Carl Jones, Senior Lecturer in Public Relations and Advertising, was interviewed by the Loud and Clear podcast about diversity, equity and inclusion and the decolonisation of advertising.
During the podcast interview, Jones said that American advertising needs to be more diverse in order to not discriminate, drawing upon his PhD research on decolonising advertising.
In the interview, he said: “White people lived in a communication media bubble, and black people lived in their bubble that was controlled, it is like a media apartheid. I think social media is a democratising media and allows people to broadcast their voice, and cross over to different platforms, or in other words, to different bubbles. What social media has done is give [people] a platform to be heard.”
He added: “When I moved to Mexico and went to casting sessions, I could not understand why my clients always selected models that had European features and lighter skin. When the people on the streets of Mexico didn’t look that way. Nobody in advertising could tell me why. That is why I want to decolonize advertising, to take away colonial thinking from the advertising process.”
Listen to the full podcast episode on Spotify or Apple Music.
