Tasks Due from Last Week

This Week’s Topics

Check-in

I can’t believe we are on Week 10 with only five classes left!

For our Post-Modernism week after spring break, I was hoping we could take a field trip to see Thierry Mugler: Couturissime at the Brooklyn Museum. However, I was unable to get us free entry. Special exhibits are $12. I encourage you to go to see it over the Spring Break, if you wish!

Do you have anything to share from your Research Journal? Add a comment to this post with something you’ve added to your Research Journal recently.

Or suggest a track for the playlist on the COMD3504 playlist post.

Recap

The main focus of last week’s class was Marshall McLuhan’s “The Media is the Message,” ways persuasive social media “massages” and changes us, and how that change/manipulation has lasting effects on society. If you didn’t watch The Social Dilemma, take a look at the trailer.

And let’s watch a little more of this video to see how persuasive technology can have lasting effects on society.

  • If fake news spreads 6x faster than real news, what will become of society if the persuasive technology used for for-profit social media advertising is allowed to continue as it is now?
  • Are the AIs of social media downgrading our free will?

Tristan Harris – A New Agenda For Tech Presentation (54 mins)

Tristan Harris – A New Agenda for Tech Presentation

The topics we will be covering this week will build on reading #8: Roland Barthes’ essay “Rhetoric of the Image.” We will explore representation, context, and the use of persuasive rhetoric in advertising, specifically concerning the perpetuation of racial, ethnic, and gender biases. The work we engage in today will inform your second and last research paper and hopefully also your Research Project/Presentation.

Research Project Timeline

By today you should have completed the first two milestone. Review the project guidelines and see below for the next milestones.

  • March 15: Define your research topic/question and submit your Research Project Outline
  • March 30 : Finalize your topic and start collecting supporting media and sources in an annotated bibliography
  • April 13: Finalize your research, supporting media and sources
  • April 20: Complete your presentation outline and script based on your research
  • April 27: Assemble all graphics and text in a slideshow
  • May 4: Share in-progress slideshow presentation with voiceover, get feedback from peers and professor, finalize annotated bibliography
  • May 11: Post Presentation to OpenLab site – follow the guidelines
  • May 18: Review Research Project Presentations in class.
  • May 22: Submit one comment on each of your classmates’ presentations

Activities

Below find the information covered in this session. Complete all of the following activities, videos, and assignments.

1. Representation and Context (90+ minutes)

Last week we examined Marshall McLuhan’s ideas about media. We learned that the medium is integral to the message and how we receive it. This week we will look at representation and context by exploring the use of stereotypes in media (print, radio, television, and online advertisements). In your second Research Paper, you will use the terminology and approaches that we cover this week to deconstruct a historical or contemporary advertisement that uses coded cultural message(s) of racial, ethnic, and/or gender stereotypes.

We will return to Saussure (sign, signifier, signified) and Peirce (symbol, icon, index) to refresh our understanding of early semiotics. We will incorporate the terms we learned in the last reading of Barthes (connoted, denoted, iconic messages, linguistic messages) and explore additional terms such as encoding, decoding, polysemic, myth, and naturalization. Lastly, we will look at Jamaican-born cultural studies scholar and activist Stuart Hall who explored how the dynamics of media representation reinforce societal power structures.

Terminology

Before we go any further, let’s make sure we all understand the semiotic terms we will need to deconstruct an advertisement.

Ferdinand de Saussure

  • Sign: A sign is anything that creates meaning composed of a signifier and a signified.
  • Signifier: A word, an image, a sound, anything we see, speak or hear to refer to the sign.
  • Signified: The concept that our mind conjures in relation to the sign.

Charles Sanders Peirce

  • Icon: signifier resembles the signified
  • Symbol: arbitrary learned relationship between the signifier and signified
  • Index: signifier is caused by or linked to the signified

Here’s a review from Week 8

Semiotics: WTF? Tom Nicholas

Roland Barthes

Building on Saussure and Peirce, Barthes argued that when we construct a sign (encoding), its reception (decoding) does not take place in a vacuum. Our individual experience, society, and culture impact its meaning and how it is interpreted. In our reading this week, we looked at Barthes’ close-reading of an image, the Panzani advertisement.

Let’s review the Reading Response Guidelines, read part of the essay together, and then take a look at this breakdown of “Rhetoric of the Image” by Lesley Lanir where she covers some of the following terms.

  • Encoding: creating a message for transmission (i.e., creation and distribution of an advertisement)
  • Decoding: the process of interpreting a message (i.e., watching and interpreting an advertisement)
  • Denotation: Literal meaning (a message without code)
  • Connotation: symbolic or cultural meaning (a coded message)
  • Linguistic message: words used to convey meaning
  • Non-coded iconic message: an image with literal meaning
  • Coded iconic message: an image with a coded message
  • Polysemic: a sign that has multiple meanings
  • Myth: a widely accepted meaning of a sign
  • Naturalization: in a society, the repeated use of signs shapes their meaning

Here’s a 9+ minute video that takes us through some of these semiotic terms from a film perspective. Advertising takes a similar approach. NOTE: It’s common in media studies to refer to all media examples as “texts.”

Semiotics for Beginners

Stuart Hall

Stuart Hall was a Jamaican-born British sociologist, cultural theorist and political activist. He looked at the power of mainstream media (advertising, TV, film, etc) to understand the representation of race, gender, class, ethnicity, and religion. Here are some of the theories and terms associated with his work.

  • ReceptionTheory: This theory asserts that advertising and media are encoded and decoded. The creator encodes messages and values into media which are then decoded by the audience. Audiences will decode the media in different ways and not always in the way the creator intended.
    • Dominant, or Preferred Reading: how the creator wants the audience to view the advertisment or media.
    • Oppositional Reading: when the audience rejects the preferred reading, and creates their own meaning. This can happen when content is controversial or when the audience holds different beliefs or is of a different age or culture.
    • Negotiated Reading: a compromise between the dominant and oppositional readings. The audience accepts some of the creator’s view, but also has their own views.
  • Representation Theory: There is no true representation of people or events in media. Designers/creators try to ‘fix’ a ‘preferred meaning’ through ideology or stereotyping. Historically, this is driven by people in power.

This 6+ minute video explains Hall’s Reception Theory:

Stuart Hall’s Reception Theory Explained

This 3-minute video breaks down Hall’s Representation Theory:

Stuart Hall’s Representation Theory – Simplified

This 7-minute video gives a bit more detail and context to Hall’s Representation Theory:

Representation Theory Explained

In this 55 minute documentary from 1997, Stuart Hall offers an extended meditation on representation. Take a close look at 36:00 he speaks about representation and “identification” in advertising. Note that this video was created is prior to social media and the internet era that we live in now. Consider if the power structure has changed and why/why not?

Make sure you are logged into CUNY SSO (single sign-on) to view.

Placeholder image used to link to video.
citytech.kanopy.com/video/stuart-hall-representation-media – 55 minutes

2. Stereotype in Advertising Media

The use of stereotypes to communicate meaning and sell products has a long history in advertising media and visual communications. Advertisers are waking up to this history and changing their approaches.

As we observed in our readings on the lack of diversity in design, leadership in the field of advertising media and design was dominated by white, heterosexual men. And as we see from our recent study of media and the message (and representation above), mainstream and social media are powerful forces for intentionally or unintentionally reinforcing societal biases. It’s changing, but women and BIPOC designers in advertising are historically underrepresented. That lack of diversity in creative leadership has allowed widely-held biases to continue to flourish.

Here are some sources to get you started in your research for Research Paper 2. Choose a historical 19th or 20th-century advertisement that uses obvious and/or documented racial, ethnic, or gender stereotypes to sell the product, review the sources below to support your research. Browse the references below to find an advertisement to work with or find your own!

History of racial, gender, ethnic, and cultural stereotypes in advertisements

3. Assignment: Research Paper

Follow the assignment guidelines and prompts for Research Paper 2

  • First Draft is due April 5th
  • Final Draft is due April 19th

Resources

Week 10 Agenda Checklist

Below are all of the tasks, big and small, for this week. The due date is Wednesday, 11:59 pm before our next Thursday class. Timely completion of these tasks will contribute to your success in this course.

Submit your Weekly Agenda Checklist, indicating the tasks you’ve completed.

If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out.

Tasks from the Week 10 Agenda
Name

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