Who's Feeding the Kids Online? Digital food marketing to children in Ireland: Advertisers’ tactics, children’s exposure and parents’ awareness

Obesity in children and young people is a global health challenge. The widespread marketing of unhealthy foods (food and non-alcoholic drinks high in fat, sugar and salt, or HFSS) plays a causal role in unhealthy eating and obesity. Food and eating is typically presented as an issue of ‘choice’. However, this disregards the fact that current obesogenic environments use many tactics to promote unhealthy foods, interfering with people’s ability to make good choices. This study examined: 1. Content appealing to children and young people on websites of top food and drink retail brands in Ireland 2. Marketing techniques on Facebook: Pages of food brands that have the highest reach among young teens, the first such study of which we are aware 3. Parents’ awareness of digital food marketing to their children in an online, two-stage survey with digital marketing examples and open-ended response options

A Better Understanding of College Students\u27 YouTube Behaviors

The purpose of this research study is to get a closer look into the behavior of college students towards the video streaming website YouTube. The objective is to understand whether the benefits of publishing videos on the site are positive for business organizations. The study looks at many variables that would help companies better understand what exactly publishing a video on YouTube would do for them. These variables include gender, hours of television watched, hours of Internet used, hours spent reading and whether a video is made by a regular user or a professional company. It was found that males are more likely to use YouTube then females, despite using the Internet much less. It was also shown that there are both pros and cons for implementing user and corporate developed videos

Digital Food Marketing to Children and Adolescents: Problematic Practices and Policy Interventions

Examines trends in digital marketing to youth that uses "immersive" techniques, social media, behavioral profiling, location targeting and mobile marketing, and neuroscience methods. Recommends principles for regulating inappropriate advertising to youth

Convergence calls: multimedia storytelling at British news websites

This article uses qualitative interviews with senior editors and managers from a selection of the UK's national online news providers to describe and analyse their current experimentation with multimedia and video storytelling. The results show that, in a period of declining newspaper readership and TV news viewing, editors are keen to embrace new technologies, which are seen as being part of the future of news. At the same time, text is still reported to be the cornerstone for news websites, leading to changes in the grammar and function of news video when used online. The economic rationale for convergence is examined and the article investigates the partnerships sites have entered into in order to be able to serve their audience with video content. In-house video is complementing syndicated content, and the authors examine the resulting developments in newsroom training and recruitment practices. The article provides journalism and interactive media scholars with case studies on the changes taking place in newsrooms as a result of the shift towards multimedia, multiplatform news consumption

INFLUENCES OF YOUTUBE ADVERTISING ON YOUNG ADULTS: A SOCIAL IDENTITY PERSPECTIVE

Social media sites, such as YouTube, have provided a platform for many individuals to have online communities and form their own audiences through their shared interests and a sense of belonging. YouTube exemplifies a social environment in which everyone has the potential to be both the consumer and the producer of content and suggests the speed at which social networking innovations can transform the way we interact with other users. Corporations began to deviate new strategies to engage this new online market and have created a salient area to study the potential problems that may arise when ads present cultural biases or unhealthy habits for the sake of profit. This study explored YouTube content, its influencers, and viewers\u27 experiences within the YouTube platform through the frameworks of Social Identity Theory and the Uses and Gratification model. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with young adults who are frequent YouTube users. The participants were asked regarding their habits and consumption patterns in relation to online advertisements and viewed content on YouTube. The prevalence of online socialization, personalization, and the aspect of convenient entertainment significantly contribute to the overall time spent online. The study found that constant engagement with YouTube normalizes the repetition of advertisements which led the participants to develop different avoidance habits to cope with unwanted advertising on the Internet. However, the results also revealed that advertisements were mentioned to be entertaining and participants would continue to watch them if the content of the advertisements were enjoyable and memorable

Monitoring food marketing to children: A joint Nordic monitoring protocol for marketing of foods and beverages high in fat, salt and sugar (HFSS) towards children and young people

The protocol describes methods for how to monitor marketing of foods and beverages high in fat, salt and sugar towards children and young people at a given time as cross-sectional studies, as well as allowing for monitoring of trends. The data provided could also be used for evaluation purposes, for instance providing relevant data for evaluating regulation practices and schemes in the respective countries; to study advertising and marketing practices, contents and forms over time. In addition to being a tool for monitoring purposes within each country, the protocol will also enable comparisons between the Nordic countries by establishing a joint understanding on how each marketing channel should be monitored. The protocol has been developed as a Nordic project between representatives and experts from Iceland, Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Norway together with international experts

Mind & Matter: the Discursive Construction of the iPhone in Apple\u27s Advertising

The widespread adoption of smartphone technology in the contemporary United States requires critical reflection on its role within society. This thesis compares the way Apple\u27s television advertising discourse, from 2007 to 2011, frames the iPhone to consumers with the way Apple\u27s iAd promotional material frames the iPhone to advertisers, and considers what the disparity between these two frameworks says about the still-evolving role of smartphone technology in society. It argues that the disparity between these two frameworks is indicative of a fundamental tension within smartphone technology. This tension is reflected in Apple\u27s ability to discursively construct the iPhone as a tool of user empowerment, while at the same time discursively constructing the iPhone as a sophisticated market research and advertising platform. This study shows that user agency is complicated by the iPhone\u27s technical design which produces information about the user in an effort to modify their behavior for commercial purposes

Interactive Food and Beverage Marketing: Targeting Children and Youth in the Digital Age

Looks at the practices of food and beverage industry marketers in reaching youth via digital videos, cell phones, interactive games and social networking sites. Recommends imposing governmental regulations on marketing to children and adolescents