Marketing communications and media: Commercial Speech, Censorship and Control

The influence of advertising both directly on non-advertising content and indirectly on the resources and decisions of publishers and content providers has been the subject of analysis and criticism since the seventeenth century. Yet today the very identities of media and advertisers are becoming merged at corporate and content levels in ways that intensify but also reframe discussions on advertiser influence. This chapter surveys the various ways in which marketers can influence content and affect non-advertising communications. The chapter discusses forms of advertiser influence and control over audiovisual, print-based and digital communications, including discussions of brand control across product placement, influencer marketing and other forms of branded content. The chapter also examines practices and their analysis, ranging from instrumental actions by marketers to impersonal, structural influences of ad-buying decisions. Those forms of action now need to be supplemented and revised in the light of automated processes across the creation, buying and selling of marketing communications. As well as encroaching on editorial, marketers have also lobbied to extend protection for commercial speech. Yet, while a strong tradition of critical scholarship focuses on the mechanisms by which advertising can restrict and censor media, in recent years brands have joined or led campaigns to curb hate speech as part of brand activism, brand safety concerns or other considerations to control their advertising placement and spending. This establishes a more complex and contradictory set of dynamics and requires the review and updating of perspectives to assess the strengths, limitations and problems of marketers exercising power to influence non-advertising communications. This chapter draws on a wide range of international research studies, and the author's work, on regulation and governance, media and marketing relations, branded content and sponsored editorial, advertising campaigning and activism, and on the cultures and practices of journalism in relation to advertiser influence.

The Routledge Companion to Freedom of Expression and Censorship offers a thorough exploration of the debates surrounding this contentious topic, considering the importance placed upon it in democratic societies and the reasons frequently proposed for limiting and constraining it.

This volume addresses the various historical, philosophical, political and cultural parameters of censorship and freedom of expression as well as current debates involving technology, journalism and media regulation. Geographically, temporally and culturally diverse accounts of censorship and freedom of expression are discussed through a broad range of perspectives and case studies. This Companion covers core principles and concerns in addition to more specialist and controversial debates, including those surrounding hate speech, holocaust denial, pornography and so-called “cancel culture”. The collection pays particular attention to the role of the media in both facilitating and suppressing freedom of expression.

Comprehensive, original and timely, The Routledge Companion to Freedom of Expression and Censorship is a go-to resource for scholars and advanced students of media, communication and journalism studies.