Optional Print Ad/Website Analysis
Due:
Length and Format:
- 2-3 pages, double-spaced, 1 inch margins all around, 12 point fonts. Please spellcheck. They should be well-organized analyses of ethnic, gendered or national implications of a chosen print ad image or set of images or a website relevant to Tibet or Sino-Tibetan relations.
- Include image or URL with your analysis. All analyses will be linked to the course website and/or MIA.
Evaluation: I will evaluate and respond to papers based on (in order of priority):
- Degree to which you respond to the assignment and incorporate ideas and issues from class materials in your discussion;
- The creativity and originality of your ideas;
- The clarity of your organization and writing.
Topic:
You can take any number of angles on this assignment, but the main idea is to consider these images as visual texts inseparable from a social and political world. That is, do NOT just consider the image or website in isolation. Rather, consider the implications of its structural/compositional qualities in relation to larger social and/or political contexts.
1. First, choose your image(s)/website and your approach. You may use images or websites available on the MIA Sexism and Advertising website or the course syllabus website (see weekly links). You can also collect your own images or download them from another source, or surf the web for related websites.
2. Preserve as much of the citation information as you can (ie., where was the image printed? what year? what other forums/magazines did this image appear in? When was the website launched? by whom? what goals?).
3. As for your analytic approach, you could:
- focus on one ad image or website, but consider its composition, messages, etc in relation to other similar ones.
- consider a set of similarly patterned images or website on a theme, or from a single advertising campaign or organization.
- consider your image(s) or website in relation to the various agencies involved in creating it--track down the ad firm involved, or look at what that particular company or organization has been doing to reach consumers or donors.
4. Then, you need to historicize and contextualize your image(s) or website in some way. That is, consider
- how that product has historically been created and marketed, or
- what audiences and/or forums have this image or product historically targeted? or
- consider the historical happenings that coincided with the campaign, or
- the history of the companies involved. The best and quickest way to do this is to use internet resources.
For ad images, see especially:
- Ad Access
http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/adaccess/
Comprehensive database of 7,000 ads from 1911-1955 at Duke University. Use the "Timeline" link to consider historical happenings related to your themes/analysis. Do keyword searches for your themes
- Library of Congress: The Emergence of Advertising in America, 1850-1920
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/award98/ncdhtml/eaahome.html
Library of Congress' American Memory Digital collections. On-line exhibit of over 9,000 images from the collections of the Hartman Center at Duke University relating to the early history of advertising in the United States. This seems to be a larger collection from the Duke project. Do a keyword search for "asian" etc., Timeline links on this site as well.
- Texas U.'s Advertising dept
http://advertising.utexas.edu/world/index.asp
Check this out for resources on understanding how Ad execs think. See sections on "culture", or on "awards" for variety of ways advertisers see their work as a competitive art form.
- Advertising Age Magazine Online
http://www.adage.com/
One of the main advertising mags for people in the industry. Search online articles for your product, ad agency or firm.
- Resources on Global Corporations
These links provide information on and about corporations or reactions to them, including Coke, Walmart, media giants and more. You can find out about their products, their earnings, and their potential growth. But you can also find out about the affects they have on people's lives. This is part of Richard Robbins (SUNY, Plattsburg) website: Global Problems and the Culture of Capitalism.
For websites, see:
Tips on Structural Assessments of Commercial Images:
Think about images as a particular kind of frame that works to guide or constrain your interpretation of its meanings. Given the conditions of the contemporary advertising industry, it is safe to assume that in commercial images nearly all aspects of form are consciously contrived to achieve a certain interpretive goal.
To consider how the frame is constructed, look for:
- camera angle: perspective of the viewer or voyeur
- depth
- types of subjects
- background
- lighting/color-body language of subjects: gaze, head angle, relative size, hand
- gestures
- clothing of subjects
- relat. btw. subjects and material things
- narrative content: what story is being told or referred to? How do you know?
- What is the commodity being sold?
- What is the target audience?
- What is framed out of the image?
