The topics discussed in class and in the required readings are found in everyday culture, including advertisements (print ads and commercials). Ads can tell us a lot about how contemporary society views itself and can be referred to as "cultural artifacts." An ad analysis provides an excellent vehicle to demonstrate the topics, concepts, and theories discussed in this course with emphasis on social class, gender, sexuality, and racialization.
For your chosen ad campaign, you will analyze the content of the ad from a sociological perspective:
- What does the ad tell us about the relationships between people?
- How does the ad portray interactions between people?
- What statuses are portrayed? How does the ad indicate status value or social prestige?
- How does the ad portray its brand?
- Who is the target audience? What does the ad tell us about the target audience?
- What kinds of social wants/needs does the ad communicate? What do these wants/needs tell us about broader social norms and expectations?
Use specific examples of the issues and topics discussed in the course. The sociological ad analysis is meant to assess your understanding of sociological concepts as well as your ability to make connections between the course material and popular media. The goal of this assignment is to explain how specific sociological concepts are presented in the ad. This is NOT simply a description of the ad!! A brief overall description of the ad may be included in the introductory paragraph, but that's it. After that you must pull specific examples from the content and relate them directly to the course material in order to make your main points.