Thursday, 31 March 2011

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In Henry Jenkin's (2006) article on the Eight Traits of the new media landscape he states that
"there is a danger that as this technology becomes so familiar, so much a part of our daily routines that it becomes invisible to us: we can no more see the layer of media that surrounds us than fish notice the water they are swimming in" (Jenkins 2006)

  In my opinion this quote can be applied to advertisement, its everywhere and we don't even realise it! For example I was on Facebook scrolling down my home page and what appears down the side of my page? Adverts. How does Facebook know I have a Nikon camera? Why are they offering me places on a photography course?

The other day my flatemate got "fraped" and instead of being entered as "female", her gender got changed to "male", as a result she was saying that in fact her advertisment had changed to nude pictures of women and advertisements of cars. According to Henry Jenkins (2006) the information we enter becomes a form of collective intelligence and seems to determine the advertisements that come up in our browser. Different advertisements appeal to different genders.
When researching about advertisements on Facebook I came across some information about how buisnesses can advertise on Facebook. Businesses can select an audience they want to advertise to by selecting the location, interests and age of a person. Buisnesses can also use the "like" button to influence their audience. This shows that different businesses use strategies to target their audience.


In a recent photography lecture/ workshop we were discussing how in the current media and advertisements are even these days influenced by classic photographers and films from the past. For example the classic scene in American Beauty. The advertisement is a re-creation of the famous scene from American Beauty but instead is advertising Budweiser. It is evident that some of the classic photographers and films still influence the media today.
 Another example of influences in advertisement is from a photographer called Hannah Hoch. Here are some examples of her work.The image on the left represents the general more towards increasing gender ambiguity. Many of her photomontages point out faults with the beauty culture. She saw how different females are in reality compared to the media. When reading and looking at old copies of Vogue online this could be classed as participatory culture according to Henry Jenkins. As I read these issues of Vogue I came across the following images that have clearly been influenced by Hannah Hoch. 
 
This is an advertisement by Harvey Nichols from Vogue in 2009. Looking at this it could be that it has been influenced by Hannah Hoch as this is similar to her photomontages and the same kind of style as her. 

In conclusion to this blog, advertisement effects our everyday life even if we are unconcious and unaware of this. Businesses and Advertisers conciously use strategies to get their target audience to look at their product. It is also evident that photographers and films are still influencing the modern advertisements of today.

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