Tide - audience

Blumler and Katz

• The audience is active and they select and watch media texts to fulfil their needs.

• 4 uses of media texts

  - Surveillance 

  - Personal identity

  - Integration & social interaction

  - Diversion

  
  

What demographic group is the Tide advert aimed at? (economic, age, gender).

• Middle class

• Female

• Middle-aged

Apply Young and Rubicam to Tide

Tide may appeal to aspirers as the woman in the advert is aspirational as she fits conventional beauty standards and is seen in a stable, middle-class, traditional lifestyle.

Apply Blumler and Katz to Tide

• Personal identity - women may have used the advert to form part of their personal identity

• This is the intention of the advert as women of the time were beginning to resent their role as housewives after they were put into the workplace to replace men

• Companies wanted women to accept their traditional role again

Tide - reception theory

• Hegemonic reading - the reader aspires to be this ‘perfect’ housewife and sees Tide as am aspirational brand. Audiences at the time were likely to take this reading

• Negotiated reading - the consumer doesn’t like how sexist the advert is but still sees Tide as a good product

• Oppositional reading - the advert is sexist and traditional, promotes outdated gender roles. A stance likely to be taken by modern audiences, particularly women

Applying Gerbner’s cultivation theory

• Passive audience theory

• Women who saw the advert and similar ones would be conditioned into buying into this traditional lifestyle and typical view of what femininity is

• However, not all women did buy into this

• After the war, many women were opposing this traditional lifestyle