Ethical media

It could be argued that the communications industry as a whole – and the advertising industry in particular – have long held a reputation for relying on people’s weaknesses to drive sales while compromising future generations’ access to finite resources.

This thirst for short-term profit has allowed global corporations to make unsustainable consumption patterns the norm and encourage addictive and wasteful behaviour.

The impact on mental health

Now, as mental health issues across the world reach untenable levels, many unregulated communications campaigns persist in highlighting our inadequacies. They aim to make us feel our lives lack seemingly important things, such as cheaply made new clothes, luxury cars, the latest wireless tech or exotic adventures in remote destinations.

While some campaigns rely on making us feel inadequate and unsuccessful, they are also partly responsible for humans drifting further and further away from the meaning of happiness.

All the research tells us that happiness is about gratitude, being ourselves and living in the moment with what we already have. Yet many communications campaigns take the easy route of relying on making us feel exactly the opposite: perpetually inadequate, wanting to be someone else and constantly chasing the future rather than being happy with our present.

Comms and mind control

According to global research director George Tsakraklides, 2019 was a landmark year for the advertising and social media industry in two respects.

First, micro-targeting political Facebook ads that were implicated in swaying election results across the globe brought to the surface a brand new, much more impactful way of exercising influence on consumers.

Using the power of Artificial Intelligence and the sophistication of personalised algorithms, micro-targeting has been so effective that it has raised the question in some circles of whether this level of mind control should even be legal.

The new digital ecosystem, where 87 million people’s personal data can easily be bought and sold without approval, and where Dark Web money sponsors algorithmic campaigns that appear and disappear overnight, revealed that we are potentially entering a dangerous age where those who have the money control the truth itself.

This is likely to become reality unless we have serious conversations about regulation in the digital space.