Earliest is what could be called a consensus approach to critical advertising studies, which developed within traditions of popular mass-culture

criticism of its harmful effects. Press criticism by Upton Sinclair, George Seldes and others who complained on the influence of advertisers on newspapers. This was a democratic and structural critique, not one that dealt in any depth with issues of culture and representation, etc. Popular criticism of advertising by the 1950s was articulated through fears of propaganda and in the terms of behavioral psychology, which left the structural critique behind for one that centered on (fetishized) images. Examples include Vance Packard, The Hidden Persuaders; and, later, Brian Winston Keys books on subliminal advertising. The consensus approach in scholarly terms is best represented by the collection titled Advertising and Society; Classic and Contemporary Readings on Advertisings Role in Society, edited by Roxanne Hovland and Gary B. Wilcox (1989). (This has been updated as Roxanne Hovland, Joyce Wolburg and Eric Haley, eds. Readings in Advertising, Society, and Consumer Culture, New York: M.E. Sharpe, 2007). The sections in which it is organized suggest as much: institutional issues, sociodemographic issues, legal and regulatory issues, economic issues, and ethical issues. All are hidden within a reigning liberal-pluralist political philosophy and Lockean rationality, which place at the forefront issues of individual freedom vs. social control. This consensus approach, characterized by structural critiques of market deformation and psychological critiques of all-powerful images, is what still reigns currently as the standards for consensus approaches to advertising criticism.