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Adam was a wide variety of research interests that he is slowly narrowing. His primary focus in graduate school has been media, technology and society. He often uses advertising as a starting point. Advertising is one of the few forms of media that attempts to influence behavior, advertisers are actively trying to get you to buy their product. While a TV show may inadvertently influence your behavior the ad is intended to do so. For Adam, this becomes an important place to focus energies when studying media and society. Combined with the technological revolution going on in the advertising industry, there could not be a better time to study the subject matter. Here are several brief descriptions of work done in the last year looking at media, technology and society: media consumption and social spaces, advertising and new media, global brand management, and critical analysis of media censorship.
Media and Social Spaces - A qualitative study looking at March Madness fans and TVs in social spaces. By looking at the TV as an active participant in the social space of a bar, the study uncovered some observations of fans managing levels of intimacy with the TV and other fans. Specifically, fans used communication techniques such as supportive, adversarial and group think, to navigate a disparate environment comprised of individuals with shared and competing goals.
Advertising and New Media - A mini-site and animation outlining Google's relationship with the advertising industry. Google already forged a path for online advertising to really begin to become profitable. However, they did something else as well. Google designed a system that was cheaper, more accurate and held advertising more accountable. The ramification of this internet specific shift is an industry-wide shift for advertising, resulting in changes in radio, TV and print as well. Where will Google take advertising in the future?. Click here to view the site.
Global Brand Management - A quantitative study of Guinness' advertising campaigns over the last 80 years. This brief study looked at the famous Guinness beer posters that adorn many pub and basement walls throughout the world. The study attempted to discern core brand attributes through the analysis of decades of campaigns by looking for consistencies throughout Guinness' history of advertising. The results showed three main appeals of the campaigns across time: positive, humor and emotional. While emotional is more of tactic for advertising, positiveness and humor are modes of carrying a message. By preserving these appeals, Guinness has consistenly branded themselves since the company began advertising in the 1930's.
Critical Analysis of Media Censorship - A critical analysis of network TV ratings system and V-chip technology. Using Foucauldian notions of power and governmentality, Adam analyzed the social functions of these forms of control and censorship. What he uncovered was a disciplining process that sought to hegemonize adult use of knowledge of sex and violence. Furthermore, the technologies involved push media consumption into new ground by implementing a kind of binary morality. The use of digital technologies, like the v-chip, to censor content eliminates agency from process and places moral decision making into black and white situations or, if you will, "1" or "0". Download the paper.
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