AMST 103b: Advertising and the Media Spring, 2014
Maura Jane Farrelly
Tu.,/Fri., 9:30-10:50, Mandel Humanities Center, G03
Office hours: Tu./Fri, 2-4pm
e-mail: farrelly@brandeis.edu
By some estimates, the average adult in the United States encounters as many as 5,000
advertisements in a single day. In slightly more than a hundred years, the advertising industry in
this country has grown from a small collection of cheap, simplistic, and hyperbolic claims about
so-called “patent medicines” to a pervasive cultural phenomenon that guides our understandings
of ourselves, shapes the way we interpret the events and developments in our communities, and
entrenches our collective commitment to capitalism.
More to the point, the advertising industry has become the financial backbone of the
news industry in the United States – and that news industry, in turn, is the cornerstone of our
entire democratic system.
This course will give students a general understanding of the relationship between
advertising and some of America’s recent social, cultural, political, and economic developments.
Students will explore the extent to which advertising has been shaped by – as much as it has
shaped – the American “character.” They will also be challenged to consider the role America’s
character played in the development of a democratic system –unusual in the West – that ties a
primary means by which individuals are prepared to meet the mandates of citizenship (i.e., the
news industry) to commercialism.
Readings:
A substantial collection of articles – all of which are available through LATTE – along with the
following books, which can be purchased at the university bookstore:
1. Conley, Lucas, Obsessive Branding Disorder: The Illusion of Business and the Business of
Illusion
2. Hamilton, James T., All the News That’s Fit to Sell: How the Market Transforms Information
into News
3. Strasser, Susan, Satisfaction Guaranteed: The Making of the American Mass Market
4. Twitchell, James B., Twenty Ads that Shook the World: The Century’s Most Groundbreaking
Advertising and How it Changed Us All
Requirements:
1. Class attendance and participation: This means that you must come to class, and that you
must read the required assignments and think about them before coming to class.
Participation will take the form of answering questions when asked and offering your
own, insightful questions/commentary. If you are shy, come and speak to me, and we
can talk about ways of getting you over that hurdle. I understand shyness, but I will not
accept it as an excuse for a lack of participation. Nor, of course, will I accept illpreparation as an excuse. Class participation will be 5% of your final grade.
2. Quizzes… every Friday, I will administer a brief “current events” quiz that will be drawn
from all of the “Media and Advertising” articles that have been published in the Business
section of the New York Times over the course of the previous seven days:
(http://www.nytimes.com/pages/business/media/index.html) . The quiz will NOT include
that Friday’s news, but it will include the previous Friday’s news. The quizzes will
amount to 10% of your grade. Please be advised that although there are free copies of
the Times available for all students in the Shapiro Center, the hard copy of the paper does
not categorize articles under a “Media and Advertising” heading. This category is
available ONLY through the Times’ website – and if you do not subscribe to the Times,
you are limited to no more than 20 articles per month, per computer. Your parents may
have a subscription that you can use to log on, or you may wish to subscribe yourself at
the education rate:
http://homedelivery.nytimes.com/HDS?CMHome.do?mode=CMHome. Or you can
simply move to another computer on campus, once you have reached your 20 article
limit.
3. A mid-term exam that will count for 25% of your final grade.
4. An 8-10 page research paper (note the italics and boldface) that will count for 30% of
your final grade (The topic is posted on LATTE.)
5.
A final exam that will count for 30% of your final grade.
Speaker Assignment:
The date has not been solidified yet, but the Journalism program is hoping to host a
lecture this semester by Major General Anthony Cuculo, former Chief of Public Affairs for the
U.S. Army. He will probably be speaking some time in early April. All students will be expected
to attend the evening lecture (in lieu of the class we will all be missing on April 4th), unless you
have received a pre-approved excuse from me. I will let you know when the lecture will be
taking place as soon as I know. Students who fail to attend the lecture without a pre-approved
excuse will have 20% deducted from their overall “quiz” grade.
A Note on Late Papers and Plagiarism:
All of the work that you turn in to me must be your own. If you are even slightly unclear about
what, exactly, constitutes plagiarism, I encourage you to come and speak to me before you begin
writing your big paper. Late papers will lose one third of a grade for every day that they are late.
Papers that are more than two days late will not be accepted.
Syllabus:
Tue., Jan. 14th: Hello
American Individualism
Fri., Jan. 17th:
Stephen Lukes, “The Meanings of Individualism;” Ralph Waldo
Emerson, “Self Reliance;” David Brooks, “Harmony and the Dream,” all
on LATTE
What Is Advertising?
Tue. Jan. 21st:
Fri., Jan. 24th:
Michael Schudson, “Advertising as Capitalist Realism,” Advertising and
Society Review, on LATTE
Sut Jhally, “Advertising as Religion,” Advertising and Society Review,
on LATTE
A Brief History of Consumer Culture and “Commercial Speech”
Tue., Jan. 28th:
Fri., Jan 31st:
Tue., Feb. 4th:
Fri., Feb. 7th:
T.J. Jackson Lears, “From Salvation to Self-Realization…,” on LATTE
Susan Strasser, Satisfaction Guaranteed…, Ch. 1,2, and 8; James B.
Twitchell, Twenty Ads that Shook the World, Ch. 1,2
Strasser, Satisfaction Guaranteed, Ch. 4,5, and 6; Twitchell, Twenty Ads,
Ch. 3, 4
Boedecker, Morgan, and Wright, “The Evolution of First Amendment
Protection for Commercial Speech,” Journal of Marketing; Kozinski and
Banner, “Who’s Afraid of Commercial Speech?,” Virginia Law Review.
Both available on LATTE
The Rise and Ramifications of the Commercial News Industry
Tue., Feb. 11th:
James T. Hamilton, All the News That’s Fit to Sell, ch. 2, 6, 8, 3
Mid-Term Exam
Fri. Feb. 14th:
Tue., Feb. 18th:
Fri. Feb. 21st:
In-class exam
NO CLASS (Winter Break)
NO CLASS (Winter Break)
Just the Ramifications of the Commercial News Industry
Tue., Feb. 25th:
Fri., Feb. 28th:
Ben Bagdikian, The Media Monopoly, ch. 1, 11, and 12, available on
LATTE
Blake Fleetwood, “The Broken Wall: Newspaper Coverage of its
Advertisers ,” Washington Monthly; Coke Memo to Publishers; Warner
and Goldenhar, “The Cigarette Advertising Broadcast Ban and Magazine
Coverage of Smoking Health,” Journal of Public Health Policy, all on
LATTE
Alternatives to the Commercial Media
Tue., Mar. 4th:
Fri., Mar. 7th:
Philo C. Wasburn, “Democracy and Media Ownership,” Media, Culture,
and Society; Rowland and Tracey, “Worldwide Challenges to Public
Service Broadcasting,” Journal of Communication, both on LATTE
Jeffrey Scheuer, “Clean News” (Ch. 8), in The Big Picture: Why
Democracies Need Journalistic Excellence; James Ledbetter, “Can It Be
Saved? (pp. 222-235), in Made Possible By…, on LATTE
What Ads Do and How They Work
Tue., Mar. 11th:
Fri., Mar. 14th:
Twitchell, Chps. 8,9,10, and 12
“The Persuaders” (in class)
Critiques of Advertising
Tue., Mar. 18th:
Fri. Mar. 21st:
Tue.., Mar. 25th:
Fri., Mar. 28th:
Tue., Apr. 1st:
Fri., Apr. 4th:
Tue., Apr. 8th:
Fri., Apr. 11th:
Tue., Apr. 15th:
Fri., Apr. 18th:
Tue. Apr. 22nd:
Nancy Tomes, “The Great American Medicine Show Revisited,” Bulletin
of the History of Medicine; Vance Packard, “Marketing Eight Hidden
Needs,” in The Hidden Persuaders. Both on LATTE
Discussion Group day: “The Selling of Attention Deficit Disorder,”
New York Times, December 14th, 2013, on LATTE
Richard W. Pollay, “The Distorted Mirror…”, Journal of Marketing;
Morris B. Holbrook, “Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall…”, Journal of
Marketing; Jules Backman, “Is Advertising Wasteful?”, Journal of
Marketing, all on LATTE
“Captive Audience” (in class); Twitchell, Ch. 11 and 16
Naomi Klein, “Culture Jamming: Ads Under Attack,” and “A Tale of
Three Logos,” in No Logo, on LATTE
NO CLASS: I have a conference in Macon, GA
C. Russell Brumfield, “What’s Your Whiff Factor?” (Ch. 10) in Whiff!
The Revolution of Scent Communication in the Information Age, on
LATTE
Conley, Obsessive Branding Disorder, Intro and Chps 2-7 and 9
NO CLASS (Passover/Easter)
NO CLASS (Passover/Easter)
NO CLASS (Passover/Easter)
Advocacy/Political Advertising
Fri., Apr. 25th:
Twitchell, Ch. 7 and 16; Stephen Ansolabehere and Shanto Iyengar,
Going Negative (excerpt), on LATTE
VNRs/Spin
Tue., Apr. 29th:
Final Exam
???
Robert B. Charles, “Video News Releases: News or Advertising?,”;
on LATTE NOTE: RESEARCH PAPERS DUE TODAY