Agent of Your Own Destiny: How Neoliberal Discourses Permeate Award-Winning Public Service Announcements

Abstract

Public service announcements (PSAs) are messages disseminated by governments and nonprofits to serve the public interest. In emphasizing social good, PSAs should be less likely to employ neoliberal discourses. Neoliberalism is a political and economic structure and ideology that seeks to maximize free trade and minimize government interference. It has expanded to become a set of practices that calls on individuals to be agents of their own destinies, focus on their own self-care, provide for their own needs, and be responsible for their actions. To answer calls for media scholars to examine neoliberal discourses in their fields, this study uses qualitative (N = 59) and quantitative (N = 276) content analyses to articulate how neoliberal discourses permeate award-winning PSAs. Results uncovered five elements of discourse utilized in PSAs: (1) the entrepreneurial self, (2) sensitization to neoliberal values, (3) sensitization to neoliberal affective dispositions, (4) individualization at the expense of examining socio-political structures, and (5) hollow diversity. Findings show an increasing tendency for PSAs to employ hollow diversity, representing marginalized identities as individual obstacles to overcome through hard work, while simultaneously divorcing social issues from their historical or systemic roots. This has important implications for the development of inclusive advertising.