210 Final Flashcards

Question

Danesi Ch. 8 - ADVERTISING - main techniques

Answer 1

- Positioning: Targeting the right audience in the right media. For example, beer ads target college students at parties, and perfume ads target those interested in romantic socializing. - Image-Creation: Crafting a personality for products that specific consumer types can identify with. This includes the product’s name, packaging, logo, price, and overall presentation. - Mythologization: Imbuing brand names, logos, product design, ads, and commercials with mythic meanings. For example, beauty products often feature attractive, almost deified individuals to evoke mythic themes like beauty and the conquest of death. - Rhetorical Strategies: Using rhetorical techniques such as metaphor, irony, alliteration, and tautology to construct persuasive messages. Examples include: Metaphor: Associating products with artistic or superior qualities. - Irony: Using humor or unexpected twists to engage the audience. - Alliteration: Repetition of sounds to make brand names memorable. - Tautology: Making statements that sound truthful but are essentially repetitive. - Brand Naming: Creating names that evoke specific connotations, such as tradition, reliability, or nature. Examples include names referring to the manufacturer (e.g., Armani), fictitious personalities (e.g., Wendy’s), or aspects of nature (e.g., Tide). - Logo Design: Designing logos that generate connotative signification systems through visual modality. For example, the Apple logo symbolizing access to "forbidden" knowledge. - Ad Campaigns: Systematic methods of media-based advertising aimed at achieving specific goals, such as demonstrating product superiority or changing the product’s image. - Placement: Showcasing brands in movies and TV programs to tap into social trends and signifying systems. This includes celebrity endorsements and creating fictitious characters to promote brands. - Co-option: Adapting and recycling cultural trends, especially from countercultures, to appeal to a broad audience. This includes using the symbols and rhetoric of youth rebellion to market products. - Artistic Techniques: Using art techniques like surrealism and synesthesia to create compelling ads. This includes employing artists to design ads and commercials that rival traditional art forms.

Answer 2

- quite a few inconsistences between what people say what they want in terms of privacy and how they actually behave online disclosing information - are people lazy, do they not care, or are they responding in predictable ways online where platfroms take advantage of them

Answer 3

cognitive biases and design tactics platforms use to manipulate users into disclosing information

Answer 4

- Cognitive bias is a mental shortcut where the brain simplifies information based on personal experiences and preferences. While this helps process information quickly, it can lead to errors in thinking. - These are unconscious decision-making processes that influence individuals without them even realizing it

Answer 5

- Dark patterns are design tactics that exploit human behaviour to deceive users into actions that don't benefit them - are not the result of incompetence

Answer 6

intentionally designed to influence you towards a certain behaviour that favours, guess who? - the company or brand

Answer 7

- hidden costs at the last step of a checkout process - charging credit cards automatically when a free trial service ends

Answer 8

We don’t make rational decisions online (rational actor disclosure model)... why?

Answer 9

1. Anchoring: it’s what we see first; arrangement (video game tokens) 2. Framing: how it’s presented to consumers 3. Hyperbolic discounting: I’ll disclose, and I’ll immediately get the benefits (bundling) 4. Overchoice: paralyzes us, barrier to rational disclosure

Answer 10

Cognitive biases are part of how dark patterns work

Answer 11

- positioning - possible choices - nudging - wording - images - all “affected users’ consent behavior” (Baroni)

Answer 12

shrinkflation - party size chip bag - product cant be recharged - smaller packaging same price

Answer 13

- Dark patterns and human use of technology result: change in behaviour - Dark patterns manipulate use behaviour - Dark patterns exploit cognitive biases; in other words, we tend to process information based on our personal experience and knowledge - “framing effect” – the conclusions is dependent on you

Answer 14

- Social World: frustration deleting accounts alone, help is needed - Pragmatics: conflict; you want to delete, but guess who wants to keep your data? - Semantics: do you ever get frustrated and give up? - Syntactics: reach a dead end; forced down another avenue - Empirics: time, time, time to get an answer! - Physical World: exploiting email or phone

Answer 15

This document discusses "Dark Patterns," which are design patterns intentionally created to deceive users or favour the interests of parties other than users. The paper emphasizes the socio-technical characteristics of dark patterns, which involve human and technical issues, and applies the Semiotic Framework to analyze them from a socio-technical perspective. Main Points: 1. Definition of Dark Patterns: Design patterns that deceive users or favour other parties' interests, causing negative emotions like frustration and anger. 2. Socio-technical Characteristics: Dark patterns occur when humans interact with technical artifacts, involving both social and technical aspects. 3. Roach Motel Example: A dark pattern where users can easily enter a situation (e.g., creating an account) but find it difficult to exit (e.g., deleting the account). 4. Semiotic Framework: Used to analyze dark patterns, considering six layers: Social World, Pragmatics, Semantics, Syntactics, Empirics, and Physical World. 5. Analysis of Roach Motel: Each layer of the Semiotic Framework reveals different aspects of the Roach Motel dark pattern, such as user frustration, conflicting intentions, confusing semantics, and physical constraints. 6. Future Research: Suggests exploring each layer in-depth to understand the mechanics of dark patterns and their socio-technical impacts. The document aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of dark patterns by considering both technical and human factors, using the Semiotic Framework as a tool for analysis.

Answer 16

- a design strategy where users can easily enter a situation: signing up for a service or creating an account, but find it difficult to exit, such as canceling a subscription or deleting the account. - pattern makes it straightforward for users to get into a service but creates numerous obstacles when they try to leave, often involving hidden options, complex procedures, or requiring additional steps like making a phone call or sending an email. - The goal is to retain users and their data by making the exit process cumbersome and frustrating.

Answer 17

Relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief. - the idea that feelings sometimes matter more than facts. - practitioners are trying to compel someone to believe in something whether there is good evidence for it or not Example - ‘in this era of post-truth politics, it's easy to cherry-pick data and come to whatever conclusion you desire’ - some commentators have observed that we are living in a post-truth age’

Answer 18

Semiotics - We know that every report, we read, hear and see is a sign that represents something; - these signs refer to some concept/idea

Answer 19

- Use of algorithms to engage audiences in relation to fake news - Our fixation of beliefs as outlined by Kolbert - Facebook uses algorithms to organize and distribute information; these filters are programmed to select what a given person is already inclined to like and displays this in that person’s newsfeed - Fake news takes advantage of the established belief that an external reality is being represented in news reports

Answer 20

- science which studies the role of signs as part of social life - study how meanings are created, focusing on both communication and how reality is built and maintained

Answer 21

to investigate how cultural meanings encoded by media texts are adopted, adapted for specific purposes, and then redistributed throughout the culture

Answer 22

concerned with the effect mass media/mass broadcasting (newspapers, radio, cinema) had on audiences and populations - propaganda advertising

Answer 23

1. meaning is not simply fixed or determined by the sender. 2. the message is never transparent. 3. the audience is not a passive recipient of meaning Production – Circulation – Distribution or Consumption – Reproduction to consume is an active process leading to the production, or reproduction of meaning.

Answer 24

1. Dominant reading (viewers passively and uncritically accept the text’s preferred meaning). 2. Negotiated reading (viewers understand the text’s preferred meaning, but slightly dissent from it). 3. Oppositional reading (viewers understand the text’s preferred meaning and either reject, criticize or reconstitute it in subversive or politically charged ways).

Answer 25

People who use media, use it for certain gratifications - Who uses what media, therefore, varies from person to person (i.e. a child watches cartoons, a housewife watches soap operas, etc.) - Asks: ”Why do people use media and what do they use them for?” - To satisfy their specific needs - Audience has power b/c it decides what’s popular, what’s not, what will be shown on tv, what will be cancelled, etc.

Answer 26

- Think critically about the messages and signs you encounter everyday - Help identify the rhetoric and modes of persuasion involved in propaganda, advertising, etc - Help identify the producer of messages

210 Final Flashcards

(51 cards)