1. SOCI1005B Winter 2019 Analysis of an Advertisement from Popular Culture: Instructions prepared by Christian Pasiak, Department of Sociology & Anthropology, Carleton University 1 | P a g e Analysis of an Advertisement from Popular Culture (Weight 25%) approx. 3-4 pages, double-spaced, plus bibliographic references page DUE ONLINE (via cuLearn upload1): Wednesday, March 20, 2019 by 11:55pm 1 Be advised that .pages format files are not compatible with the Microsoft Office software standard used across campus, so it is recommended to save your documents in formats such as .docx, .pdf, .odt or .rtf files to ensure that all submissions can be read (and evaluated). Do not upload .zip files. Goals: In this exercise, you will: 1) identify an example of a contemporary social problem in an advertisement from a popular culture source 2) describe what techniques the advertiser used to try to compel the viewer/consumer to (re)act e.g. to purchase a product in the advertisement, and describe how the social problem is perpetuated, located, or exemplified within the advertisement (which may be unrelated to the advertiser’s intentions) 3) conduct some research to provide support of your critical analysis of the advertisement via two sources of scholarly, peer-reviewed, sociological evidence (e.g. supporting why this type of cultural mediation is a problem – appealing to wider implications/historical context) 4) synthesize: demonstrate your understanding of the main scholarly arguments used to support your position by summarizing in your own words/demonstrating the ability to relate general evidence to a more specific example (e.g. framing the advertisement as an example of a contemporary cultural issue) 5) practice standard elements of style commonly used in research papers e.g. how to cite sources and write bibliographic references After completing this assignment, you should: 1) better understand how a sociological approach can help identify and connect with ‘big issues’ in real-world, every-day examples 2) be able to distinguish between popular media sources (e.g. newspaper articles, magazines, documentaries) and peer-reviewed, scholarly research sources (e.g. academic journals) 3) have acquired experience reading scholarly research and summarizing in your own words 4) have experience relating general evidence/research to a more specific, current example How to Pick an Advertisement/Getting Started: Browse some advertisements from popular culture e.g. those found in newspapers, magazines, YouTube or other online videos, on websites, television, billboards, posters, and the like – and locate an advertisement that demonstrates some engagement with, or an example of a contemporary social problem that interests you. DO NOT USE PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENTS. It would be better to select an advertisement from a popular brand in which the social problem is manifested/perpetuated (an advertisement that could be widely viewed – so is more relevant to an argument about popular culture). SOCI1005B Winter 2019 Analysis of an Advertisement from Popular Culture: Instructions prepared by Christian Pasiak, Department of Sociology & Anthropology, Carleton University 2 | P a g e Topic Selection Continued (What kind of “social problem” am I looking for?): The definition of a social problem here can be broadly understood to be any ongoing issue or controversy as it pertains to relational dynamics, everyday practices, or patterns of human behaviour (e.g. it may involve some form of social inequality related to race, class, sex, gender, age, religion, and/or the body – or any intersection of these social categories). There are many issues to choose from, including but not limited to: racism and ethnocentrism (including concerns dealing with religious intolerance, institutional racism, colonization, concerns publicized by movements such as Black Lives Matter and Idle No More, issues that come up when discussing immigration, refugees, migrant labourers), sexism, trans/homophobia, gender norms (e.g. performance of masculinity and femininity), beauty standards and body norms, ageism, crime (street or white collar), homelessness, suicide, bullying, violence (state or domestic), abuse, missing and murdered indigenous women, risk and environmental issues, prohibition, penality (e.g. work about prison (in)justice, incarceration and punishment), income inequality, rationalization principles, consumerism, media bias and public opinion, medicalization, problems relating to differential mobilities (e.g. car dependency, urban planning issues, gentrification), privacy and surveillance, terrorism, access to care (e.g. health technologies, home caregivers, childcare), stigma (e.g. of mental health issues) and just about any form of exploitation or social exclusion! If you are uncertain whether a topic will be suitable for this assignment, please feel free to ask. Formatting Guidelines: • Include page numbers in the bottom right corner of each page. • Include your student name and number as a header. • Use standard fonts and margins (e.g. Calibri 11pt, Times New Roman 12pt, etc. i.e. typically your word-processing program’s defaults). • Double-space. • Indent paragraphs, but do not add extra space between paragraphs beyond the existing doublespacing. • In-text citation and bibliographic referencing should follow APA-style formatting. Layout and Organization: • title • body: description of advertisement and critical analysis of its relation to a social problem • bibliographic references: one for the advertisement (including web URL if online) and two scholarly, peer-reviewed sources (see citation and referencing instructions below for details) o additional references may be included, but they will not receive bonus credit o despite quantity of references, centre the argument around the sociological sources – other references should be treated as supplementary/examples Create a Strong Title for Your Assignment Give your ad analysis a unique title relevant to a social problem and the way it is represented in popular culture. There is no need to make a separate title page; the title should be on the first page at the top of the page, centred, and underlined. It might be helpful to try to create your title last (after you have already selected your topic and advertisement and put some thought into analyzing how the social problem is SOCI1005B Winter 2019 Analysis of an Advertisement from Popular Culture: Instructions prepared by Christian Pasiak, Department of Sociology & Anthropology, Carleton University 3 | P a g e represented in this medium). Hint: Sometimes sub-headings make it easier to create a title that is creative and specific to some aspect of your topic, both elements of an ideal title. Body: Descriptive and Analytic Components First, write a paragraph or two describing the social problem that is the focus of your analysis while situating the problem based on how it isrepresented in the advertisement. The goal here is to introduce both the social problem and its relation to the advertisement, describing how the advertisement perpetuates and/or is an example of a manifestation of the problem. This introduction should be clear and concise; in other words, stay focused and to-the-point (e.g. while you may briefly address the cultural and historical context that will be developed further beyond the introduction, avoid using an overgeneralization about ‘human nature’ as a jumping-off point). The following questions may help you get started: • What was the focus of the advertisement (i.e. what was centred in the promotion as being of value)? At the same time, what elements or dimensions of the social problem are portrayed? (How) are these two questions related? o Does the advertisement focus on a product which is itself problematic or was something about the way a product is advertised the issue? Both? o Does it seem it was the advertiser’s intent to stir up cultural controversy or was this more likely an unintentional outcome (if there has been some cultural opposition) – i.e. was the social problem a manifest or latent function of the advertisement? (In other words, is it implicitly or explicitly part of the ad? Is it central or peripheral to the product being advertised?) • Describe specific elements of the advertisement so that the reader can follow your analysis without having seen the ad (i.e. “give them a visual” – with words/descriptive language). After identifying the social problem and how it is represented in the advertisement generally, focus on further developing the critical analytical question of how this raises a ‘bigger’ issue about cultural interpretations or representations of social problems; use the scholarly, sociological research to situate the problem from this advertisement within a broader cultural and historical context. Make specific reference to elements and descriptive details from the advertisement. The main purpose of these developing paragraphs is to identify and describe ways that advertisements from popular cultural contribute to cultural interpretations of social problems, how they play a role in (re)producing meanings which mediate the understanding and experience of social and cultural reality. To accomplish these goals, address the following questions using two peer-reviewed, sociological sources (i.e. journal articles or books from university presses) to help you develop and support your arguments: • How is what is being portrayed in the advertisement problematic? How does the advertisement (re)produce cultural meaning in a problematic way according to the scholarly evidence? • How might this example be extrapolated to the broader cultural and historical context of the social problem’s existence? Lastly, given the evidence you’d provided to support a critical analysis of the current advertisement, write a concluding paragraph (2-3 sentences) wherein you suggest an alternative strategy by which the brand owner or advertiser might have been able to avoid your criticisms; any suggestion offered should be informed by a sociological understanding of the current problem. SOCI1005B Winter 2019 Analysis of an Advertisement from Popular Culture: Instructions prepared by Christian Pasiak, Department of Sociology & Anthropology, Carleton University 4 | P a g e Referencing: Selecting Scholarly Sources, Inclusion of In-text Citations, and Bibliography Three external sources should be referenced in this assignment: one for the advertisement (including a complete reference in the bibliography that includes details such as retrieved-from URL and lastaccessed date for advertisements found online), and two scholarly, peer-reviewed sociological sources that will help inform your analysis and cultural contextualization of the advertisement. To ensure that your scholarly sources are peer-reviewed and sociologically relevant, it is recommended that you use the MacOdrum library database where you can add filters: “full text”, “peer-review”, and then further filter results by “social science and social history” or “sociology”. Peer-reviewed sources undergo a blind screening process where they are reviewed and vetted anonymously by a group of established professionals in the field. The “social science and social history” filter will allow searches for relevant articles in various branches of sociology, criminology, race and gender studies, anthropology, social psychology, and critical theory. However, it is recommended that you avoid journals of “behavioural” studies (behavioural psychology), addictions, adolescents, criminal justice, epidemiology and other types of medical journals. Though these sources may be scholarly, peer review, and evidence-based, they may frame issues through disciplinary lenses that may are not considered “sociological” (e.g. individual-level analyses or biological determinism approaches). For this assignment, look for sociological sources or scholarly sources that complement a relational viewpoint fitting the broad definition of sociology described in the first lecture. If uncertain whether a source seems sociological or not, email the instructor or your TA and ask. Choose sources that address the social problem or cultural mediation by the advertisement outlined in yourintroduction. At the very least, you need to be able to make the argument that the sources address the problems somehow. If your social problem is quite specific and is situated in events that are more current than the available academic research, then you will look for articles that seem closely related, or address similar topics and make a creative application/extension of their findings/insights to this specific example of the social problem that’s of interest to you. It is okay to look at how academic sources approach the topic more broadly. Include a separate bibliographic reference page where complete references for each source are listed alphabetically by author last name (or in the case of the ad, should an individual author’s name be absent, by name of organization/company responsible for its publication along with all other pertinent referencing details such as time of publication or any other publication details relevant to the medium). Apply a hanging indent to each of your bibliographic references. Peer-reviewed journal articles obtained online through the MacOdrum Library website do not need to include URLs, DOI numbers, or last-accessed dates; you may reference them as if you are citing the print version (which would be author(s), year, article title, journal title, volume, issue, page number range). In addition to the complete reference page, there should be in-text citations within the body of the analysis where sources and page numbers are referenced, even when paraphrasing! For the sake of consistency and evaluating a common standard, follow APA style. Here is a link to a ‘quick guide’ from the library, though longer versions (and hard copies) are available on site at MacOdrum:https://library.carleton.ca/sites/default/files/research/courseguides/Using%20APA%20style%20-%20Final%202016-03-17.pdf Composition/Style: Write full, complete sentences. Create a new paragraph when shifting topics or subject matter. Spelling and grammar will be included in the evaluation. Your analysis should be clear, cohesive and make sense on its own without requiring a general audience to have read the assignment guidelines in advance to make sense of it. SOCI1005B Winter 2019 Analysis of an Advertisement from Popular Culture: Instructions prepared by Christian Pasiak, Department of Sociology & Anthropology, Carleton University 5 | P a g e Evaluation for this component is largely based on the degree to which your writing is clear and easy to follow. While that may intersect somewhat with spelling and grammatical correctness, this category has more to do with logical organization and whether you can communicate clearly. Do not bullet list or number answers to questions. Instead, structure your answers in sentences and organize your work into logical paragraphs. You may follow the question outline in sequence to help you organize your work. While describing your observations, you may write in the first-person (“I”), but do not base your analysis on personal anecdotes. In other words, contextualize your details and descriptions using sociological concepts and research (from the scholarly sources), and keep your analysis structured and grounded by not straying too far from the questions in the assignment guidelines. Do not paraphrase any one source at great length; instead, try to integrate the findings into the main body of your analysis in a way that is logically organized and focused on your critical analysis – use them to guide and support your trajectory. In other words, try to find a balance somewhere between personal speculation/tacit insight (pure speculative analysis) and taking a back-seat to what others have written or described (pure description/paraphrasing). The full evaluation rubric is posted on cuLearn. It is strongly encouraged that students refer to the rubric before submitting assignments to gain a clear sense of how the marks will be distributed. In addition to meeting with or emailing the professor and teaching assistants, students are encouraged to take advantage of the following resources: Assistance for Students: Student Academic and Career Development Services: http://carleton.ca/sacds/ Writing Tutorial Services: https://carleton.ca/csas/writingservices/ Peer Assisted Subject Coaching (PASC): https://carleton.ca/csas/people/sociology/

    

    

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