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2.4 Previous Research

Advertising today exists in multiple channel (or “source”), multiple media, multiple

device interactive communication network—a massively interconnected set of nodes and a

variety of “connections” among those nodes. This reality implies major changes in how
advertising influence people to buy brands (or vote for a candidate, or think more highly of a

corporation, or adopt a better health habits). Before the creation and expansion of the digital
communication network, advertise often turned to theories of “integrated marketing

communication” (IMC), where a number of media (e.g, radio, TV, newspaper) were combined
to bring integrated messages about the brand to people, thus reaching customers with different

frequencies, at different times, and under different circumstances.

An advertisement or PR event that lead people to talk about the ads or brand (word-of-

mouth) was also considered as one of the voices of the integrated efforts. (Thorson & Moore,

1996). But in the mid -1990s the internet started to come of ages, and as its structures and
functions developed over the next 20 years, scholars came to realize that communication was

moving forward toward being being less “mass” and more “network” oriented. Because culture

is mediated and enacted through communication, a network culture came into dominance
(Castella, 2000, p, 356).

That is, ads “spread” into the digital communication network are not the same as they were

initally constituted. If only because some individual has “liked”, “shared” or “posted” them so
they arrive at the next node with that additions. Note that we refer to consumers “using ads”

instead of “reponding to ads”. This purposeful, mean to indicate the highdegree to which

consumers can control and influence what happen to ads as they spread throughout the network.
(Shelly Rodgers & Esther Thorson, 2017)

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