Staging a Delicate Dance: Taking a Critical Media Studies Approach to Teaching Advertising as a Trade

Abstract

Abstract: Teaching an introduction to advertising course through a critical media studies framework to students aspiring to enter the field poses a special challenge. This scholarly approach comprises an assortment of related theoretical perspectives whose common vantage point is centered on examining media through a skeptical, humanistic, and political lens and applying the resulting understandings toward promoting social justice. An apparent paradox arises when learners excited about training to practice a trade are encouraged to probe some of the deleterious consequences that advertising indirectly generates. In this essay, I describe the delicate dance we perform in class to resolve the predicament. Specifically, I discuss how, based on the major topics covered in my textbook , The Social Impact of Advertising: Confessions of an (Ex-)Advertising Man, several of the course lessons focused on interrogating the business' dark side can also evoke bright insights that future advertising professionals will benefit from if they later choose to incorporate them into their careers.