“Moderate” gendering in Swedish gambling advertisements

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study brings together an interest in contemporary gambling advertising, national regulatory impacts on such advertising, and the ways in which gender, in combination with ethnicity, operate in such advertising. The paper’s aim is to explore the interplay between state and self-regulations of gambling advertising and the concrete design of these advertisements in Sweden. More to the point, it explores how the “moderation” regulation in the Swedish Gambling Act (from 2019), as well as industry principles of non-stereotypical gender advertising, impact on the ways in which gambling ads are multimodally designed and organized. The results show that women are explicitly targeted by using both masculine and feminine semiotic strategies, albeit in a “moderate” way. The male market is addressed using stereotypically masculine framings, but without aggressively masculine or macho-like codes. The analysis further exposes that current regulations only partly cover other potential problems in ad design such as ethnic stereotyping. It is argued that the law’s demand for moderation in advertising may backfire as a strategy to protect people from the harmful effects of gambling. This because it promotes moderate narratives and moderate gender representations that mimic ordinary practices, settings and lifestyles that appear highly normalised (and thus risk-free).