Essay Instructions: here is what the paper is supposed to be like.
Analyzing the effectiveness of a T.V. advertisement, also to demonstrate the ability to locate and effectively use empirical research findings to support your arguments.
Analyze the effects of the specific ad your assigned. Specifically, identify and analyze TWO important features of the ad that you think would have an impact on whether or not the ad is effective for the particularly the targeted audience. You may choose persuasion- related features, such as source characteristics (e.g., fear appeal, use of a kind of evidence) or you may choose features that come from course topics such as perception (e.g., attention- getting features like salience or factors that influence impression formation) or mass communication. Discuss how these features would be effective as well as how might they fall short, and make an argument ultimately about how persuasive you think the ads would be.
Analyze the broader effects of these kinds of ads. Specifically, using the concepts and theories of mass media effects discussed in readings make an argument about the potential kinds of effects (or lack of effects) that ads like this would have on their viewers.
Uses out side research. In addition to supporting your arguments with clearly defined courses concepts / theories. And concert examples from the ads, YOU must find and discuss the findings of at least TWO published empirical studies to support your arguments about the effectiveness (or lack of it) of these kinds of ads. The empirical studies must examine in some way the specific features of the ads that you discuss (e.g., a particular source or message characteristics you analyze) and/ or the more general media effects that argue (or one of each), the studies must be ones that you find on your own (not findings summarized in a textbook or other summary. The studies must be from academic journals (not news reports of studies)
For each study briefly describe what the study did and what it found, and apply the study’s findings to the ads you analyzed (e.g. does the study suggest that a particular use of the feature in the ad would be effective or ineffective? why who? Since you need to provide arguments both for and against the effectiveness of the ads, your best use of the studies is to use one of them to provide evidence that a particular feature or type of ad IS effective at persuading/ affecting viewers and the use the other study to provide evidence that the ads might not actually have much effect. Ultimately, you’ll need to draw some conclusions, based on the support/ arguments/ evidence you have provided, as to what kinds of influence (or not) you think the ads might have.
Here is a description of the commercial that I was assigned to watch and analyze.
Robot spider / Lego x -o force www.exo-force.com
They totally lay out a plot- story line and the commercial starts by saying “beware the evil robot-spider , striking venom” he is attaching a fortress which your suppose to protect. Half the commercial is computer animated mini cartoon but they show real toy. Starts off that way then shows actual toy. There is another toy promoting the other a series of toys. “Use your machine to fly and defeat the evil robot spider” this machine is a separate toy to kill other. The machine takes out bottom of a bridge that the evil robot spider is on and the spider falls in to fog abysses then they show the robot spider start to claw its way out of fog they then say “the fate of humanity is in your hands” “You decide” leaves you with option. Does he die? Spider man right when they shows his claw appear from fog abysses they say “You decide”
TELEVISION ADVERTISING LEADS TO UNHEALTHY HABITS IN CHILDREN; SAYS APA TASK FORCE
Research Says That Children Are Unable To Critically Interpret Advertising Messages
WASHINGTON – Research shows that children under the age of eight are unable to critically comprehend televised advertising messages and are prone to accept advertiser messages as truthful, accurate and unbiased. This can lead to unhealthy eating habits as evidenced by today’s youth obesity epidemic. For these reasons, a task force of the American Psychological Association (APA) is recommending that advertising targeting children under the age of eight be restricted.
The Task Force, appointed by the APA in 2000, conducted an extensive review of the research literature in the area of advertising media, and its effects on children. It is estimated that advertisers spend more than $12 billon per year on advertising messages aimed at the youth market. Additionally, the average child watches more than 40,000 television commercials per year.
The six-member team of psychologists with expertise in child development, cognitive psychology and social psychology found that children under the age of eight lack the cognitive development to understand the persuasive intent of television advertising and are uniquely susceptible to advertising’s influence.
“While older children and adults understand the inherent bias of advertising, younger children do not, and therefore tend to interpret commercial claims and appeals as accurate and truthful information,” said psychologist Dale Kunkel, Ph.D., Professor of Communication at the University of California at Santa Barbara and senior author of the task force’s scientific report.
“Because younger children do not understand persuasive intent in advertising, they are easy targets for commercial persuasion,” said psychologist Brian Wilcox, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology and Director of the Center on Children, Families and the Law at the University of Nebraska and chair of the task force. “This is a critical concern because the most common products marketed to children are sugared cereals, candies, sweets, sodas and snack foods. Such advertising of unhealthy food products to young children contributes to poor nutritional habits that may last a lifetime and be a variable in the current epidemic of obesity among kids.”
The research on children’s commercial recall and product preferences confirms that advertising does typically get young consumers to buy their products. From a series of studies examining product choices, say Drs. Kunkel and Wilcox, the findings show that children recall content from the ads to which they’ve been exposed and preference for a product has been shown to occur with as little as a single commercial exposure and strengthened with repeated exposures.
Furthermore, studies reviewed in the task force report show that these product preferences can affect children’s product purchase requests, which can put pressure on parents’ purchasing decisions and instigate parent-child conflicts when parents deny their children’s requests, said Kunkel and Wilcox.
Finally, in addition to the issues surrounding advertising directed to young children, said Kunkel, there are concerns regarding certain commercial campaigns primarily targeting adults that pose risks for child-viewers. “For example, beer ads are commonly shown during sports events and seen by millions of children, creating both brand familiarity and more positive attitudes toward drinking in children as young as 9-10 years of age. Another area of sensitive advertising content involves commercials for violent media products such as motion pictures and video games. Such ads contribute to a violent media culture which increases the likelihood of youngsters' aggressive behavior and desensitizes children to real-world violence,” said Dr. Kunkel.
According to the findings in the report, APA has developed the following recommendations:
• Restrict advertising primarily directed to young children of eight years and under. Policymakers need to take steps to better protect young children from exposure to advertising because of the inherent unfairness of advertising to audiences who lack the capability to evaluate biased sources of information found in television commercials.
• Ensure that disclosures and disclaimers in advertising directed to children are conveyed in language clearly comprehensible to the intended audience (e.g., use “You have to put it together” rather than “some assembly required”).
• Investigate how young children comprehend and are influenced by advertising in new interactive media environments such as the internet.
• Examine the influence of advertising directed to children in the school and classroom. Such advertising may exert more powerful influence because of greater attention to the message or because of an implicit endorsement effect associated with advertising viewed in the school setting.
APA Task Force on Advertising and Children: Dale Kunkel, Ph.D., University of California, Santa Barbara; Brian Wilcox, Ph.D., University of Nebraska; Edward Palmer, Ph.D., Davidson College; Joanne Cantor, Ph.D., University of Wisconsin, Madison; Peter Dowrick, Ph.D., University of Hawaii; Susan Linn, Ed.D., Harvard University.
According to J. Van Evra, author of Television and Child Development, young children are particularly vulnerable to the influence of commercial advertising. They do not have the capacity to evaluate it critically, and as a result parents are pressured to buy products such as cereal and toys.
1.
Thesis II
Psychologically children are easily influenced and helplessly at the mercy of advertising, because they are not yet able to differentiate between advertising and edited television programmes.
There are several reasons why advertising and its influence on children's behaviour takes up public and political discussion to such a pronounced extent:
1. Advertising is universally present and it is salient; one is affected by it and can only evade it to a very limited extent. The numerous stimuli and their intensity automatically result in emotional reactions of sympathy or antipathy: the subject matter of the mass media determine both the relevant political and private discussion.
2. Every advertisement is an exaggerated and emotionally highly charged brief burst of information, which is always directed at one specific target group. Advertising reaches everybody but is always only aimed at one specific market segment. Polarisation of opinion is therefore a precondition and with it an affective, emotionally charged aversion to advertising. There isn't anybody who has not at some time been enraged about a certain advertisement or commercial spot: all forms of aversion to advertising stem from this affective feeling.
3. In naive everyday comprehension, advertising is always perceived to be equivalent to the effect advertising has - in the sense of influencing behaviour. The demand for bans on advertising is based on the naive assumption - conviction - ,which is not scientifically tenable, that there are mono-causal links between advertising and the effect advertising has on behaviour. The central psychological assumption of all political discussion is that advertising aims at influencing and ‘leading astray’. This naive theory of everyday psychology on the effectiveness of advertising has nothing to do with current scientific knowledge.
4. The diversity as well as the increase in child and juvenile misbehaviour (aggressiveness, crime, school failure, health risks) as well as the increase in psychosomatic illnesses calls for interpretative research. However, in the quality of interpretative research there is a drastic difference between scientific psychology and the psychology of laymen - and this also includes politicians. In naive everyday psychology quite specific mechanisms of attributing causes to critical developments can be proved. In a study with mothers we have been able to prove that above all mothers consider ‘excessive media consumption, ozone, nuclear power, drugs, narcotics, genetically engineered crops, air pollution, chemical residues in food as well as accidents’ to be risk factors for child development. Only a minority of mothers are sensitive to the risk factors within their own area of responsibility (smoking, alcohol, malnutrition, hygiene, lack of vaccination), i.e. responsibility for developing wrong behaviour patterns is to a great extent considered to be in outside conditions (external causal attribution). The love of a ‘no risks’ society increasingly results in substituting scapegoats outside one's own sphere of influence for self-responsibility. Due to its universal presence, advertising is one of these scapegoats; also because - in the naive theory of the effect of advertising - it is attributed to have a direct effect on behaviour, it thus provides psychological relief from the strain of self-responsibility.
