Tracking the Consumption Junction:Temporal Dependencies between Articles and Advertisements in Dutch Newspapers

Historians have regularly debated whether advertisements can be used as a viable source to study the past. Their main concern centered on the question of agency. Were advertisements a reflection of historical events and societal debates, or were ad makers instrumental in shaping society and the ways people interacted with consumer goods? Using techniques from econometrics (Granger causality test) and complexity science (Adaptive Fractal Analysis), this paper analyzes to what extent advertisements shaped or reflected society. We found evidence that indicate a fundamental difference between the... Mehr ...