Wag the Dog

The media manufacture a war, create a folk hero, and save a scandal-plagued presidency when a Hollywood producer and a Washington spin-doctor get in bed together.

I'm showing it to the Mass Communication pro-seminar this week. View this 4 minute clip and check out Internet Movie Database to learn more.

Advertising: raw, cooked, incorporated

Here is a very brief description of one of the projects I'm working on. It considers what available stock of meanings are brought to bear by advertising as a form of historically situated communication. Advertising is a kind of double-communication since it sends messages per se and it supports other messages publication. One key assumption is that the separation between content & audience in mass communication research is false or at least misleading; a tight structural relationship exists between the two.

The nature of advertising: raw, cooked, incorporated

A growing consensus suggests that a global ecological crisis impacts every facet of human society. The recent oil rig explosion and consequent spill in the Gulf of Mexico sent crude oil gushing into the waters, killing 12 oil rig workers as well as marine wildlife, putting fishermen out of work, devastating the tourism industry and other negative occurrences. Although the disaster was watched with horror, the US remained divided over the wisdom of further drilling and indeed whether there is an ecological crisis or not.

Mass media, as has been richly established, contributes to the formation of public opinion through its agenda setting, and other functions. But most commonly advertising’s ability to persuade or set an agenda has been relegated to its primary intention, i.e. to promote products and services.

This research assumes that advertising has an educational function related to the formation of public opinion that exists separately from its promotional function. It explores how advertising educates one section of the population, women between their teen years to over 40, about the role of nature in their social and cultural milieu. The research focuses on magazine advertising, treating ads as sections in a textbook, the textbook being the magazine which performs a highly complex set of educational practices and the ads which both compliment the editorial content and add to it.

Please return to the blog for updates on this project.

A Face in the Crowd--Trailer

I showed A Face in the Crowd to my graduate proseminar in mass communication.

It's a classic film about the power of media, the transition from radio to television, Andy Griffith' first film, Lee Remick's first film and also starring Walter Matthau, Patricia Neal, Tony Franciosa. Watch this trailer, scroll down 1 blog entry for the clip about new approaches to advertising, and seek out the film on DVD. Well worth the time, I promise you!

Face in the Crowd--Advertising Vitajex

In this clip from film A face in the crowd, a new harder-sell approach to advertising on the relatively new medium, television, is promoted. This movie, Andy Griffith' first, is well worth seeking out. View it with friends who study mass media, advertising, public opinion, or film!

The Duck Takes to the Airwaves

In the last few entries, you'll find the presentations & creative work of ADPR 3110 [Advertising Message Strategy] students. Those entries show off their print executions.

In this entry, listen to the :60 second radio spot created by Emmy Johnson & Jonathan Joiner for Duck Brand Duct Tape. You can view their presentation on "Roushanzamir" channel on YouTube.

Congratulations, Loren Saxton

Loren Saxton's Master's thesis, "Katrina's Story: a narrative analysis of news coverage and FEMA's crisis response strategies," was successfully defended on April 14, 2010. Please wish her well as she enters her doctoral program at the Grady College, University of Georgia--Athens.


Brief description of findings: Grounded theory suggests that as levels of categorization and analysis progress, new research questions emerge. Indeed, rather than establishing a link between news releases and news articles that conveyed a shift in crisis response strategies relative to the emergence of Katrina's narrative, this study identified consistencies in language, tone and themes within news articles and news releases. This study revealed that after Katrina, the functions of public relations and journalism were similar: both emphasized Katrina's effects on national and local economies, while ignoring inherent social divisions based on race and class.

Photo caption: Loren Saxton with friend

Creativity?

image from http://www.benefitcosmetics.com
click image to read text

Is advertising a creative enterprise? It's certainly a commercial one. Add creativity + commercialism; what's the answer?

Michael Schudson suggested Capitalist Realism as a way to conceptualize advertising and, by extension, a great deal of the creative work[mass] produced post-20th century. Capitalist realism evokes the concept "socialist realism" a stream of creative production associated with the USSR. [for those to young to remember, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.]

Where does capitalist realism [top-down communication] end and self-expression [bottom-up communication] begin? Are there boundaries, are boundaries blurred?

These are questions to which I hope to receive answers [readers' versions of answers] in response to this blog entry.

I look forward to your input. Your friend, e