Advertising’s Movement to the Connection Era: A New Paradigm for Understanding Connections Among Brands, People, Content, and Technology

Jooyoung Kim (forthcoming). "Advertising’s Movement to the Connection Era: A New Paradigm for Understanding Connections Among Brands, People, Content, and Technology," International Journal of Advertising. Abstract: This article introduces Connectism as a new meta-theoretical paradigm for advertising research, developed in response to the communication complexity in digitally networked and algorithmically mediated environments. Connectism conceptualizes communication in the connection era as a relational, distributed, and emergent process of meaning-making and systemic persuasion. Applied to advertising, it reframes the field around connected influence. Under Connectism, advertising is defined as a “brand-activated communication system that connects people, content, and technology to generate influence as it emerges within connected environments.” The paradigm rests on five foundational assumptions: relational primacy, distributed cognition, embedded shared agency, emergent interpretation, and systemic persuasion. These are operationalized through five integrative constructs – Connectibility, Connexity, Connectedness, Connectance, and Connexus – which together provide a systemic framework for analyzing how advertising functions within communicative ecologies. Rooted in diverse theoretical traditions, Connectism reconceptualizes advertising as connected influence and offers methodological pathways and a forward-looking research agenda to guide inquiry in a hyperconnected era shaped by interactivity, algorithmic personalization, and intelligent media systems.