Seminar: “Sex and Violence in TV Advertising” by Amir Hetsroni, Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, FFB-06, 3:40PM February 17 (EN)

“Sex and Violence in TV Advertising” by Amir Hetsroni, Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, 
Department of English, Culture and Communication

Wednesday, February 17, 15.40

FF-B06, Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture Building

The representation of sex and violence in mainstream television commercials, assessed the public level of objection to the appearance of such objectionable material in advertising, and questioned the audience’s capability to estimate correctly the frequency in which this content appears. The data were gathered from a content analysis of TV advertisements (eight years of prime-time ads), an audience survey and analysis of regulation hearings. While the research was conducted mainly in Israel, it included a cross-cultural comparison. Historical review and analysis of regulation hearings show that there has been no systematic change in the level sex in mainstream TV advertising since the late 1990s and that political initiatives to censor such ads lacked correspondence to the rate in which relevant ads were aired, promoting a large variety of products (and not just certain bands – as critics and journalists often contended). In other words, regulators, politicians and the media themselves are also prone to pluralistic media ignorance. The presentation culminates with questions for future research and analysis of the connection of between pluralistic media ignorance and other concepts in media research – including cultivation.

Amir Hetsroni is an Associate Professor in the Department of English, Culture and Communication at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University in China. He co-wrote and edited four books, and composed fifteen book chapters and over fifty journal articles. His research interests revolve around reality construction in the media and its effects – particularly from a cultivation perspective. A study published in Journal of Advertising ranked him amongst the 100 most prolific scholars in advertising research.