SMC387 Advertising & Media

Advertising & Media
SMC387
Winter 2021
University of St. Michael’s College at the University of Toronto

Course Description

This course is an introduction to a critical media studies approach to advertising and its role in and impact on society. Throughout the course we will consider the history of consumer culture and advertising and the current state of digital, directed advertising with a particular focus on the impact on the individual consumer/user. The ubiquity of advertising in society ensures its centrality in capitalist economies and in the structure of media industries. Modern popular culture is inundated with the promotional discourses of marketing campaigns that both impact and are impacted by dominant ideologies. During the course students will be exposed to the role of consumption and advertising in political, social, cultural, economic, and environmental aspects of society. The goals of the course are to think critically about the advertising we are subjected to everyday and its purpose. Students will also be able to understand the historical, political, social, cultural, economic, and environmental impacts of advertising as well as analyze advertisements for form, content, and ideology. Finally, students will have a better understanding of and be able to better recognize the ways in which they are integral to the advertising ecosystem.

Vintage Skype ad; story available here

Weekly Schedule & Readings:

January 14, 2021 – Introduction: Everything is a Brand

January 21, 2021 – Introduction to Consumer Culture

  • Strasser, Susan. “The Alien Past: Consumer Culture in Historical Perspective,” Journal of Consumer Policy, vol. 26, no. 4, 2003, pp. 375-393.
  • Williams, Raymond. “The Magic System,” New Left Review, 1 July 1960, pp. 27-32.

January 28, 2021 – Advertising in a Digital World

— Advertising Observation Assignment Due —

  • Cohen, Nicole. “Commodifying Free Labor Online: Social Media, Audiences, and Advertising,” In The Routledge Companion to Advertising and Promotional Culture, Routledge, 2013, pp. 177-191.
  •  Austin, Drew. “The Constant Consumer,” Real Life Magazine, 10 September 2018, https://reallifemag.com/the-constant-consumer/

Optional:

  • Terranova, Tiziana. “Free Labor,” In Digital Labor: The Internet as Playground and Factory, edited by Trebor Scholz, Routledge, 2013, pp. 33-57.

February 4, 2021 – The Commodity Audience

  • Meehan, Eileen. “Gendering the Commodity Audience: Critical Media Research, Feminism, and Political Economy,” in Sex and Money: Feminism and Political Economy in the Media, edited by Eileen R. Meehan and Ellen Riordan, University of Minnesota Press, 2002, pp. 209-222.
  • Willard, Lesley Autumn. “From Co-optation to Commission: A Diachronic Perspective on the Development of Fannish Literacy through Teen Wolf‘s Tumblr Promotional Campaigns,” Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 25, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.3983/twc.2017.894.

Optional:

February 11, 2021 – National & Sports Branding

— Super Bowl Ad Analysis Due —

  • Aronczyk, Melissa. “How to Do Things with Brands: Uses of National Identity,” in Canadian Journal of Communication, vol. 34, no. 2, 2009, pp. 291-296.
  • Jackson, Steven. “Globalization, Corporate Nationalism and Masculinity in Canada: Molson Beer Advertising and Consumer Citizenship,” Sport in Society, vol. 17, no. 7, 2014, pp. 901-916. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17430437.2013.806039
  • View SuperBowl 2021 commercials 

February 18, 2021 – READING WEEK – NO Class

February 25, 2021 – “Woke” Advertising & Identity

  • Thompson, Cheryl. “Global Conglomerates Take Over Black Beauty Culture: The Ethnically Ambiguous, ‘Multicultural’ 1992s and 2000s,” Beauty in a Box: Detangling the Roots of Canada’s Black Beauty Culture, Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2019, pp. 165-195. 

Optional:

March 4, 2021 – Youth & Advertising

— Subvertisement Assignment Due —

March 11, 2021 – Fast Fashion & the Environment

  • Gupta, Shipra and James W. Gentry. “Evaluating Fast Fashion: Examining its Micro and the Macro Perspective,” in Eco-Friendly and Fair: Fast Fashion and Consumer Behaviour, edited by Mark Heuer and Carolin Becker-Leifhold, Routledge, 2018, pp. 15-23.   
  • Lekakis, Eleftheria J. “Culture Jamming and Brandalism for the Environment: The Logic of Appropriation,” Popular Communication, vol. 15, no. 4, 2017, pp. 311-327, 10.1080/15405702.2017.1313978
  • “Supreme,” Patriot Act with Hasan Minaj, s01e05, 18 November 2018 https://youtu.be/RKl_Y3EA7Sc (25:00)

March 18, 2021 – Branding the Self

March 25, 2021 – The Relationship Between Advertising & Content

  • Newell, Jay, Charles T. Salmon, and Susan Chang. “The Hidden History of Product Placement,” The Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, vol. 50, no. 4, 2006, pp. 575-594.   
  • Meyers, Cynthia B. “Conclusion,” in A Word from our Sponsor: Admen, Advertising, and the Golden Age of Radio, Fordham UP, 2014, pp. 282-294.

Optional:

  • Gray, Jonathan. “From Spoilers to Spinoffs: A Theory of Paratexts,” in Show Sold Separately: Promos, Spoilers, and Other Media Paratexts, New York UP, 2010, pp. 23-30 only.

April 1, 2021 – The Role of Advertising in a Democratic Society

— Final Essay Due —

  • Schauster, Erin E., Patrick Ferrucci, and Marlene S. Neill. “Native Advertising Is the New Journalism: How Deception Affects Social Responsibility,” American Behavioral Scientist, vol. 60, no. 12, 2016, pp. 1408-1424.
  • “Sinclair Broadcasting,” Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, 3 July 2017, https://youtu.be/GvtNyOzGogc(18:59)
  • Bedingfield, Will. “K-Pop Stans Took on Trump in Tulsa, Now They’re After the White House,” Wired, 24 June 2020, https://www.wired.co.uk/article/k-pop-trump

“The basic myth of our culture is that consumption is the goal of life.” – Dallas Smythe

“Of the incredible amount of labor which sustains the Internet as a whole … we can guess that a substantial amount of it is still free labor” – Abigail De Kosnick