210 Final Flashcards
1
Q
HISTORICAL TRENDS IN ADVERTISING
19th Century and earlier
A
literal description of product
2
Q
HISTORICAL TRENDS IN ADVERTISING
Late 19th - early 20th century
A
consumption as a way of solving social problems
3
Q
HISTORICAL TRENDS IN ADVERTISING
1930s
A
advertising began to reflect the qualities and values that were important to consumers
4
Q
HISTORICAL TRENDS IN ADVERTISING
1950s
A
advertisements began to promote images of the product that consumers could identify with
5
Q
1956 Refrigerator Ad
A
super convenient fridge layout
- commercial shows product, and what it does, exactly what someone would want
6
Q
HISTORICAL TRENDS IN ADVERTISING
Post 1960s
A
advertising became more concerned with invoking subliminal and unconscious desires
- e.g girls butt and car
7
Q
Decoding Ads: Three Important Components
A
- Implied Narrative
- Intertextuality
- Anchorage
8
Q
Ideology
A
- set of values, belifes and feelings that together offer a view of the world
- Used by powerful groups to show and promote how society is organized and which values matter most
9
Q
What is advertising according to Danesi?
A
- Consumer advertising is a type of persuasive communication aimed at encouraging people to buy products or services
- “Advertising textuality” refers to how ads and commercials are created using specific codes or symbols deliberately associated with the products they promote
10
Q
Positioning and Image Creation
How to structure the ad?
A
- Audience, education level, class, social lifestyle
- Give it Personality: identify with the product
11
Q
Rhetorical Strategies
A
- jingles and slogans
- use of imperative verbs
- formulas
- alliteration
- absence of language
- intentional omission
12
Q
Rhetorical Strategies
Jingles and Slogans
A
work at the level of an unconscious metaphor (“Harvey’s Makes a Hamburger a Beautiful Thing”)
13
Q
Rhetorical Strategies
Use of imperative verbs
A
effect of advice (“Just Do It”)
14
Q
Rhetorical Strategies
Formulas
A
making meaningless statements sound truthful (A Volkwagen is a Volkswagen)
15
Q
Rhetorical Strategies
Alliteration
A
repeating sounds, easier to remember
16
Q
Rhetorical Strategies
Absence of Language
A
message is implied
17
Q
Rhetorical Strategies
Intentional omission
A
secrets grab our attention
18
Q
Why so many visible logos now?
A
- brings a general branding in our mind and memory
- not many ads seen on clothing before 1970s
19
Q
Creating a signification system and “branding”
A
- To create a system of meaning for a product using persuasive and visual techniques, we must establish a brand for it
Why?
- it becomes an identifier for the product
- how people generally refer to the product (McDonald golden arches)
20
Q
Ad Campaigns: Attracting New Consumers
Men, Cosmetics & Grooming (early 2000s)
A
- Metrosexual
- Masculinity
- Push/pull effect
- Commodity capitalism
- Studio 5ive Skin Care
21
Q
Placement
Where to advertise?
When to advertise?
A
- Tap into social trends and signifying systems so your product gets noticed not just as a brand but so much more
- It’s a “promise
22
Q
Placement - Gilette Ad
A
- taken during the MeToo movement era
- addresses sexual violence and toxic masculinity in the beginning of ad
- shows “typical” male with the: boys will be boys, a man saying “what I think shes trying to say is”, “comedic” sexual assault
- transforms to men calling one another out and fathers teaching sons right from wrong
- men need to hold other men accountable
- boys of today will be the men of tomorrow
23
Q
Rhetoric of Advertising
A
- Consumerist ideology thrives on making us see ourselves as flawed or inadequate, and advertising constantly invents new ways to reinforce this perception
- This system hides behind the rhetoric of personal empowerment (e.g., “improve your appearance to feel empowered”), but the underlying message is that you’re not enough as you are
24
Q
Danesi Ch. 8
- ADVERTISING -
A
- Definition and Impact: Advertising is defined as a form of public announcement aimed at promoting products, services, or causes. It has evolved into a persuasive social discourse influencing consumer behaviour and cultural values.
- Techniques: Advertisers use positioning, image-creation, and mythologization to embed messages into the mediascape. They create brand images and logos that resonate with consumers’ unconscious desires and cultural myths.
- Rhetorical Strategies: Advertising employs rhetorical techniques such as metaphor, irony, and alliteration to construct persuasive messages. Brand names and logos often carry metaphorical meanings that enhance their appeal.
- Historical Context: The document traces the history of advertising from ancient shop signs to modern digital ads, highlighting significant developments like the establishment of advertising agencies and the use of new media technologies.
- Art and Advertising: Advertising is compared to art, with modern ads and commercials often rivaling traditional art forms in creativity and impact. The document discusses how advertisers use artistic techniques, including surrealism and synesthesia, to create compelling ads.
- Co-option and Branding: The strategy of co-opting cultural trends, especially from countercultures, is examined. Brands like Gap have successfully used this approach to appeal to a broad audience. The importance of creating a signification system through branding is emphasized.
- Impact on Culture and Society: Advertising shapes cultural values and individual behaviors. It has become a dominant form of social discourse, influencing how people perceive and interact with products.
- Advertising Campaigns: Systematic methods of media-based advertising aimed at achieving specific goals.
Use of multiple media technologies to deliver messages and create a sense of cultural continuity.
- Placement and Reverse Branding: Showcasing brands in movies and TV programs to tap into social trends.
Some brands become fads that shape societal trends, known as reverse branding.
- Advertising Textuality: Construction of advertisements based on specific codes or signification systems.
Techniques include intertextuality and subtextuality, creating deeper meanings and connections.
Overall, the document provides a comprehensive analysis of advertising as a semiotic system, illustrating its pervasive influence on modern culture and communication.
25
Danesi Ch. 8
- ADVERTISING -
main techniques
- Positioning: Targeting the right audience in the right media.
For example, beer ads target college students at parties, and perfume ads target those interested in romantic socializing.
- Image-Creation: Crafting a personality for products that specific consumer types can identify with.
This includes the product’s name, packaging, logo, price, and overall presentation.
- Mythologization: Imbuing brand names, logos, product design, ads, and commercials with mythic meanings.
For example, beauty products often feature attractive, almost deified individuals to evoke mythic themes like beauty and the conquest of death.
- Rhetorical Strategies: Using rhetorical techniques such as metaphor, irony, alliteration, and tautology to construct persuasive messages. Examples include:
Metaphor: Associating products with artistic or superior qualities.
- Irony: Using humor or unexpected twists to engage the audience.
- Alliteration: Repetition of sounds to make brand names memorable.
- Tautology: Making statements that sound truthful but are essentially repetitive.
- Brand Naming: Creating names that evoke specific connotations, such as tradition, reliability, or nature.
Examples include names referring to the manufacturer (e.g., Armani), fictitious personalities (e.g., Wendy’s), or aspects of nature (e.g., Tide).
- Logo Design: Designing logos that generate connotative signification systems through visual modality.
For example, the Apple logo symbolizing access to "forbidden" knowledge.
- Ad Campaigns: Systematic methods of media-based advertising aimed at achieving specific goals, such as demonstrating product superiority or changing the product’s image.
- Placement: Showcasing brands in movies and TV programs to tap into social trends and signifying systems.
This includes celebrity endorsements and creating fictitious characters to promote brands.
- Co-option: Adapting and recycling cultural trends, especially from countercultures, to appeal to a broad audience. This includes using the symbols and rhetoric of youth rebellion to market products.
- Artistic Techniques: Using art techniques like surrealism and synesthesia to create compelling ads.
This includes employing artists to design ads and commercials that rival traditional art forms.
26
Privacy
- quite a few inconsistences between what people say what they want in terms of privacy and how they actually behave online disclosing information
- are people lazy, do they not care, or are they responding in predictable ways online where platfroms take advantage of them
27
Semiotics and cognitive biases
cognitive biases and design tactics platforms use to manipulate users into
disclosing information
28
Cognitive bias
- Cognitive bias is a mental shortcut where the brain simplifies information based on personal experiences and preferences. While this helps process information quickly, it can lead to errors in thinking.
- These are unconscious decision-making processes that influence individuals without them even realizing it
29
Dark Patterns
- Dark patterns are design tactics that exploit human behaviour to deceive users into actions that don't benefit them
- are not the result of incompetence
30
Design Patterns
intentionally designed to
influence you towards a certain behaviour that
favours, guess who?
- the company or brand
31
Dark Pattern Examples
- hidden costs at the last step of a checkout process
- charging credit cards automatically when a free trial service ends
32
Cognitive biases and acting rationally
(or irrationally?)
We don’t make rational decisions online (rational actor disclosure model)... why?
33
Why don't we make rational decisions online
1. Anchoring: it’s what we see first; arrangement (video game tokens)
2. Framing: how it’s presented to consumers
3. Hyperbolic discounting: I’ll disclose, and I’ll immediately get the benefits (bundling)
4. Overchoice: paralyzes us, barrier to rational disclosure
34
Cognitive biases and Dark Patterns
Cognitive biases are part of how dark patterns work
35
Semiotics of Dark Patterns
- positioning
- possible choices
- nudging
- wording
- images
- all “affected users’ consent behavior” (Baroni)
36
“asshole design”
shrinkflation
- party size chip bag
- product cant be recharged
- smaller packaging same price
37
Intersection between technologies and social practices
- Dark patterns and human use of technology result: change in behaviour
- Dark patterns manipulate use behaviour
- Dark patterns exploit cognitive biases; in other words, we tend to process information based on our
personal experience and knowledge
- “framing effect” – the conclusions is dependent on you
38
Semiotic Framework – Roach Motel
- Social World: frustration deleting accounts alone, help is needed
- Pragmatics: conflict; you want to delete, but guess who wants to keep your data?
- Semantics: do you ever get frustrated and give up?
- Syntactics: reach a dead end; forced down another avenue
- Empirics: time, time, time to get an answer!
- Physical World: exploiting email or phone
39
Dark Patterns Baroni Reading
This document discusses "Dark Patterns," which are design patterns intentionally created to deceive users or favour the interests of parties other than users. The paper emphasizes the socio-technical characteristics of dark patterns, which involve human and technical issues, and applies the Semiotic Framework to analyze them from a socio-technical perspective.
Main Points:
1. Definition of Dark Patterns: Design patterns that deceive users or favour other parties' interests, causing negative emotions like frustration and anger.
2. Socio-technical Characteristics: Dark patterns occur when humans interact with technical artifacts, involving both social and technical aspects.
3. Roach Motel Example: A dark pattern where users can easily enter a situation (e.g., creating an account) but find it difficult to exit (e.g., deleting the account).
4. Semiotic Framework: Used to analyze dark patterns, considering six layers: Social World, Pragmatics, Semantics, Syntactics, Empirics, and Physical World.
5. Analysis of Roach Motel: Each layer of the Semiotic Framework reveals different aspects of the Roach Motel dark pattern, such as user frustration, conflicting intentions, confusing semantics, and physical constraints.
6. Future Research: Suggests exploring each layer in-depth to understand the mechanics of dark patterns and their socio-technical impacts.
The document aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of dark patterns by considering both technical and human factors, using the Semiotic Framework as a tool for analysis.
40
What is the Roach Motel dark pattern?
- a design strategy where users can easily enter a situation: signing up for a service or creating an account, but find it difficult to exit, such as canceling a subscription or deleting the account.
- pattern makes it straightforward for users to get into a service but creates numerous obstacles when they try to leave, often involving hidden options, complex procedures, or requiring additional steps like making a phone call or sending an email.
- The goal is to retain users and their data by making the exit process cumbersome and frustrating.
41
What is Post-Truth?
Relating to or denoting circumstances in which
objective facts are less influential in shaping public
opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.
- the idea that feelings sometimes matter more
than facts.
- practitioners are trying to compel someone to believe in
something whether there is good evidence for it or not
Example
- ‘in this era of post-truth politics, it's easy to cherry-pick data and come to whatever conclusion you desire’
- some commentators have observed that we are living
in a post-truth age’
42
Why facts don't change our minds?
Semiotics
- We know that every report, we read, hear and see is a sign that represents something;
- these signs refer to some concept/idea
43
Semiotics and Algorithms
- Use of algorithms to engage audiences in
relation to fake news
- Our fixation of beliefs as outlined by Kolbert
- Facebook uses algorithms to organize and distribute information; these filters are programmed to select what a given person is already inclined to like and displays this in that person’s newsfeed
- Fake news takes advantage of the established belief that an external reality is being represented in news reports
44
Semiotics Meaning and Reality
- science which studies the role of signs as part of social life
- study how meanings are created, focusing on both communication and how reality is built and maintained
45
Semiotics of Mass Media
to investigate how cultural meanings encoded by media texts are adopted, adapted for specific purposes, and
then redistributed throughout the culture
46
'Media Effects’ Theory
concerned with the effect mass media/mass
broadcasting (newspapers, radio, cinema) had on audiences and populations
- propaganda advertising
47
Encoding/Decoding and the Rhetorical Situation (Media Semiotics)
1. meaning is not simply fixed or determined by the sender.
2. the message is never transparent.
3. the audience is not a passive recipient of meaning
Production – Circulation – Distribution or Consumption – Reproduction
to consume is an active process leading to the production,
or reproduction of meaning.
48
Three Positions or Strategies of Decoding
(Media Semiotics)
1. Dominant reading (viewers passively and uncritically accept the text’s preferred meaning).
2. Negotiated reading (viewers understand the text’s preferred meaning, but slightly dissent from it).
3. Oppositional reading (viewers understand the text’s preferred meaning and either reject, criticize or reconstitute it in subversive or politically charged ways).
49
Uses and Gratification Theory
People who use media, use it for certain gratifications
- Who uses what media, therefore, varies from person to person (i.e. a child watches cartoons, a housewife watches soap operas, etc.)
- Asks: ”Why do people use media and what do they use them for?”
- To satisfy their specific needs
- Audience has power b/c it decides what’s popular, what’s not, what will be shown on tv, what will be cancelled, etc.
50
What can Media Semiotics do?
- Think critically about the messages and signs you encounter everyday
- Help identify the rhetoric and modes of persuasion involved in propaganda, advertising, etc
- Help identify the producer of messages
51
