The New Strategies of Social Influence Masked in the Media that Slow Down Social Change

Abstract

In modern societies, capitalism has made use of advertising to disseminate, sustain, and dynamize its profit-oriented production model. The argumentation of this chapter proposes that, in the face of the environmental, technological, social, and cultural changes of the late twentieth century, advertising has set in motion, during the first years of the twenty-first century, the adaptive mechanisms of change that have allowed it to evolve and survive in the new context of consumption. The chapter shows the ways in which advertising has changed its strategies in this process of adaptation. It has gone from a direct persuasive model embedded in the media to an indirect model masked in any support of the digital culture of entertainment. This subtle adaptation has made not only that advertising continues to fulfill its function at the service of the capitalist economy and sociocultural reproduction but also that its new strategy is increasing its advertising effectiveness, since it is using techniques of masking and activation of consumer participation that increase the psychological footprint that induces them to consume. This new advertising has been endowed with a renewed capacity to slow down the change toward less unequal sociocultural models committed to a more sustainable global environment. In the absence of an economic paradigm shift, we suggest a path of possible positive change through counterargumentation strategies, awareness raising, and social and institutional education policies that highlight the strategies and consequences of these new surreptitious forms of advertising persuasion.