter, Turow chose to pivot to research due to the unstable political climate of the late 60s. Though Turow did not become a lawyer as his parents had envisioned, he emerged as a distinguished specialist, providing a new perspective on the significance of advertising.
“Advertising, like many types of media, is storytelling,” Turow explains. Advertisers tell us stories not only about their products but also about society. They can define and fund almost any type of media. Advertisers aim to reach specific segments of people, which is why they're so adept at understanding and capturing who matters, what their interests are, and what stories best resonate with them. Based on these advertising decisions, the media build its narratives, catering to targeted segments of society.
This segmentation has continuously been reinforced during the last 30 years. When Turow had just started his research, only three news networks existed (ABC, NBC, CBS) along with some public broadcasting and a few independent local stations. The state of media technology at that time could be described with the title of an archived Street article, entitled “Soap Box Meets Boob Tube,” written by Turow when he was a student. The overall focus of media exploration was on “mass society, the large number of people who paid attention to particular programs and music, etc,” Turrow says.
With the evolution of the Internet as a commercial operator, our perceptions of media and knowledge extracted from it changed. Turow has been looking into these perception changes since then to understand the implications of media segmentation. He outlines the most important consequence of this phenomenon. “When hyper–segmentation goes after you, it puts you as opposed to a group of people or even the whole larger society,” Turrow says.
Even though segmentation can seem to be an intuitive process, the interplay of different types of media is quite intricate. Most media nowadays, whether digital, print, or both, are created by segments of society that “get together to talk about things and listen to things they care about.” Another important force at play would be what Turow calls “society–making media.” These are media that bring those groups together in the ideal sense: People who belong to those segments now get together to share ideas, celebrate each other, and argue with one another.
In the best of all worlds, both segmenting media and society–making media would be equally developed. Still, currently, only the former flourishes, mainly due to the hyper–segmentation in which advertisers and media companies are more and more interested. It's difficult to find society–making media today, that bring people together over particular matters and stories. Turow warns that increasing AI use is accompanied by hyper–segmentation. "We are going to lose even the ability to have a healthy balance between segment–making and society–making media," Turrow says. "Segments are not going to be there and society is not going to be there, because the focus will be on the individual.”
Social media platforms increasingly try to encode our identities, creating personalized narratives tailored precisely to our assumed preferences through the golden algorithm. This phenomenon is not entirely new. Subtle nudges such as email auto–suggestions have long been integrated into our digital communication. Recently, extreme examples of AI defining users’ personalities emerged. Instagram now suggests comments based on what people have previously shared and written. “It's a kind of [a] weird world we're getting into,” Turow says, with quiet concern. AI–generated interactions blur the line between individual personality and algorithmic prediction, letting technology define us.
But this is not the only threat modern media poses. Privacy in the modern age remains an area of profound ignorance. Turow observes that not even all lawyers read privacy policies, except perhaps just those who actually write such texts. Most users feel resigned rather than empowered by privacy choices, especially if they believe that corporations collect and monetize their data, yet they are unable to find viable alternatives.
So, what should we do, if we want to keep our perfectly–adjusted Reels feed while avoiding social isolation caused by these mechanisms? Turow suggests prompt structural and institutional changes. He believes that individual action alone might not be enough to reverse the trajectory of hyper–segmentation or AI's increasing influence, so governments and businesses should step in to tackle this issue. Nevertheless, he believes education remains a powerful tool in helping us stay informed and connected.
Unfortunately, high schools, Turow observes, rarely equip students with basic knowledge of how the internet and digital media operate. Students frequently enter university—Ivy League schools included—proficient at navigating most media platforms yet genuinely unaware of the business behind their screens. “It's shameful,” Turow says, especially when considering that most Americans have not completed a college education, leaving them especially vulnerable to media manipulation and privacy breaches. Effectively resolving these challenges will demand collective, structural action from governments and other regulatory bodies.
But still, Turow remains hopeful. “Humans are storytelling beings. For millions of years, people have told stories," he says. We live in an era where most of the stories we passively consume are made by institutions of some sort. Still, we can and should be conscious about the why and who of crafted public narratives. By understanding the implications of the stories told by different sectors of society—and their underlying motivations—we can reclaim agency from the algorithms shaping our lives.
