It is common in communication studies to characterize contemporary capitalist society as a consumer society, where the media plays a central role especially, though not exclusively, through advertising. This paper will focus specifically on the role advertisements play in the media in a consumer capitalist society. We live in a consumer culture where products are constantly advertised. Advertisements all serve the same purpose to promote and sell products and services in a society where consumers are constantly buying products according to advertisers that will satisfy their wants and needs. Media is often referred to as mass media and this form of communication has been used by companies to promote their products. This allows innovative ideas and concepts to be shared with other people through forms of mass media such as newspapers, magazines and the television. As technology continues to advance, advertising techniques advance as well, by enticing, shaping and creating consumerism and needs where luxury is turned into a form of necessity. This paper will argue some of the issues and concerns of advertising techniques, it will argue the role played by advertising in mass media, the negative impact advertisings has on program quality, and lastly, the implications for our understanding of the role of contemporary mass media in democracy.
Media is commonly understood as discourse, another system of signification and expressivity, but our contemporary understanding of mass media includes electronic media such as the radio, film, and television (Nesbitt-Larking). Advertising is often used to help pay for the cost of free media such as television channels that are funded by advertisements in order to help reduce the company’s financial cost (Bagdikian). The role advertising plays in mass media is the promotion of products and ideas which influences our choices and decisions on what it is we consider important (Vincent). Media companies are dependent on advertisements because of the revenue they receive. As a result, contemporary mass media is largely driven by the forces of the market.
Advertising shows us the commodities and how the audiences are commodities for sale (Nesbitt-Larking). Advertiser’s mass produce and we are trained to consume through our exposure to television and forms of mass media. The audience is sold as a product by companies for profit, where the customers are the corporate advertisers who buy demographic information on the company’s audience group (Chomsky). Nesbitt-Larking discusses how selling takes place in the media, he states that “what is being sold is not just a brand or gadget, it is an entire system of rule and regime, as well as a limited parameter on our dreams and aspirations” (179). This means that people will only buy products which they find fulfilling to their wants and needs. Advertisers in turn use the information product from the media company’s audience to generate revenue for them because advertisers are...
