Radical Rutgers Professor Maps Toxic Ads, Then Buys Billboards to Publish Her Results

I just stumbled upon Naa Oyo A. Kwate's pursuits through GOOD magazine. She is currently working on projects which map and catalog outdoor advertising content and relate those statistics back to social health issues which might be a result of said advertising. Her results are astounding and yet another reason for the public to take seriously the role that outdoor advertising plays in our public and thus private lives. On top of this she plans to purchase outdoor advertising space for her own messages which speak to the problems she has come across. While I love this idea, I would be incredibly surprised if she was allowed to purchase ad space to critique outdoor advertising. I will be doing more research on Naa as I am sure there is much more to discover. While were at it, Ron English knew tobacco, McDonalds, and liquor ads were bad way back when. He didn't map them, he just re-imagined them.

Naa Oyo A. Kwate's innovative research analyzes the urban environment in terms of its impact on health. As Associate Professor in the Department of Human Ecology at Rutgers University, she carries out studies that focus on what she calls "toxic exposures" to things like fast-food outlets, advertising messages, and even subtler cues such as bulletproof glass, barbed wire, or shopfront security grilles. [More]