Friday, February 17, 2012

Final research


In the final research, I would like to research on the influence of advertisement industry among media. 

Through the classes, we have read and discussed about how advertisement industry has influenced on other media industries so that the targeted audiences become narrowed: consumers.
For example, TV industries need a support for its funds from advertisement industries; as a result, the TV programs become not only what audiences want but also what advertisers want. This brings up the question of media as public sphere, diversity in audiences, or possibility of democracy. Also, because the purpose of advertisements is promoting product and make profit, one would say advertisements are promoting consumerism. 

I would like to do content analysis of one TV program (I am thinking about Gossip Girl for this now), and specify what kind of audience they are approaching or what products they intend to sell through this program after researching what advertisement companies were funding for this TV program. After this, I will make an argument between the authors who argue that advertisements influence on TV program to decide the targeted audience and also message (“buy product”) and the authors who argue that the audience influence on content of TV program.

However, I am still not sure how to narrow down my research topic and am not sure  if this research topic is what I want. I will explorer more and we will see....

3 comments:

  1. http://tinyurl.com/7yeoonv

    Here is an article on how advertising creates myth this seems like the beginning point of any ad regardless of its medium it might help you narrow your topic.

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  2. I think your ideas are really interesting!!! I think colin's suggestion about advertising creating a myth is a really great idea. Roland Barthes in his book "Mythologies" has a chapter called the "Myth Today", which is all about the creation of the myth. If you want to use this article let me know it is an article I read last semester. I think explaining the myth and then going into a specific show and how they pick their advertising could be a great research paper!

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  3. Nozomi, I think you are on to something very interesting here, and i like that you are going to use Gossip Girl as a bit of a case study. That alone should help you narrow your focus. A question I have is whether you will be looking at the types of products advertised during the show and how that fits into the program's intended audience or if the show was created and then advertisers decided that their products fit with the type of audience that show attracts? It is more of a "argument direction" question so maybe that will be answered once you do more research. I think a good place to start might be conducting some broad research on how product advertisement affects viewers (for example, do people only watch shows if the products advertised are geared toward them or does that not really matter).

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