Impact of advertising on children

Question 1

BACKGROUND
- Valkenburg findings
- intentional + unintentional effects

Answer 1

Intentional effects - great brand awarness, prefrenece for one product over another

Unintentional - increase materialistic attitudes, parent-child conflict, dissatisfcation + unhappiness

Question 2

What did correlational studies find

Answer 2

positive correlation between amount of television children watched and number of brands they recognise

Question 3

What did Pine and Nash find
- dissatisfcation + unhappiness

Answer 3

Children who watched TV with adverts tended to request for more toys from Santa

this leads to greater disappointment and dissatisfaction

Question 4

What did a content-analysis find on gender stereotyping in ads

Answer 4

Males were more likely to be active and females passive in their behaviours in ads

64% of dominant characters in ads were male

In another study, ads for girls toys emphasized the importance of attractive appearance whereas boys was competition + destruction

Question 5

What did Halfood find on food advertising and childhood obesity

Answer 5

obese children were able to recognise more food-related ads than non-obese children

more ads obese children recognised, the greater their food intake (high-calorie snacks)

Question 6

BACKGROUND
- sample of gorn and goldberg

Answer 6

Large sample of 5-8 year olds at a summer camp

from low-income Canadian families

Question 7

BACKGROUND
- gorn and goldberg
- results

Answer 7

The children who saw sweet/fizzy drink ads chose sweets more often than fruit compared to others

Food ads can affect children’s eating choices. Eliminating sweet ads could reduce consumption of sweets

Question 8

BACKGROUND
- gorn and goldberg
- sampling bias
-reliability
-validity

Answer 8

SAMPLING BIAS
- only 5-8 years old
- only from low-income families

RELIABILITY
- good controls + standardised procedures
- all watched 30 mins of cartoons everyday for 2 weeks

VALIDITY
- carried out in summer camp
- high ecological validity
- where children would normally watch cartoons

can establish cause and effect between watching ads for sweets + fizzy drinks and childrens consumption of unhealthy food

Question 9

KEY RESEARCH - Johnson and Young
- Aim
- Sample

Answer 9

AIM - to see if ads aimed at boys and girls use different langauge

SAMPLE - 188 toys ads shown around freeview cartoons in USA

Question 10

KEY RESEARCH - Johnson and Young
- procedure

Answer 10

the researchers carried out content analysis on ads looking at whether voice-overs were gender exaggerated,

the verb elements used in ads (more competition words ‘crush’ or nurturing words ‘love’)

speaking lines given to boys and girls

how often the word ‘ power’ was used in ads

Question 11

KEY RESEARCH - Johnson and Young
- results

Answer 11

The ads aimed at girls had voice-overs that were more sing-song, high pitched whereas those aimed at boys were more aggressive

Girls had more nurturing words, Boys had more competition words

One ad for girls mentioned power whereas 21% of ads for boys mentioned power

CONCLUSIONS - Ads are gender stereotyped
Gender stereotypes are because they work in selling products

Question 12

KEY RESEARCH - Johnson and Young
- sampling bias
- ethnocentrism

Answer 12

Sampling bias
- only ads from freeview children cartoon programmes
- only placed around cartoons, so ads only apply to young children, not older children or teenagers

Ethnocentrism
- not criticised as realised it only applied to US culture + understanding meaning of ads

• didn’t assume that their conclusions about the promotion of gender stereotypes can be applied to another culture

Question 13

KEY RESEARCH - Johnson and Young
- Reliability
- Validity

Answer 13

RELIABLE
- categories were clear and unambiguous
eg. whether ‘power’ was used
-100% agreement between raters > interrater reliability

VALIDITY
- subjective interpretation
- cant establish cause and effect

Question 14

Relation to socially sensitive research

Answer 14

gender stereotyping in ads being negative is socially sensitive
as opinions differ on whether gender differences should be encouraged in children

IMPLICATIONS ON COMPANIES AIMING AT CHILDREN
- careful not to use gender stereotyping in ads
- tension between rights of advertisers in consume culture to sell products + wider social responsibility

IMPLICATIONS FOR ADVERTISING REGULATORS + GOVERNMENT
- should stop junk food advertising to children as > obesity
- gov is planning a ban on this online before 9pm on TV from 2025 so less exposed to junk food

Question 15

Strategies to reduce the impact of advertising

Answer 15

> limiting TV advertising
media literacy interventions

Question 16

Implementation of limiting TV advertising

Answer 16

HOW
- advertising regulators can limit/ban certain ads
eg. UK banned advertising which includes harmful gender stereotypes

• self-regulation eg. mars don’t deliberately target children to buy sweets so advertising regulate still allow them to advertise
• UK gov planning on banning ads to junk food before 9pm watershed on TV

WHY
- prevent childhood obesity as found ads can increase likelihood of obesity
- prevent gender stereotyping + reduce parent-child tensions

Question 17

Implementation of Media Literacy Interventions

Answer 17

HOW
- parents educate children on the purpose of advertising + consumer culture
- they could say ‘I think girls like robots too! I don’t know why they use it on boys’
- schools can educate children on purpose of advertising

WHY
- research found parents who made opinion known about advertising can reduce impact of advertising
- reduce parent-child conflict
- reduce impact of gender steroptyping