Hobbs


 * From Marcia and John, June 29 class.

Hobbs Chapter 7:** At Concord High School, researchers Renee Hobbs and Richard Frost wanted to find out if the English 11 students became more critically aware of advertising strategies after studying the claims and presentations of advertising during the course of the school year 1998-1999. They were particularly interested in examining students' recognition of the target audience, purpose, point of view, and creative construction techniques.

Studies show that studying and discussing advertising in school can reduce children's vulnerability to advertising appeals and increase their ability to produce counterarguments. They created a control group who did not study advertising, and tested the groups in September and in May.

1. the ability to distinguish program from commercial 2. recognizing that an ad was created by an author or external source 3. appreciating that an ad is designed to reach an intended target audience 4. identifing the symbolic and constructed nature of advertising 5. being able to generate real-world examples of a product not meeting the expectations generated by the advertising.
 * Cognitive defenses** can be developed which will enable the young person to resist advertising appeals by becoming aware of an ad's purpose and understanding how persuasive techniques work. The student can then produce **counterarguments**, based on attitudes and information he/she already holds. To understand the selling intent of an ad, the child (usually around the age of 10 or 11) must possess these skills:

Here's a good place to put your own examples:


 * THINGS YOU BOUGHT FOR YOURSELF OR FOR SOMEONE ELSE THAT WERE RIP-OFFS:**

I'll start: When I bought my Ford Escape in 2001, my family did NOT jump into the back with sleeping bags and Coleman lanterns to go camping. And has anybody ever lost weight eating Kellog's Special K? YOUR TURN:

Anyway, getting back to the book: according to Potter, whom the author discusses, structures that underlie media literacy include knowledge of the advertising production process, media content, media industries, media effects, real-world information, and knowledge of self. Students learn many of these things by constructing a commercial or advertisment of their own. In examining ads in the classroom, the teachers wanted their students to be able to identify So students need to examine the political and economic contexts of an ad. Doing so makes them more aware of social and racial differences as they look at target audience. They could support their judgments and interpretations using specific evidence from ad texts, an important central skill of literacy education at the secondary level, according to the researchers (discerning author's intentions = critical literacy). When they closed their study, the numbers showed clearly that the students who had studied advertising understood the persuasive techniques involved and could produce more thoughtful counterarguments than the control group.
 * target audience
 * techniques of ad construction: visual, verbal, symbolism, graphic design
 * subtexts unstated, like any logos that were on/in the ad
 * the ad's purpose: business (to sell something?) or associative-emotional? Remember our discussion about the mural of Middle America that Wal-Mart has on the wall of its Hwy. 41 store? Am I a better American because I shop there?

As we discussed in class, this study of advertising methods can be applied to nearly everything our students will encounter on the internet, and we should help them learn how to make critical decisions about the content they may access.


 * PowerPoint Hobbs Chapter 8**

And here are the references: Hobbs, R. (2007). //Reading the media: Media literacy in high school English.// New York: Teachers College Press.

Potter, W.J. (2004).//Theory of media literacy: A cognitive approach.// Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.