Publics and Publicity: Outdoor Advertising and Urban Space

Abstract

This photo essay reflects on mediatized public space, “publicity” and their relationship with the outdoor advertising industry and its products — billboards, panels, and adverts on buses and taxis. Excerpts from ethnographic research on the industry and images of advertising’s impact on urban space are placed in dialog to offer insights into the forms of publicity created.1 This series of snapshot urban views aims to echo people’s apprehension of advertising texts, and to signal how people and advertising panels inhabit city spaces. It shows how the advertising industry’s research on its targeted consuming publics is folded into this urban encounter. This performs a publicity that is mediated not just by the adverts but by commercial knowledge practices and the intense semiotic “noise” of contemporary cities.

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