Can You Read Between the Lines?

Introduction : Advertising and its role

Advertising saturates our everyday lives; it’s a part of the mainstream culture of the modern world and as such has a considerable amount of power within our lives. The existence and potential of advertising can determine what brand of Milk you prefer or the type of car that you purchase be it Hyundai, Holden, Ford, Honda, BMW or Mercedes. All of these advertisements are created and aimed at a target. This target or receiver is the consumer who would potential purchases these products. Advertisement is one of the oldest mechanisms of retailing and has intensified in today’s consumerism driven society.

Love it or Hate it advertising is an important structure of our economy and an important communication tool especially in the popular culture dimension of society. Understanding the signs and signifiers or understanding what and who this advertisement is aimed at is the key to success in applying what the critical media literacy framework talks about being able to read between the lines.

Advertising is present in almost all forms of communication; the Internet, the telephone, the print media, the postal system, television, radio. People can even advertise by talking face to face with others. On the Internet, businesses, companies and corporations have their own Web pages advertising their products, their ways of doing business, their employees, or their services. On the telephone, telemarketing is trying to persuade the homeowner into buying a product or a service by word of mouth.

The two main places where advertising is the most widespread is firstly  TV commercial advertising, especially at night on the commercial TV stations during prime time. The next most prolific place is print media: books, newspapers, magazines, flyers, catalogues. Newspapers hold classifieds, personal ads (tall, dark and handsome male enjoys walks on the beach and 60’s rock music), ads for local businesses (car dealers, lawn mowing or clothing stores), and notices for upcoming events such as plays or festivals, and movie listings. Magazines have pages and pages of advertisements, whether they're for musical instruments, sports equipment, clothes, food and make-up. Magazines like Cleo or Vogue are majoritively made up of consumerist advertisement for the latest perfume fragrance from a celebrity collection; the magazines stylist’s top 5 winter essentials or a new nail colour. These advertisements are  visually appealing, eye catching and in most cases present a picture perfect image of life or the lifestyles of women who subscribe to these products.

A good ad has potential to be very effective, this has been proved through the following public service announcements that use the Television, radio and print media to get their message out.

Advertisement is so effective because as people are exposed constantly and these advertisements depict the feelings or the images that are familiar, influential and appealing to the lives of people the power of advertisement is realised. It’s interesting to step back and assess your own habits...Are you influenced by this Mass Media?

Audience vs. Stakeholder

Advertising ensures an interaction between these four elements:

·         Consumer or Receiver

·         Product

·         Corporate Enterprise and Stakeholders

·         Manufacturer or Producer

These transactions happen every day and ever minute as a result of effective advertisement.

Critical Media Literacy:

What is important is that you understand that motivation and connects between these different groups. The Media literacy framework helps in understanding how these interact to create texts. Advertisement is designed to be persuasive and has a deep psychological effect on the receiver. This effect is what corporate enterprise relies on to sell their product.
Literacy can be defined as:

“Literacy is the flexible and sustainable mastery of a repertoire of practices with the texts of traditional and new communications technologies via spoken language, print and multimedia.” (Luke & Freebody, 2000, p. 9)

Therefore Critical media literacy is a crucial part of critical literacy, and one which helps students to become active, informed, participants of society (Luke, 2007; Morrell, 2002).

Critical Media Literacy is defined as:

“Critical media literacy is an educational response that expands the notion of literacy to include different forms of mass communication, popular culture, and new technologies. It deepens the potential of literacy education to critically analyze relationships between media and audiences, information, and power. Along with this mainstream analysis, alternative media production empowers students to create their own messages that can challenge media texts and narratives (Kellner & Share, 2006, p. 60)”.

From this definition we see that it is important for the consumer or audience to decode and understand the signs and signifiers of these texts. In the study of English,power, context and audience are very important. The following questions  should be used to decode these texts in the world around us.

Media Literacy Framework Questions

There are a variety of questions that can be considered when exercising these decoding skills:

One approach is the Critical Media Literacy framework:

Critical Media Literacy Framework

1.      Who created this message and why are they sending it?

2.      What techniques are being used?

3.      What lifestyles, values, and points of view are represented in the message?

4.      How might different people understand this message differently from me?

5.      What is omitted from this message?

  What can you see?

This lesson you will take what you have learnt about advertising and the how as a consumer the critical media literacy skills you exercise everyday help you read between the lines, lets now apply this knowledge in the following activities:

Activity 1:

A recent TV broadcast in “A current affairs” has also discussed the role of advertising in society.

Watch this clip and apply these questions:

ACA- Infomercials: Tuesday,8,2010

1. Who created this message and why are they sending it?
2. What techniques are being used?
3. What lifestyles, values, and points of view are represented in the message?
4. How might different people understand this message differently from me?
5. What is omitted from this message?

After answering these questions pair up with the person next to you and discuss your interpretations.

1.      What are the similarities and difference in your answers?

2.      Why do you think these differences have occurred?

   Activity 2:

  Using the same skills from the previous activity assess the following advertisement samples. These samples are typical types a person would encounter every day. Be sure to be aware of the effect of these advertisements and make detailed notes of what you discover.

After you have made some notes on the samples, form into focus groups and discuss your findings. Each group member will have a different perspective on what they think the message of the samples might be.  Post your findings on the blog page in the comments space for discussion and marking.

Click on the link below to access samples

Activity Two Samples

Activity 3:

Find your own example of advertisement at work from whatever source you would like, it may be TV, internet or  print media.  

Analyse this example using the framework and post your findings on the blog with a link to the ad and your written analysis. After you have completed that, explore what other students have posted and comment on their selections and ideas.