Lesson 1 - Exploring the Adbusters website
Digitally convergent technologies: the coming together of previously separate industries thanks to digital (computer-based) technologies. A good example is the Adbusters website, which combines film (videos), photography, and journalism (text).
Exploring the website:
- How are ideological perspectives encoded in the Adbusters website?
- What messages and values are presented on the Adbusters website? How do you know? Three explicit examples, please!
- What are three things you can do on the Adbusters website that you absolutely cannot do with the Adbusters print magazine? EXPLICIT examples, please.
Ideological perspective - A system of beliefs shared by a group of people
The main ideological perspective of Adbusters is to smash ads, fight corruption and speak out the truth to power. It is trying to raise awareness of real, extreme issues that we have to face in society.
We can see this ideological perspective presented on their website, which has been encoded with messages and sets of values to the audience. This has been presented in many ways for example:
- Adbusters uses the defaced faces of political figures such as Joe Biden (President of America) and Xi Jinping (President of China) to criticize them for not doing enough to help prevent societal issues from happening.
- The phrase 'does not have the guts' has been used to present Biden in a position of weakness and suggests that he does not have the ability to fix his country and is an inadequate president.
- 'Xi is on a roll beating the West at every turn' Praises Xi, but is then slowly turned to criticism which suggests that no matter what he does to stop these societal issues, they will slowly return
- This has been done to clearly show their ideological perspective in which they do not agree with or like these political figures
- The colour red has been used to grab the audience's attention and symbolizes hatred
- Placing text over their faces has been done to take away their power and make them seem less important/significant
- Adbusters presents their ideological perspective of a dislike towards newspapers. This post created by Adbusters talks about how over a period of 3 weeks the New York Times has not spoken a word about the Palestine crisis
- This post has been published with the intent of shaming the New York Times for not speaking out about the crisis or attempting to bring light to it.
-Confrontational mode of address towards the New York times
to try and make them feel guilty and ashamed of doing this
- 'They'd be better off pretending it didn't exist. Creates the impression to the audience that the New York Times simply does not care about this issue and think that it doesn't affect them, so therefore it is irrelevant to them
- By creating this article the producers are trying to make the audience opposed to the New York Times and therefore stop reading.
- Clear straightforward, criticism of the makeup industry
- Confronting, and calling out makeup brands who give the audience the impression that in order to be seen as attractive they must wear their makeup products.
- Making audiences feel like they are a part of this fight against the brands by using the word 'us'
- Wants to make these brands feel guilty about their actions and let them know that what they are doing won't work for much longer
- Also makes audiences who are unaware that brands do this aware
- By referring to the last word used, this insults the brand by calling their products unsatisfactory and letting them know that they are useless anyway.
Other messages and values that are presented in a range of different ways:
- This piece of merchandise listed on their website communicates the message to the audience that all of these listed are wrong and are bad and that they should not be supported
- We can assume this is wrong due to the red line crossed through the middle of each word. The colour red symbolizes this hatred
- The reason they have been crossed out is to encode the message to the audience which therefore symbolizes the fact that Adbusters want to erase them from society, as they are wrong
- We can see from this that Adbusters carry a left-wing ideology
- Again we can see the cross placed over the symbols of the Republican and Democrat parties. This symbolizes Adbusters dislike for the two and doesn't agree with either of them and therefore they should be erased.
- This symbolizes to the audience that they shouldn't support either of them are they are both as bad as each other
- Again this enforces Adbusters ideological belief of being against the government
- And that the symbol placed beneath the two are the only correct and safe option
- These images publicly shame and call out McDonald's for the unhealthy and damaging food.
- Even goes as far as saying that fast food such as Mcdonald's is causing people to die young
- Uses their iconic 'M' logo flipped to mock and shame them for causing so much harm to people from the ingredients that are out in their food (such as a very high amount of fat, and grease)
- Made to put people off and uses shock factors to surprise their audience by including information about the high amount of fat and that if they continue to 'Eat fast' they will 'Die young'
What are three things you can do on the Adbusters website that you absolutely cannot do with the Adbusters print magazine? EXPLICIT examples, please.
First of all, you can watch videos. This is more beneficial for their audience members who prefer watching rather than reading. They also contain moving images which allow their audience to see topics in more detail and learn more information from this
You can visit their culture shop where you can buy merchandise and other products directly from their website. Money made from this will be put directly back into Adbusters as it is a non-profit magazine.
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