Hi everyone. I'm trying to write my 3rd year undergraduate dissertation and I want to analyze an ad campaign from a brand that launched 4 commercials that are less-than-two-minute to investigate how gender is interpreted in advertising and whether the commodification of feminism can still be empowering. I feel quite inexperienced if we talk about typical research methods and approaches, therefore what would you suggest me to do? My research will definitively take a qualitative approach, however I'm not so sure if I can apply semiotics on videos and if visual analysis means the same thing as semiotics, or if I should apply other type of analysis (e.g. textual), or mix two types of analyses. What would most advertisements use if I were to analyze the message of the campaign, the image, the background, and relate everything to current social-political times?
Dear Adelina Alexandru
Semiotics is the study of sign and examines the process by which meaning is produced and communication achieved. So, you can say that every approach you employ to study sign ( verbal, nonverbal, visual, etc) is oriented towards semiotics. As to ads and commercials, I highly recommend multimodality ( Gunther Kress) as the approach that suits best your data. For more information, see: https://youtu.be/kJ2gz_OQHhI, https://youtu.be/nt5wPIhhDDU and https://youtu.be/rZ4rMVCWkQs.
Best Wishes
Hello Adelina. Jinan F. B. Al-Hajaj 's answer has great insight to the differences underlying your question. From my perspective, really you are proposing two sorts of different requests for advice. The first one - whether semiotics is appropriate - is well-answered by Jinan. In short, of course you can use semiotics, but the real question is if you are really interested in the semiotics. Questions along this line would be somethings along the line of "(1) what does gender seem to mean in advertising," and "(2) how does it get that way?" You would track down, through your videos, the different content that triggers readings of gender, and the "meaning" behind it. If you are interested in this question, the American Journal of Semiotics vol. 34 addresses these questions directly (incl. brand building, visual semiotics). You can find the volume here: https://www.pdcnet.org/collection-anonymous/browse?fp=ajs&fq=ajs%2FYear%2F6982%7C2018%2F
The second underlying question, if you are more interested in what sort of content appears in the videos, and what the videos seem to include as content in dealing with gender in advertising, you have a shorter 'trek' to make. Again, Jinan F. B. Al-Hajaj 's answer is totally spot-on here, and simple content analysis/descriptive work will serve you well, with attention to multimodal resources the videos tend to utilize. This route really becomes up to your discretion for what content you want to highlight, and what constructs you connect them with.
Hello Adelina Alexandru,
It seems to me that your topic " investigat[ing] [1] how gender is interpreted in advertising and [2] whether the commodification of feminism can still be empowering" is rather broad one. Could you tell what are the relations between its parts in terms of methodological choices and phases of the research process?
My point is related to the differences of epistemological positions between content analysis and semiotics. To me "content analysis" can even be a specific research technique wheras semiotics is broader and more abstract orientation towards culture in general. Brett A. Diaz above also approached my point.
Good luck!
Hello Adelina Alexandru, Thank you for your question. I had the same kind of problematic in my own PhD project and I found very precious reference within the work of french Schoolar Stéphanie Kunert : she working about gender norms in advertising (and in order to analyse advertising within a mutlimodal semiotic approach I highly recommend Karine Berthelot-Guiet !) I think that references can really help you ;)
Sémioticiens Éliseo Veron and Jean-jaques Boutaut can be very helpfull too ;)
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