TV advertising with acting children (up to 12 years): an analysis of audio-visual contents

Abstract

Nobody questions that advertising is one of the elements of the culture of our time and it generates consumption, being the children the most sensitive objectives. Thus, once the consumption habit is created, it is quite easy to correct its direction, directing it towards the satisfaction of new needs (Martínez, 1995: 12). We try throughout this research to understand the presence of the figure of children in any advertising spot and to set some implicit values that can affect them. For it, we have divided this study in four parts. The first part puts forward the reason of selection of this project. The second part, on which our study is based: the present mediatic society. Consumption predominates in our society, and it finds its maximum apogee on TV. advertising, since the television is a mass-media that has high social power. And the children are protagonists in spots because advertising tries to consolidate the habit of consumption in the childhood (Furones, 1980: 30). In the final part, we will continue with the development of proposals of intervention to prepare people to a critical and intelligent consumption. For it, we will concentrate in five scopes: school, family, the own intervention, the media and the community. The third part of our study presents audio-visual documents, base of our research. In it, we will describe the process of research followed by the object of our study, the audio-visual documents, and we will indicate the objectives that we considered. By watching the videos, we will collect the data that will be analyze with the object of valuing its adjustment to the intentions of the research and will present the results derived from the process. And finally we will indicate the conclusions that have come up in our study along with the consequences that will take us to future potential research and all those limitations that have come up throughout the research process..