New Challenges to Advertising: A Call for Transformation, Well-Being, and Positive Social Change

special issue editors Linda Tuncay Zayer, Catherine Coleman, Kelly Chu, and Verena Gruber

Background

With people around the world facing complex challenges amidst increasingly uncertain futures (Willige 2024), advertising scholars have renewed interest in social and well-being impacts (e.g., Royne-Stafford and Pounders 2021; Zayer, Coleman, and Gurrieri 2023), focused on identifying problems and seeking transformative outcomes.  This special issue invites scholarship with the lens of advertising as an institution and focuses on how a systems perspective can illuminate macro-social issues. Specifically, we call for research that explores how transformation, well-being or social change can be fostered or hindered through the power of advertising.

Read the special issue editorial, titled, “Advancing a Transformative Agenda Amid Institutional Complexity in Advertising” by Zayer et al. (2026):