Magazine Ads Research Articles

Influenza, a medicina enferma: Ciência e práticas de cura naé poca da gripe espanhola em São Paulo

Liane Maria Bertucci’s Influenza, a medicina enferma chronicles the theories and lived experiences of institutions and individuals of all classes who negotiated, suffered through, recovered, and died from the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918 in São Paulo, Brazil. Worldwide, this epidemic took the lives of more people than World War I and killed 1 percent of São Paulo’s population alone. Bertucci’s analysis, the only publication of such magnitude regarding the 1918 epidemic in Brazil, contributes to a small and growing scholarly and literary writings concerning this global epidemic. Her focus on a single city leads to a narrative and analysis of unprecedented depth and breadth. She shines light on the complex interrelations and dizzying multiplicity of scientific, hygienic, and urban theories, as well as institutional responses and treatments. This focus also allows her room to delve into individual experiences of the epidemic.Bertucci contextualizes the epidemic within the broader history of São Paulo’s urbanization, industrialization, and growth from about 1910 onward. Her analysis contributes to several arguments prevalent in urban, labor, and medical historiographies. During the epidemic, government officials and medical personnel targeted the poor and working classes as most in need of public assistance but also most to blame for spreading the illness. Bertucci’s analysis, however, adds a new twist to this making of the so-called dangerous classes: during the 1918 epidemic, workers were faulted not for being lazy, but for working too hard. It contributes to a growing literature on what many scholars see as increasing government and medical institutional control over public and private life in the first few decades of the twentieth century.Clear tensions existed in São Paulo (as well as other cities in Brazil) between the state and municipal government and the newly established Serviço Sanitario regarding who should fund and manage hygienic programs, and political power stagnated or flourished depending on personal ties of clientalism or enmity. The author focuses on the tensions between medical authorities’ attempts to control where (hospitals) and how (allopathic medicines) people advertised, provided, and applied treatment for the flu. She is especially insightful in pinpointing specific moments of shifts in the articulation of such control. One of her most fascinating assertions identifies a “180 degree” moment in which “these so-called sanatoriums [nosocômias], for centuries repudiated by the population as a place of death and treatment for the wretched, transformed themselves at the end of October [1918] into the ‘great solution’ to the epidemic disaster” (p. 127). Cutting against the Foucauldian grain, Bertucci also identifies the failures of institutional control: for example, the inability to stem certain cultural practices, such as kissing, hugging, social visits, visits to cemeteries, and popular medicine.Her emphasis on the inextricable interconnections and tensions between popular and scientific medicine in twentieth-century São Paulo affirms that cultural miscegenation permeated Brazilian life. Bertucci’s sources reveal this multiplicity of cultural practices: page after page of magazine and journal ads, and pharmacy shelf after pharmacy shelf of popular treatments side by side with “scientific” medicines. Through such materials, she probes the historiographically elusive private lives of São Paulo’s residents, nearly a century ago.Bertucci presents evidence that the 1918 epidemic was the moment when—despite their continued interrelation, both cordial and contested—allopathic practitioners began to articulate a clearer separation between themselves and those they termed charlatans. She argues that a major way these doctors distinguished the microscope from the Madames was their move from fantastic promises of miracle cures to more realistic and sober cautionary descriptions.The vast multiplicity of details and voices is both the book’s most challenging aspect and its greatest strength. Bertucci analyzes dozens of official medical reports and São Paulo newspapers and magazines. This scope captures a wide range of perspectives and sympathies, from church publications to women’s magazines to journals specializing in irreverent political humor. She neither totally vilifies nor lionizes efforts at control or resistance. Her complex (and thus sometimes difficult to follow) narrative provides a deeper and more accurate account of the cruelty, selfishness, complacency, impotence, kindness, and generosity among and between people of all classes during the epidemic. Bertucci gives voice to both institutional leaders and patient-citizens.Bertucci’s prose is clear and often poetic, and the subject has relevance to not just Brazilian but to world history. Influenza, a medicina enferma is therefore not just a must-read for specialists in the field but also an excellent book for an undergraduate course and for a more general readership. Medical researchers, government agencies, and architects might use this work to help frame questions or glean details that could further their quest to understand what caused the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic, how to prevent it from recurring, and political, social, and economic strategies for negotiating future emergency relief services.

Personal Values, Advertising, and Smoking Motivation in Taiwanese Adolescents

ABSTRACT This article explores the role that personal values plays in motivating Taiwanese adolescents to smoke. In a nationwide survey of high school students, smokers attached greater importance to hedonic gratification values and less importance to idealism values than did nonsmokers. Hedonic gratification values were associated with favorable attitudes toward smoking, while idealism values were associated with unfavorable attitudes toward smoking. Attitudes toward smoking predicted adolescent smoking behavior. Evidence suggested that advertising plays an important role in motivating adolescents with hedonic gratification values to smoke. First, in the survey, hedonic gratification values were associated with paying attention to and expressing favorable attitudes toward cigarette advertising. Second, a content analysis of cigarette ads in magazines found hedonic gratification values to be the most commonly portrayed values, occurring in 62.7% of ads.

The Portrayal of Asian Americans in Mainstream Magazine Ads: An Update

Mass-circulation magazines were analyzed for the frequency and nature of advertising portrayals of Asian Americans, along several dimensions related to the “model minority” stereotype. Findings were compared with those for African Americans and Hispanics. Despite some improvement in the frequency and scope of representation, the presence of Asian Americans is still limited to narrowly defined stereotypical roles. Logistic regression analyses provided further support for the findings. Drawing on both cultivation and expectancy-violation theory frameworks, the authors suggest that, to the extent that the stereotype is reflected and reinforced through advertising, biased and undue expectations may be formed, resulting in negative consequences for the group members.

Allergies: Ionizing Air Cleaners Zapped

Ionizing air cleaners—those staples of infomercials and splashy magazine ads—are not only ineffective at removing contaminants from indoor air, but also may emit enough ozone to be a health concern. The effects may be even greater in people with respiratory problems, who make up 80% of the buyers of such devices. Those are the conclusions reached in tests of the units described in the May 2005 Consumer Reports (CR). CR tested five units (including the top-selling Ionic Breeze from The Sharper Image) and confirmed results reported in October 2003 rating most of the air cleaners “poor” at removing dust and tobacco smoke from the indoor environment. This time around, pollen was added as well, with similarly disappointing results. The cleaners were also tested for generation of ozone, a respiratory irritant. The results showed that some of the least effective models also emitted potentially harmful ozone levels. “We felt that it was particularly important to notify our subscribers that these air cleaners not only don’t remove particulates from the air, but they also put ozone into it,” says Jeff Asher, vice president and technical director of Consumers Union, the publisher of CR. There is no regulatory standard for ozone emission by air cleaners; manufacturers claim to adhere to a voluntary standard of 50 parts per billion (ppb), a limit established by the Food and Drug Administration for medical devices. CR used Underwriters Laboratories Standard 867 to measure the units’ ozone levels from 2 inches away in a sealed polyethylene room. All five machines failed that test. To more accurately reflect actual use conditions, CR also tested the devices in an open laboratory, from distances of 2 inches and 3 feet. Two units failed this this test; the other three (including the Ionic Breeze) produced levels of 26–48 ppb at 2 inches and 2–18 ppb at 3 feet—still high enough by CR’s estimation to be of concern. “The levels were not what I would call of great imminent risk,” says Asher, “but it was of significant risk in the sense of being in an indoor environment, where we just don’t need more ozone.” The Sharper Image, which unsuccessfully sued CR over its 2003 report, has fired back, assailing the magazine’s credibility. In a 6 April 2005 press statement, CEO Richard Thalheimer called the article “irresponsible in the way it casually and unscientifically speculates about public health and safety. . . . We continue to emphatically disagree with Consumer Union’s methods in evaluating the Ionic Breeze.” But health and engineering experts find the CR results troubling. “These levels make these devices inappropriate to use for asthmatic patients and for patients with respiratory disease,” says Peyton Eggleston, interim director of the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center. Richard Shaughnessy, an environmental engineer at the University of Tulsa who has researched air cleaners for many years, concurs, pointing out that “not only are people with respiratory illnesses and asthma the population targeted by most of these air cleaners, they’re also the ones who are most likely to be adversely affected in terms of exposure to small amounts of ozone.”

Master Tropes in English Magazine Advertisements: A Semiotic Topic-Vehicle Approach

This paper investigates three master tropes (viz, simile, metaphor, and metonymy) in English magazine ads, taking a semiotic topic-vehicle approach to identify and analyze the three tropes. The purpose of the investigation is twofold: to see (ⅰ) if the topic-vehicle approach can account for the three tropes in English magazine ads and (ⅱ) if the three tropes occur in independent phrases the same as they occur in complete clauses. It is concluded that the semiotic topic-vehicle approach, including the concept of complex tropes derived from it, is generally applicable to the three tropes in English magazine ads and that every type and subtype of a trope assuming the form of a complete clause can also take the form of an independent phrase.

Cigarette advertising in magazines for Latinas, White women, and men, 1998--2002: a preliminary investigation.

Cigarette ads in popular magazines play a role in smoking and in brand preferences among women and men, but few studies have analyzed ads directed at women vs men, and no study has examined ads directed at women of different ethnic groups. Hence, we examined cigarette ads in popular magazines for White women, Latinas, and men 1998 through 2002 for the first time. Significant differences in the number of cigarette ads by magazine audience were found, along with significant differences in the type and brands of cigarettes advertised to each group. These preliminary findings suggest that the tobacco industry may target women in a manner that differs from its targeting of men, and may target Latinas in a manner that it does not target White women. Results are discussed in terms of the need for further research on tobacco ads directed at women.

More than Pictures? An Exploration of Visually Dominant Magazine Ads as Arguments

This paper explores the extent to which individuals infer similar claims from visually dominant magazine advertisements. Past research suggests that consumers interact with visual stimuli in such advertisements and draw meaningful semantic claims based on the pictures presented by connecting the image to a product claim. A basic argument structure is presented to explain the process by which this occurs. Participants (N = 118) were asked to view eight visually dominant magazine advertisements, and to infer what they thought were the product claim or claims. Results suggest that respondents do infer consistently a small set of claims for a given advertisement but that they also can see multiple meanings within an ad.

An Update on Sex in Magazine Advertising: 1983 to 2003

Magazine advertisements from 2003 were content analyzed as an extension of a study reported in Journalism Quarterly that assessed sex in advertising in 1983 and 1993. As watchdog groups become more vocal concerning indecency in advertising and media in general, it is important to assess the state of sex in advertising since 1993. The findings indicate overall increases in sexual dress and intimate contact from 1983 to 2003 and that female models were more explicitly dressed in 2003 (49%) than 1993 (40%). In addition, sexual content continued to be more explicit and prevalent in women's and men's magazines compared to newsweeklies. In 2003, for instance, 78% of women in ads in men's magazines were sexually attired.

Evaluating the Balance of Persuasive and Informative Content within Product-Specific Print Direct-to-Consumer Ads

This study attempts to compare the prevalence of persuasive and informative appeals found in direct-to-consumer (DTC) ads of prescription drugs in consumer magazines. A content analysis of DTC ads in a stratified randomized sample of magazines published from 1995 to 2000 identified the use of 10 types of persuasive appeals and 12 types of informative appeals. The average ad employed the use of 6.24 informative appeals and 3.13 persuasive appeals. DTC ads in magazines with a predominately male readership were found to contain a greater number of persuasive appeals than ads in other magazines. While the products most frequently advertised were for chronic nonlife-threatening conditions, a panel of pharmacists evaluated the majority of these products as having a high degree of clinical usefulness. Despite significant differences in the prevalence of certain types of appeals among ads for different products, the balance of persuasive and informative appeals did not vary considerably among them. Ads for drugs judged to be more specious in clinical usefulness did not employ the use of additional persuasive appeals and were found to be just as informative as ads for other drugs.

The Prevalence of Sexual Imagery in Ads Targeted to Young Adults

To determine if advertisers use sexual imagery to appeal to youth, 2,863 ads in magazines read by young and mature adults were compared. Results indicate that ads targeted to young adults were 65% more likely to contain provocatively dressed models and 128% more likely to contain sexual behavior than those for mature adults. In the ads for young adults, female models were 3.7 times more likely to be portrayed sexually than were male models. The findings suggest that advertisers use sexual imagery, primarily by means of female models, to appeal to young audiences. Education and consumer action implications are discussed.

Paradise and plantation: tourism and culture in the anglophone Caribbean

It is hard to ignore the hotels. They rise like mammoths of iron and concrete above the homes, the office buildings, the trees of New Providence, island of my birth. So begins Ian Strachan's history of the idea of the Caribbean as paradise. The modern image of the Bahamas as a carefree tourist oasis has its origins in much earlier cultural mythology: the first colonizers conceptualized the Caribbean as a place beyond time, beyond the real, and the region produced profit seemingly without work. Yet an Edenic experience was made possible only by the existence of the plantation - the very opposite of paradise for the Amerindians, whose homeland was colonized, and for those brought as slaves. Examining poetry, plays, novels, travelogues, magazine ads, postcards, posters, brochures, stamps, popular songs, paintings, and illustrations, Paradise and Plantation presents telling links between the myth of a Caribbean paradise and colonial ideologies and economics. Strachan considers the cultural, economic, and social effects of tourism's brochure in the modern Caribbean, specifically in the Bahamas, and he enriches his discussion with a fascinating exploration of the ways postcolonial Caribbean writers such as V. S. Naipaul, Derek Walcott, Paule Marshall, Jamaica Kincaid, and Michelle Cliff have responded to the paradise-plantation dichotomy. The conspicuous disparity between the Caribbean's reputation as paradise and the stark social, economic, and political realities of the region is not news. Ian Strachan's genealogy of the paradise-plantation myth goes far beyond the established discourse in paradise studies, however, providing a new and interdisciplinary approach to further the discussion.

English in the Ecuadorian commercial context

This paper presents a study completed in Quito, Ecuador's capital, in 2002. It investigates the attitudinal perceptions toward English in advertising in this context, as well as the actual distribution of English in magazine ads and commercial names of business establishments. The findings are the result of four data collection procedures: first, a questionnaire administered to advertising experts; second, an analysis of business names in ten shopping centers; third, an analysis of advertisements in Ecuadorian magazines; and fourth, an interview survey with the same group of advertising experts. The results are analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively, with the aim to provide an attitudinal sociolinguistic profile of English in Ecuador from a descriptive, comparative and critical perspective. Adopting the socioeconomic framework presented by Bourdieu (1991), English is found to represent commercial capital. Moreover, English is shown to be highly stratified according to socioeconomic strata, and to function as a segmentizer and a gatekeeper on the Ecuadorian market. Thus, if English is to succeed in functioning as empowerment (cf. Friedrich, 2001) among the disadvantaged in Ecuador in the future, affirmative action is needed, especially within the educational sector.

Choice and self-expression: a cultural analysis of variety-seeking.

Three studies examined whether the tendency to seek variety in choices depends in part on cultural assumptions of choice and uniqueness. Study 1 showed that people from different cultures where different assumptions of choice and uniqueness dominate show different levels of variety in their choice rule use. Study 2 primed participants with magazine ads highlighting different representations of uniqueness dominant in individualist versus collectivist cultures to show the influence of cultural meanings of uniqueness on the variety-seeking tendency. Study 3 manipulated the motivation to display variety to demonstrate that variety-seeking in the United States partly hinges on cultural meanings of choice as self-expression. Variety-seeking in choice rule use was eliminated when participants had the chance to self-express through choice listing. The research illustrates the role of cultural assumptions in the variety-seeking tendency.

Let's Hear It for the Zena Princess Warriors

Most teenage girls have very little accurate information about their reproductive systems. Vaginal health in particular seems to be an area where myths and misinformation abound. More than 20 years of adolescent gynecology practice has given me some insight as to the sources teens use for information about vaginal health. Media sources, such as TV and magazine ads, are extremely influential. The concept of feminine hygiene has been mostly created by those who manufacture and sell feminine hygiene products. They have capitalized on the idea of menstruation as an unclean process, an idea promulgated by centuries of cultural practices that isolated women during menstruation and regarded menstrual blood as unclean or even dangerous. Though women in our society are no longer isolated or avoided during their menses, many female relatives perpetuate this concept by encouraging their daughters and granddaughters that the vagina needs to be cleaned after sex, after the menses, or just routinely. Mothers and grandmothers are a very influential source in my experience. In the urban setting in particular, many teenage girls have been raised by their grandmothers, who are well-intentioned but who often pass on information that is outdated or mythical. Learning how to douche seems to be a rite of passage for many teenage girls and douche products abound.

Differences in Media Buying by Online Businesses in Black- and White-Targeted Magazines: The Potential Impact of the Digital Divide on Ad Placement

This study examined differences in ad placement by online companies based on whether the publication targets the general market or the Black population. Seventy-two magazines from three different categories were analyzed to ascertain the number of online company ads in each magazine. It was predicted that online businesses placed more ads in general market magazines than they did in magazines targeted to Black audiences. The findings clearly support the overall hypothesis. The potential impact of the digital divide on ad placement is discussed.

Differences in Media Buying by Online Businesses in Black- and White-Targeted Magazines: The Potential Impact of the Digital Divide on Ad Placement

This study examined differences in ad placement by online companies based on whether the publication targets the general market or the Black population. Seventy-two magazines from three different categories were analyzed to ascertain the number of online company ads in each magazine. It was predicted that online businesses placed more ads in general market magazines than they did in magazines targeted to Black audiences. The findings clearly support the overall hypothesis. The potential impact of the digital divide on ad placement is discussed.

A comparison of services advertising strategies used in US and Korean magazine ads: a content analysis

This study assesses the level to which services advertisers follow guidelines for effective services advertising suggested by prior academic literature. The study analyzes George and Berry’s five guidelines for effective services advertising strategies and Berry and Clark’s four tangibilization strategies. The extent to which these suggested strategies are actually implemented by practitioners in the USA and South Korea is investigated, using a content analysis methodology. It is hypothesized that advertisers in a more advanced services economy like the US would be more in tune with the distinctive nature of services (e.g. intangibility) and would practice these guidelines more frequently than advertisers in a newly developed services economy like Korea. The findings suggest that US services magazine ads do use most of the suggested services advertising strategies more frequently than the Korean counterparts. However, there are a few exceptions, and some of the guidelines were not widely used in either country. Managerial implications and suggestions for further research are provided.

Shaping Our Mothers' World: American Women's Magazines

midcentury periodicals that fostered an indelible middle-class ideal for American women also confronted happy homemaker stereotype Read by millions of women each month, such mainstream periodicals as Ladies' Home Journal and McCall's delivered powerful messages about women's roles and behavior. In 1963 Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique accused genre of helping to create what Friedan termed the problem that has no name -- that is, presenting women as stereotypical happy homemakers with limited interests and abilities. But this ideal of contented, domestic women was far from monolithic in periodical literature of time. Nancy A. Walker's analysis of a wide range of magazines, including Good Housekeeping, Vogue, Mademoiselle, Redbook, and others, reveals their depiction of a broader, fuller image of womanhood. As she notes a reflection of complex debates about nature of domestic life in 1940s and 1950s, she perceives editorial policies that mixed banalities with urgent actualities. Rather than making isolated decisions about content, editors interacted with advertising agencies, with manufacturers of products, with experts in such fields as nutrition, medicine, technology, and childcare, and with preferences and values of their readers. When World War II altered family patterns by taking millions into armed services and drawing many women to jobs in defense plants, magazine articles both supported and attacked new roles women took, while applauding women's home-front contributions to war effort. After war magazines reflected Cold War anxieties while touting rising consumer culture. Even as magazine ads promoted a white, suburban, middle-class ideal, such series as How America Lives in Ladies' Home Journal revealed a society that was economically and ethnically diverse. The pages of women's magazines of 1940s and 1950s helped to shape and expand domestic world our mothers inhabited. Examining articles, fiction, advice columns, and advertisements that magazines comprised during midcentury, Walker argues persuasively that contradictory messages were a reflection of complex cultural values and institutions at a time when domestic world became increasingly important as both a symbol of American democracy and site of personal fulfillment. Nancy A. Walker, a professor of English at Vanderbilt University, is author of A Very Serious Thing: Women's Humor and American Culture and Feminist Alternatives: Irony and Fantasy in Contemporary Novel by Women (University Press of Mississippi). She is coeditor of Redressing Balance: American Women's Literary Humor from Colonial Times to 1980s (University Press of Mississippi).

Portrayal of Women in Movie Ads Changes Little from 1963–1993

Scholars have analyzed newspaper stories, editorials and photographs.1 Yet, very few studies, by contrast, exist about advertisements in this important medium.2 The image of women in advertising is also a topic of frequent academic investigations. Most studies of this nature examine magazine ads and a few analyze television commercials. Newspaper ads are again neglected in this line of research.3 To study the image of women in media, the inclusion of newspaper movie ads is important for two reasons. First, in a culture generally criticized for portraying females as objects of demeaning entertainment, movies are likely to reflect this phenomenon.4 Such bias is likely to appear in movie ads. Second, newspaper advertising is a critical medium in communication. Many people scan newspaper movie ads to study the genre, stars, plots, show times and locations to decide which movie to see. Because movie ads in newspapers are seen by a great number of people, whether these readers end up in the movie theater, such ads are worth studying. The feminist movement's impact on gender roles in films and whether newspaper ads faithfully reElect the content of movies that they promote are important topics for academic research, but they are beyond the scope of the present study. The present research only focuses on newspaper movie ads. The Feminist Movement and the Present Study The present study aims to understand whether gender roles portrayed in movie advertisements in newspapers have changed to parallel the feminist movement. Movie ads in 1963 and 1993 were chosen because of their association with two milestones in the feminist movement. The year 1963 was significant because of the publication of a landmark book, The Feminist Mystique.5 The movement reached a peak of mass mobilization around 1970 and continued into the 1980s. When a large number of women ran for political office in 1992, it was proclaimed as the Year of Women.6 This suggests another peak in this movement and indicates that the status of women has been advanced in society. If the movement had an impact on the entertainment industry, newspaper movie ads in 1993, a year after a milestone in the movement, should reflect such an influence. The key concerns of the feminist movement include job equality in terms of opportunity and compensation, division of labor within the home, and portrayal of women as sex objects whose primary function is to attract the opposite sex.7 These concerns can be summed up with one phrase--equality between men and women in all aspects. Accordingly, the present study examines the changes of gender roles in the number of appearances, dominance and aggression and treatment as sex objects. Ageism against women, especially female actors, is also of interest.8 Specific guidelines for analysis, such as the quantity of representation, the scale of sexism, dominance, function ranking, aggression and definition of sex objects, were adopted from frequently cited studies.9 Research Questions The present study seeks to answer the following research questions. RQ1: Does the number of female figures increase over time? RQ2: Do movie ads continue to show male dominance over time? RQ3: Does the treatment of females10 as sex objects decrease over time? Method One constructed week was created for 1963 and 1993 to provide a before-after comparison. The sample was randomly selected and then adjusted (one date was substituted) in order to cover both the summer and Christmas seasons because Hollywood traditionally releases a majority of its movies during both time periods.11 The Los Angeles Times was chosen because Los Angeles is the home of Hollywood movies as well as a metro area with a large movie audience. In addition, movies that did not appear tobe released nationally were excluded from the analysis. Advertisements for the same film were coded once unless they were very different from each other. …

Body Image, Race, and Fashion Models

The perceived effects of advertising on body-image factors were tested in both Black and White college-age women. After seeing magazine ads that portrayed either Black fashion models or White fashion models, respondents rated perceived effects of these ads on body-image factors. The effects were rated on self, on other Black women on campus, and other White women on campus. When projecting perceived effects on others—of the same race or a different race—both Blacks and Whites indicated that media effects would be maximal when the race of the model matched the race of the respondent. However, when rating perceived effects on self, whereas Blacks identified strongly with Black models, there was no significant difference in the way Whites identified with fashion models of either race. The results are examined within the framework of social distance and social identification.