Keynote address for The First International Workshop on Data Mining and Audience Intelligence for Advertising, August 12, 2007, San Jose California

“Social Challenges of Data Mining Practices in Advertising”

Joseph Turow, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania

What is the intelligence of the audience when it comes to data mining and data use?  What challenges do public knowledge and perceptions raise for database advertisers and the intermediaries (such as Microsoft, Yahoo and Google) that work with them?  This talk will address these questions from the standpoint of the ad industry’s history, references to recent developments, and several national surveys of the internet-using public.

About the speaker:  

Joseph Turow is Robert Lewis Shayon Professor of Communication at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School For Communication. 

A 2005 New York Times Magazine article referred to Professor Turow as “probably the reigning academic expert on media fragmentation.”  He is the author of more than 60 articles and nine books on mass media industries.  This past October, MIT Press published his newest book, Niche Envy: Marketing Discrimination in the Digital Age.  Publishers Weekly called it a “fascinating and disturbing study” and the Financial Times said it is “well-written and thought-provoking.” 

A few of his other titles are Breaking Up America: Advertisers and the New Media World (University of Chicago Press, 1997; paperback, 1999; Chinese edition 2004), The Wired Homestead (edited with Andrea Kavanaugh, MIT Press, 2003),  Playing Doctor: Television, Storytelling and Medical Power (Oxford, 1989), and The Hyperlinked Society: Questioning Connections in the Digital Age (University of Michigan Press, forthcoming).

Professor Turow’s continuing national surveys of the American public on issues relating to marketing, new media, and society have received a great deal of attention in the popular press as well as in the research community.  He has written about media and advertising for the popular press, including American Demographics magazine, The Washington Post, Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, and The Los Angeles Times.  His research has received financial support from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Kaiser Family Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Federal Communications Commission and the National Endowment for the Humanities, among others.

Another area of Professor Turow’s work involves depictions of health care in the media, particularly television.  As one example, he and Annenberg graduate students received funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to produce a video presentation about the implications of television’s prime time medical images for patients’ understanding of doctors and hospitals.  Titled “Prime Time Doctors: Why Should You Care?” the DVD is in its second edition and has been distributed for the past four years by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to most first year medical students in the United States.  Lately, he has published regarding issues of health records and database marketing.

The recipient of a number of conference-paper and book awards, Professor Turow has lectured widely and been invited to give the Pockrass Distinguished Lecture at Penn State University and be a Chancellor’s Distinguished Lecturer at LSU. He has served as the elected chair of the Mass Communication Division of the International Communication Association.  Professor Turow currently serves on the editorial boards of the Encyclopedia of Advertising, The Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, Poetics, and New Media & Society.  He also is on the advisory board of Consumer WebWatch, a project of Consumers Union funded by the Pew Trusts and the Knight Foundation.