Download Reframing the Discourse: Advertising Rhetoric Fails to Combat

Reframing the Discourse:
Advertising Rhetoric Fails to
Combat Islamophobia
Eric Van Steenburg
Doctoral Student
University of North Texas
Society for Marketing Advances
Nov. 5, 2011
Agenda
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Background
Framing Islam
Terror Management Theory
Methodology for Advertising Critique
Analysis
Recommendations
Questions
Background
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Islamophobia
Political rhetoric
Addressing the issue
CAIR Ad Campaign
Research Question
Research
“9/11 Happened to Us All”
Firefighter
Framing Islam
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“Freedom came under attack” (Bush 2001)
Good vs. Evil (Aslan 2009; Ivie 2007)
Theological basis (Murphy 2003; Ivie 2007)
“Axis of Evil” (Bush 2002)
Negative Differences (McPhail 1991)
Complicity (McPhail 1994, 2002)
Media’s role (Aly & Green 2008; Love 2009; Merskin 2003;
Pew Forum 2007; Rozell 2010; Vultee 2006, 2009)
Terror Management Theory
• Mortality or jeopardized safety leads to
increase in negative evaluations of other
(Greenberg, Pyszczynski, & Solomon 1986)
• Threatens individual’s beliefs and values
(Rosenblatt et al. 1989)
• Dehumanize the outgroup (Rosenblatt et al. 1989)
• Effects on Good vs. Evil worldview
• Discredit spokesperson
• Muslims inherently un-American and a threat
An ad’s meaning depends on a shared agreement
in social communication where individual
interpretation is governed by the social context of
familiar patterns and themes combined with
allusions to social and historical contexts.
– Dr. Barbara Stern (1989)
Methodology
• Use of literary criticism (Stern 1989; Stern 1991;
Stern & Gallagher 1990)
• Four-step methodology to critique (Stern 1989):
1. Analytical accounting of the text
2. Analysis of the context through sociocultural and
historical perspectives
3. Structural and semiotic analysis
4. Consideration of who the audience is and what the
desired outcome is of the message originator
“9/11 Happened to Us All”
Medical Responder
Analysis
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Social construct with shared global context
Cultural ideology embedded in messages
Situates in a communal cultural ideology
Evokes established meaning
Reinforce a cultural worldview
Analysis
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Narrative approach
Opening establishes the framework
Slowly provides contextual evidence
Text completes the link
Narrator as familiar “hero” narrative
Analysis
• Thoughts of our mortality, threats to our
safety, or moments of fear can have the
effect of entrenching our cultural
worldviews (Rosenblatt et al. 1989).
• Significant relationship between mortality
salience and reformation of individual
established perspectives (Greenberg et al.
1986; Pyszczynski et al. 2010; Rosenblatt et al. 1989)
• Closely held beliefs about Islam and Muslims
should surface
Analysis
• Symbolic codes of the ad (Stern 1989)
• Music – Depressing, serious, intended
discomfort, anticipatory importance
and/or impending doom
• Visual framing
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Waist view to a close-up
Fade to black
Fade in and out of text
Close-up at announcement
• Identifier
• Intent – Tension, evoke emotional response
Analysis
• Purpose of using a narrator in an ad is to
affect persuasion (Stern 1992)
• Audio and visual elements along with text
place viewers into context and provides a
framework for advertisement experience
• Depicts relationship between ad’s content,
form, and values (Stern & Gallagher 1990).
• Content creates a meaning that conveys
values not only by what the message is,
but how it is communicated.
Conclusions
• Establishing faith of the narrator reminds
viewer of dichotomous framework
established in our culture
• Narrator becomes “other” and the cultural
worldview of good vs. evil is confirmed
• The choice to identify the narrators as
Muslim undermines the credibility of the
characters, thus nullifying any effects of
persuasion.
Recommendations
• Providing factual information to combat a
cultural worldview also entrenches that
worldview (Nyhan & Reifler 2010)
• Staking a contradictory position or affirming
the opposite rarely works in correcting
misperceptions. Makes subject resist
changes to ideologies that existed prior
to the correction (Nyhan & Reifler 2010)
• Can public opinion, when based on incorrect
information, be corrected?
Recommendations
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Priming the event
Unsettling conclusion
Third-party narrative
Islamic faith focus
Condemn terrorism
Women’s status
American image
“We Have More in Common than We Think”
Interfaith
Questions