Media I Saw Two Ads

Media

I saw two ads for the Toyota Yaris, one from YouTube and the other as part of a viral campaign to create a Yaris Internet meme. The YouTube ad has an insect made out of gas pumps walking. The Yaris comes along and squishes it, then sucks up the little bit of gas inside and drives off. A caption says "40 mpg rated." The viral campaign plays on the public's desire to contribute content, and willingness to be part of a promotion. It highlights the popularity of participatory advertising campaigns.

Media concentration would be an issue if it were anything close to reality. Media is more diffused and differentiated at this point in time than ever before, and this allows messages to be tailored to narrower audiences and exposed to the world for a low cost. There is ownership concentration and corporate influence among the largest media providers, and this seems to orient those providers to agenda-driven programming that can be detrimental to critical thinking skills.

c. I did the survey "The Color of Network TV" and found that almost every show has Caucasian leads. In addition, few shows have more than one or two minority characters at all. Two that did -- Dexter and Hawaii Five-O -- are set in locations that have a high proportion of minorities, so the casting does reflect the demographics of the setting. For some other shows, set in major cities, there is little reason for the overwhelmingly white nature of the casts.

d. Dominant ideology refers to the fact that the views of the majority will tend to dominate society. All members of society will come to view certain aspects of the dominant ideology as reality, such that those who are dominant can shape the way that everybody views the world and views themselves. The Yaris ads display this. The desire for higher gas prices is also something that is becoming a dominant ideology, and advertisers are also playing up that theme, the idea being to reinforce that sentiment among consumers so that they will be more likely to buy a Yaris. The Internet meme promotion is rather shameless and exploitative, and is not something that has become widespread in society. If more advertisers were to push this method of promotion on the public, it is possible that society could eventually come to ignore the shamelessness of that type of promotion and accept it as a natural part of surfing the web. The advertiser (Toyota) is reinforcing dominant ideology in one promotion and attempting to forge a new one in the other promotion.

There are no real stereotypes in these promotions, as there are no real characters, other than the fake bug. It is worth considering, however, that the audience in both cases is viewed as a stereotype. Those concerned about mileage are taken as very concerned, and enamored almost solely with this aspect of the car. The Internet community at large is taken as having little moral qualm with the co-opting of user-generated content to create an ad campaign -- the complicity of the audience is assumed and that may too be a stereotype of the typical Internet user.

e. What a Girl Wants illustrates the power of the media in terms of defining image for consumers. It reflects dominant ideology -- what those with the media power want is projected onto the population. Often, the audience does not realize that they are being socialized. The audience will over time, if the message is repeated often enough, begin to parrot that message and adopt it as their own. The video is interesting in that the boys and the girls interpret the message differently. The message that the girls receive is that the song(s) are about respect, while the boys interpret the message according to the manner in which they have been socialized. Students of both genders, therefore, are a product of the way in which they have been socialized -- the dominant ideology of society.