Ad industry and its problems of diversity

Here's a new book--Madison Avenue and the Color Line--by Jason Chambers, one of the authors from our textbook (on alcohol and sexually oriented appeals), with video of discussion about the problems of the advertising industry in recruiting employees of color and in its use of stereotyping. Here's the link:
http://www.aef.com/industry/industry_leaders/2008_color_line/_view/email111908

Interestingly, the cover image for this book features an African-American male in whiteface, a sort of meditation on blackface and our viewing of Bamboozled.

Study about alcohol ads near schools

This UT-Austin press release gives information from a kind of billboard content analysis, about alcohol advertising near schools with larger numbers of Hispanic students. The analysis also counted types of images used in these ads:

http://www.utexas.edu/news/2008/10/28/alcohol_advertising/

An announcement from UCD

UCD professors, students and employees: Please help feed North Texans living with hunger by donating a jar of peanut butter before November 20th. Boxes are located in the first floor main office and next to the security desk. This campaign is a class project for Dr. Berri O’ Neal’s management class and every donation is greatly appreciated. Learn more at spreadhope2008.org

No class this week

Remember, we won't be meeting this week. I'll see you again, for Spike Lee's Bamboozled, on Nov. 13.

As you are researching for your final projects and finding your texts for analysis, please email me with questions. If you are doing a qualitatively study, keep the idea of "saturation" in mind. What is saturation? It's when you've reached a kind of fullness of categories or observations. In other words, if you looked at 10 more ads or five more episodes of a sitcom, would you come up with any more "codes" or interpretations of what is going on? Would you add more categories of unique things? Have you already counted or discovered what is there, and adding more won't make your coding scheme or descriptions richer? If the answer to this last question is "yes," then you've reached saturation.

When you've reached saturation, you don't need to keep adding texts for analysis. That means you get to stop and focus on reporting the findings of your study, analyzing what themes or patterns you have found.

Links for next few weeks

Neil Foote will be a speaker in our classroom on Oct. 30; here's a preview of his perspective, from Poynter.org:

http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=58&aid=147332

And a link to the Commercial Closet, which Glenn Griffin mentioned last week:

http://www.commercialcloset.org

For a foundation article about stereotyping, here are the words of Walter Lippmann:

http://www.columbia.edu/itc/journalism/j6075/index.html?edit/course_syllabus.html

Final project assignment

We'll talk more about this tonight and next week.

You’ll be writing a 10-page final project, double-spaced, for the end of the semester. For this assignment, you’ll need to choose a method from those listed below, and you’ll need to choose a focus, too, from the areas of race, gender, sexualities, disabilities, dialects, economic class or a subset of these.

For methods, choose from:
Historical analysis (case study)
Content analysis (quantitative or qualitative)
Theme analysis
Semiotics or signs analysis
Rhetorical analysis
Narrative interviewing

First, you’ll need to find a corpus of mass media texts (ads, films, news stories, editorial cartoons, comics, TV shows, music), following protocols discussed in class for ensuring a consistent group of texts. Next, you’ll conduct research to build a short review of literature, using one major study on which to base your own. Be sure to include some theoretical work in this literature review, such as van Zoonen’s work on the politics of gazing or bell hooks’ work on stereotyping.

Devise a list of possible research questions for your corpus, after reading scholarly work about your topic. Once you’ve considered your texts and your lit review, you’ll decide on which method will be most useful for analyzing these texts and answering your potential research questions. To develop your methodology, finalize your research questions and write up a protocol for analyzing your data (be sure this method will expose findings that will be responsive to your research questions).

Report your data and synthesize these findings with your literature review, mixing your results with insights you have and with theories that you’ve studied. These insights will form the basis of your discussion/conclusions.

All parts of your paper should be like pearls on a string—all parts should be the same as to their purpose. In other words, tie things together and be sure your methods match your research questions, which should match your lit review and your discussion.

For your works cited page, which should be page 11 or higher, you’ll need to use APA style, which will be discussed in class. There are also online resources for how to cite sources; be sure to use quote marks for all material quoted from sources other than your own brain. After indirect or directly quoted material, give the citations of where this information may be verified, by offering the author’s name, the year, and page number.

Sexism in election coverage

We've been talking about this all semester. Here's are two interesting Q&A articles about current coverage, sexism, and coverage of Geraldine Ferraro in the 1980s:

http://www.nationaljournal.com/njonline/ii_20081001_8507.php


http://www.nationaljournal.com/njonline/ii_20081002_1929.php