MEDST 260: Advertising and Marketing

Introductory course to Advertising and Marketing

A Mixed Blessing: Market-Mediated Religious Authority in Neopaganism

This research explores how marketplace dynamics affect religious authority in the context of Neopagan religion. Drawing on an interpretivist study of Wiccan practitioners in Italy, we reveal that engagement with the market may cause considerable, ongoing tensions, based on the inherent contradictions that are perceived to exist between spirituality and commercial gain. As a result, market success is a mixed blessing that can increase religious authority and influence, but is just as likely to decrease authority and credibility. Using an extended case study method, we propose a theoretical framework that depicts the links between our informants’ situated experiences and the macro-level factors affecting religious authority as it interacts with market-mediated dynamics at the global level. Overall, our study extends previous work in macromarketing that has looked at religious authority in the marketplace) and how the processes of globalization are affecting religion

Nothing for Money and Your Work for Free: Internships and the Marketing of Higher Education

American universities have significantly increased their marketing expenditures over the last decade. The high cost of education, reductions in government funding, and precipitous declines in the traditional college-aged population (18-21 year olds) are some of the key factors forcing universities to be more aggressive with the promotional techniques they use to attract prospective students. In this competitive marketplace, schools promote the attributes they believe will be most compelling to high schoolers and their parents, including academics, sports, campus life, and careers. Tied into this last factor is the promotion of internship opportunities. While some of these hands-on experiences lead to jobs, there are no guarantees that attending college and engaging in an internship will translate into full-time employment. Using content analysis and auto-ethnography, I examine how universities use internships to market higher education, and argue that this is a particularly pernicious practice within the area of media studies

Nothing for Money and Your Work for Free: Internships and the Marketing of Higher Education

American universities have significantly increased their marketing expenditures over the last decade. The high cost of education, reductions in government funding, and precipitous declines in the traditional college-aged population (18-21 year olds) are some of the key factors forcing universities to be more aggressive with the promotional techniques they use to attract prospective students. In this competitive marketplace, schools promote the attributes they believe will be most compelling to high schoolers and their parents, including academics, sports, campus life, and careers. Tied into this last factor is the promotion of internship opportunities. While some of these hands-on experiences lead to jobs, there are no guarantees that attending college and engaging in an internship will translate into full-time employment. Using content analysis and auto-ethnography, I examine how universities use internships to market higher education, and argue that this is a particularly pernicious practice within the area of media studies

The Financial Interest and Syndication Rules and Changes in Program Diversity

This article examines the extent to which program diversity has changed over time on prime time, broadcast network television. This issue is analyzed through the rubric of the financial interest and syndication rules, Federal Communications Commission regulations that were enacted to increase program diversity. Diversity is assessed using quantitative methodologies and concludes that although program diversity on prime time broadcast television has fluctuated over time, it is not significantly different today than it was in 1966. This is so even though the industry has become more consolidated. This article argues that it is the economic structure that makes broadcasters dependent on advertising revenue for support that leads producers to create programming that will generate large audiences. By definition, this leads to an undiversified television landscape.

THE DYNAMICS OF DIGITAL CAPTURE: HOW INDUSTRIES TIE AUDIENCES TO EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES

Few studies examine “digital capture,” forces that get people to adopt digital technologies which, on balance, benefit organizations more than the publics. Using various perspectives on this topic, the panel will explore the ways four industries are rolling out digital technologies that have captured audiences in long-term relationships. One paper will use a “digital colonialization” perspective (Ricaurte, 2019) that highlights the influence of capitalist imperialism within contemporary political economy. A second paper demonstrates how network effects fueled adoption of the Common Application laying the groundwork for higher education marketing that fetishizes customer relationship marketing (CRM) technologies to the point of constructing teenage college prospects as sales leads and “yields.” A third presentation explores how companies seduce people to use smart devices that can infer information about the ways they talk and sound while the companies play down the surveillance aspects of the technologies, ultimately eroding their freedom to make choices under the guise of giving them new ways to choose. The fourth contribution presents the growing convergence between emerging technologies and the health sector from the perspective of political economy, demonstrating through case studies how audiences are captured through ambiguous framings that highlight the advantages of health information sharing, but obscure the exploitative nature of pervasive data collection and its use for commercial purposes. Together, the panel points to research needed to understand the emergence of various surveillance regimes before they become taken-for-granted parts of the cultural landscape when changes to them can be made mainly at their margins