Aspects of Advertising
• Ubiquitous
– Sponsorship: arenas, bowl games, web sites
• Anonymous
– Never know who wrote jingles
• Symbiotic
– Connected to social organizations/campaigns
• Reagen: “Born in the USA”/Ford: “Born to be Wild”
• Intertextual
• Repetitive
Audience Analysis
• Who’s the intended or target audience
• What signs, markers, images, language, social
practices imply that audience
• How is the audience linked to use of the product?
• What are the underlying value assumptions
– Having white teeth enhances your popularity
– Casino gambling is enjoyable
Audience as Consumers of
Experiences, Events, Objects
• Objects, events, services are commodities
• Audiences become markets; markets are constructed as audiences
– Fictional, idealized notions of audiences: “female adolescent”
• Creating needs related to status/identity
• Marketing campaigns create needs
• “Merchants of Cool”--associate product with being cool
– Coke as “cool” = international appeal to the “common people”
– Coffee consumption as “with-it/yuppie”
• Marketing of technology as fulfilling social needs
– “connecting” to the world
Attention transacting
• “Knowing how to elicit information from others,
encouraging them to provide it (with appropriate
assurances), and knowing how to work with that
information so that it becomes an instrument for meeting
what the other party believes to be their needs or
interests… [through the] the use of new information
technologies to obtain, interpret, share, and act on
information of a private nature, knowing how to build and
honor trust in online settings, knowing how to divulge and
interpret information obtained electronically in appropriate
ways, and so on.”
Audience Identification with a
Group or Cause
• Create a group or cause: “Pepsi Generation”
• Portray this group in an idealized manner
• Equate consuming a product with being a
member of this group
• Gain audience’s identification with the
group
• Audience equates being a member of group
with consuming the product
Branding
• Creating values for products/objects
identified by brand
– What do we value about a brand
– Associate meanings with a brand
– Public relations campaigns: positive image
• Why do we buy certain products
– Research on consumer behaviors
Consumption
• Creating needs related to status/identity
• Marketing campaigns create needs
• “Merchants of Cool”--associate product with being cool
– Coke as “cool” = international appeal to the “common people”
– Coffee consumption as “with-it/yuppie”
• Marketing of technology as fulfilling social needs
– “connecting” to the world
Contact displaying
• People may increasingly employ “public
media” to “create an opportunity to gain
attention” in ways that achieve “‘immediate
effects’ (rhetorical, quirky, stunning)The
role of web page design that rhetorically
serves to capture attention
Figurative language
• Simile
– Miller: The Champagne of Bottle Beers
– Breakfast without orange juice is like a day
without sunshine.
• Metaphors
– Sherwin-Williams covers the earth
Positioning
• Subjective stance within a group
• Influence of discourses shaping language
use and roles
• Competing subject positions
• Adopting positions in terms of class, race,
or gender stances and practices
• Reaction to and resistance of categories
“Sisterly Relationships”
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“Problem pages” for “self-maintenance”
Quizzes: “right answers”= “perfect girl”
Pronouns: “we”/ “you”
Relational lexicon
Shared advice
Question/answer dialogue/gossip
Hedges
Pronouns and Identification
• Use of “you”--assumes a relationship
– “Don’t let coughs keep you off duty”
• Use of “we”: personalizes the impersonal
– “At McDonald’s, we do it all for you.”
– “We try harder” (Avis)
• Use of “he”/”she”: shared knowledge
– “Does she of doesn’t she? Only her hairdresser
knows for sure” (Clairol)
Slogans that Stick
• Catchy sounds: Alliteration
– “Before it can become a Heinz bean, every raw
bean is tested by a light beam”
• Intonation
– “I exercise, AND I ea the right sort of
breakfast.”
• Different languages
– “You can fudgi it or you can Fuji it”
Magic/Religion
• Instant transformation/salvation/cure
• Mythic hero/figure/savior
– Man From Glad/White Knight
– Mythic references
• Atlas tires, Hermes FTD flowers, Ajax white knight
• Creation of evils/problems to be cured
• Magical thinking
– Perfume ads: Tabu, Obsession, Sorcercy
Language as Class Markers
• Language as “marked” vs. “unmarked”
• Cultural assumptions about dialects, register,
pitch, topic elaboration, intonation, hedging,
asides, narrative development
• Types of speech acts performed
– the power to perform orders, commands, etc.
• Class as a set of cultural, social practices
enacted through language, gestures, dress
Discourse of Femininity
• Media construction of identity
• Beauty work: sense of inadequacy
• Membership in imaginary communities of
consumption
– “synthetic personalization”
• Mass audience treated as an individual “you”
– “synthetic sisterhood”
Everyday Conversation
Doorbell rings
Woman: Hi
Man: Laura
Woman: You always did stay up late.
Man: How long have you been back?
Woman: About a day and a half. I was just passing by.
Man: At this time of night?
Woman: Are you along?
Man: Yes, er, no. Look, I’m expecting someont
Woman: It’s a neighbor
Man: Well, do we have time for a coffee?
Everyday Conversation
Announcer: GOLDERN ROASTED
RICHER SMOOTHER NESCAFE GOLD
BLEND
Doorbell rings
2nd woman: Hope I didn’t get you out of bed.
1st woman: This coffee tastes good
Man: sighs
2nd woman: gaze towards camera/1st woman
Culture jamming
‘Counter-cultural practices which critique, spoof, and otherwise confront
elements of mainstream or dominant culture.” Hypermedia can be
used to morph, alter, re-create images in ways that parody, ridicule,
resist dominant cultural practices. Henry Jenkins, in Textual
Poachers, (1997) found that Star Trek fan club members employed
video editing to construct their own versions of Star Trek programs
through editing clips from programs.
Paradigms: Audience Research:
Abercrombie and Longhurst
• Behavioral:
– Uses/gratification or cause/effect of media
• Incorporation/resistance
– Audience incorporate/resists ideological stances or
discourses
• Spectacle/performance
– Audience as active consumers/producers
– Focus on identity formation in mediascapes
Fan Hierarchies
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Knowledge about show/text
Level of participation
Access to actors/production people
Leaders
Use of venues
Paradigms: Audience Research:
Abercrombie and Longhurst
• Behavioral:
– Uses/gratification or cause/effect of media
• Incorporation/resistance
– Audience incorporate/resists ideological stances or
discourses
• Spectacle/performance
– Audience as active consumers/producers
– Focus on identity formation in mediascapes
Three Types of Audiences:
Simple Audience
• Direct communication between performer
and audience
• Performance occurs in a specific place
• Performance involves public ceremony
• Performance is public
• High distances between audience and event
• High level of audience attention
Three Types of Audiences: Mass
Audience
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Communication is mediated
Performance event is global
Less ceremony than with simple audience
Audiences experience event in private
Distance between performer and audience is
very high
• Attention is variable
Three Types of Audiences:
Diffused Audience
• Diffused/extensive audience events as part
of everyday life
– Adolescents: 4 1/2 hours a day
• Media use as constitutive of everyday life
– Listening to the radio while one works
• Audiences as active performers in a
performative society
Three Types of Audiences:
Diffused Audience
• Media performances as constructing
identities
• Global audiences--not restricted in space
and time
• Little or no ceremony
• Public and private performances
• Low or variable attention
Media Drenching and Being a
Viking Football Fan
• Spectacle/Narcissism
– Increased visibility/knowledge through performance
– Display of logos, photos, clothes, etc.
• Need for increased football on TV
• Interaction in everyday life/discussion
• Performance of identity as Viking fan
– Attachment to team
– Knowledge about team
Narcissism: Resistance to
Exploring Cultural Other
• Focus on “project of the self”: narcissism or selfabsorption/gratification.
– leads adolescents to perceive everything “in terms of the
already existing self.”
– In responding to teen magazines, adolescents react to
portrayals of ideal selfhood
– media texts primarily flatter and appease the self, rather than
challenge self
– self is therefore not interested in being challenged by
cultural others or alternative values
Responding in Media Culture
• Engagement in “mediascapes” as activities
(Abercrombie & Longhurst, 1998)
– Markers of class, race, and gender become less
important than lifestyle or appearing “cool.”
– focus on the “project of the self” constructed
through appearing to be “cool.”
– world becomes as “object of spectacle”:
experiences are treated as part of seeing and
being seen.
– “possessive gaze” that focuses on surface images
and brands associated with “coolness.”
Mediascapes and the Imagination
• Blur of distinction between fiction and real
– “Reality” television shows
– Duo-documentary
• Media as resource for the imagination
– Audiences as constructing modes of escape/day
dreams/alternative identities/spectacle
– Identification with media stars
– Intertextuality--links between film, magazine, TV
interviews, advertisements, and stars
Audience as Community
• Communities defined symbolically
– Vs. communities as local/spatial
• Creating imagined communities
– Television and evangelical communities
– Talk radio and conservative communities
– Chat rooms and fan communities
• Issues of lived-world political activity
Soap Opera Fans
• Informing
– Sharing information
• Speculating
– What may or should happen
• Criticizing
– Lack of realism
– Ideological objections
• Rewriting
– Creating alternative plots
Felicity: Audience Participation
• Texts constructed to invite audience
participation as a promotion tool
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–
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Web site promotions/summaries
Fan clubs/chat rooms
CD’s/music tie in
Novel
• Active involvement results in increased
social participation/sharing