Advertising Unhealthy Food to Children: on the Importance of Regulations, Parenting Styles, and Media Literacy

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:sec><jats:title>Purpose of Review</jats:title><jats:p>Childhood obesity is a global health concern. And a number of studies have indicated that food promotions affect children’s food attitudes, preferences, and food choices for foods high in fat and sugar, which potentially impacts children’s body weight development. This review showcases how children are affected by food promotions, why companies even target children with their promotional efforts, and what makes children so susceptible to promotion of unhealthy food. In addition, this review discusses how regulations, parental styles, and individual media literacy skills can help to contain the potential detrimental effects of food promotions on children’s health.</jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title>Recent Findings</jats:title><jats:p>The recent findings indicate that children are affected by food promotions in their preference for unhealthy food and beverages in selection tasks shortly conducted after exposure. Furthermore, results indicate significant effects of food marketing, including enhanced attitudes, preferences, and increased consumption of marketed (predominantly unhealthy) foods connected with a wide range of marketing strategies. Children are particularly vulnerable to promotional efforts and react to it strongly due to their still developing cognitive and social skills as well as their lack in inhibitory control.</jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title>Summary</jats:title><jats:p>This review proposes an applied focus that discusses pathways for regulators, parents, and educators. In the light of the discussed results, a large number of studies on food promotion indicate that there is need to react. In all these measures, however, it is of relevance to consider children’s developmental stages to effectively counteract and respond to the potential detrimental effects of food promotions on children’s long-term weight development.</jats:p></jats:sec&gt

Selling stories of social justice. How consumers react to and learn from social ads

Advertising strategies are constantly changing and today, companies often take a position regarding current social topics in their advertis-ing messages. With two experimental studies using actual ads, we explore how people react to and learn from social ads regarding particular social issues they tackle. With the first study, we examine whether an ad that deals with modern sexism raises awareness about this issue and whether it performs more effectively than a non-narra-tive, informative video (TED-talk) with the same topic. Second, as corporate social responsibility (CSR) ads are discussed to be received controversial among viewers, we explore how a social ad communi-cating a CSR message (gay rights) compared to a “classic” product ad performs on brand-relevant outcomes. Both studies indicate that raising awareness for a social issue through social ads could poten-tially backfire and might only work under certain circumstances. Advertisers, therefore, should elaborate on how they integrate CSR ads into their marketing strategies

Social Web-Nutzung und politische Partizipation österreichischer Jugendlicher

Politische Partizipation ist ein bedeutender Bestandteil von funktionierenden Demokratien. Es zeichnet sich jedoch in westlichen Staaten ein immer stärkerer Rückgang von politischer Beteiligung ab. Nicht nur die Wahlbeteiligung sinkt, auch andere Formen, wie die Teilnahme an Demonstrationen und politischen Veranstaltungen oder die Unterstützung von direkten Demokratieformen wie Volksbegehren, verlieren immer stärker an Bedeutung. Das Internet hat hier die Hoffnung geschürt neue, attraktive Formen der politischen Partizipation zu eröffnen und diese insbesondere bei der traditionell als passiv eingestuften Bevölkerungsgruppe, den Jugendlichen, zu verbreiten. Da diese als die HauptuserInnen des Social Webs angesehen werden, sind sie die großen HoffnungsträgerInnen der neuen Beteiligungsformen. Aktuelle Ereignisse wie der Arabische Frühling oder die breite Thematisierung der Online-Aktion des Vereins „Invisible Children“ und ihrer Ziele im Bezug auf den ugandischen Rebellenführer Joseph Kony geben diesen Hoffnungen neuen Nährboden. Auf Basis einer repräsentativen Studie aus dem Jahr 2010 über Mediennutzung, politische Partizipation und politischer Interesse österreichischer Befragter (N= 2.954), wird das Potenzial des Social Webs im Bezug auf politische Beteiligung ausgewertet. Im Mittelpunkt dieser Arbeit steht der Einfluss der Medienkompetenz und des Bildungsgrads auf den Level der politischen Online-Beteiligung. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass unabhängig vom Grad der Bildung Menschen das Netz für Online-Beteiligung nutzen. Besonders für Jugendliche zeigt sich politische Online-Partizipation als attraktives Instrument. Offen bleibt jedoch, wie das politische Interesse vergrößern werden kann. Denn trotzdem sich andere Bevölkerungsruppen als die traditionell politisch Engagierten im Internet beteiligen, lässt sich ein großes Maß der politischen Online-Partizipation auf die Beteiligung in der Offline-Welt zurückführen.Political participation is an important part of a functioning democracy. In western states there is a significant decline of participation. This gets apparent in the low voter turnout and the regressing of direct democracy as the contribution on referendums. As the internet got more popular, hope was rising that new forms of participation could eventually develop. Adolescents, who are usually not in the group of political activists, are the main users of the social web. This is why the hope of a political change is primarily built on them. The “Arabic Spring” and other recent events like the involvement of many social web users in the online-activities of the organization “Invisible Children” and their political goals, regarding the capture of Ugandan rebel leader Joseph Kony, lead to a new discussion of the political potential of the social web. This analysis is based on a representative survey from 2010 on the use of media and political activities of Austrian respondents (N= 2.954). Object of study is the effect of social web use for political purposes on the political participation in real life of adolescents. The main focus is on the influence of the acquired media-competence and the education level on political participation online. The results show that education is not an important indicator for political participation online. Especially adolescents use the social web for political participation. There is no answer to the question how more people, who are politically interested, can be found. Although people who are usually not engaged in political debates do participate online, most of the people who participate on the internet show their political interest and participation offline as well

Shaping Healthy Eating Habits in Children With Persuasive Strategies: Toward a Typology

There is an abundance of evidence that the presentation of unhealthy foods (UHFs) in different media has the power to shape eating habits in children. Compared to this rich body of work with regard to the effects of UHF presentations, studies testing the effects of healthy foods (HFs) are less conclusive. In particular, while the persuasive mechanisms behind HF presentations are well-understood, we lack insights about the role of messages factors, that is, how are (and should) HFs (be) presented in order to foster healthy eating habits in children. This paper tackles this research gap by suggesting the Persuasive Strategies Presenting Healthy Foods to Children (PSPHF) typology, classified along three pillars: (a) composition-related characteristics, (b) source-related characteristics, and (c) information-related characteristics. Against the background of the PSPHF typology, we review the available empirical evidence, outline pressing research gaps, and discuss implications for researchers, health promoters, and program planers

Social Media Literacy Among Adolescents and Young Adults: Results From a Cross-Country Validation Study

When being online, young users are often confronted with insulting, hateful, or misleading messages. To handle these dark forms of participation, it is essential to equip them with resources that support their social literacy in today’s complex online environments. In the present article, we deployed a previously established scale on self-perceived participatory-moral literacy and conducted a broad online survey study with 1,489 adolescents and young adults aged 16–22 years (M = 19.74; SD = 1.65; 51% female) across eight different European countries (Austria, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Slovakia, and the United Kingdom). The results provided a configural identical model of participatory-moral abilities, motivation, and behavior across the considered European countries. We could confirm weak invariance, satisfactory psychometric qualities, and convergent validity of the scale across the different countries. Implications for digital literacy research are discussed