Introduction

This absolute monster of a post covers absolutely everything we covered for Adbusters. Except it doesn't quite. The research tasks, the examples of direct action, the consideration of regulatory factors and the detailed analysis of the website as an ancillary text were all completed din different ways, and will exist in your notes.

Your notes will always be absolutely essential, and must be used in conjunction with the blog, the case studies themselves, exam board resources and anything else you can get your hands on!

Adbusters - what generic conventions does this magazine utilise and what brand identity does it construct?

Takes a political, revolutionary and even propagandistic approach, helping to position audiences in a socialist, and revolutionary mode of address
Potentially targets an anti-capitalist audience seeking an alternative… a difficult target audience!
Shocking mode of address can help to situate audience
Genre - political. Conventions such as representation of corporations, presidents, politics… all represented very negatively!
Layout - messy, ugly, difficult to market!
Aesthetic, masthead, themes, texture, size, format changes every issue, making it hard to build familiarity for the audience
Anarchist, anti-capitalist, anti-establishment, anti corporation!
Radical, different… and defying social norms
Encourages the audience to act out and be different, by… reading adbusters!
Encourages audiences to be engaged with politics…
The genre of this magazine is unclear! This means that encouraging an audience to purchase it is difficult!
However, the magazine is most logically political
The brand identity of the magazine is chaotic, unrelaxed,
The magazine has no set genre, which is reinforced through the masthead changing every edition! The identity of the magazine changes each time, contrasting the message…

ADBUSTERS ISSUE 125 INITIAL BRIEF DISCUSSION

Complete lack of columns, unconventional!
Focus on imagery rather than text
Inconsistent style throughout the magazine
Range of topics
Layout is aesthetically pleasing, and helps to communicate complex ideas
Shocking mode of address: drugs, swastikas, and images of dead children killed by drones in Pakistan
Deliberately decodes political statements to cultivate leftist and anti capitalist ideologies in the audience
Transgressive: goes beyond social and moral expectation
Propaganda?
Almost empty pages
Hypocrisy?
Discusses environmentalism and saving the planet… yet also is a commercial product
The magazine surprisingly seems to lack a particular focus. In fact, it has the potential to completely confuse audiences
We live in a messed up and scary world. The magazine features explicit images of war, explicit language language, in order to cultivate a sense of shock and fear
Aesthetic - artsy, experimental, risky, DIFFERENT from mainstream media
The magazine features adverts… but they do not portray the products kindly. In fact, ADBUSTERS features NO paid for advertising. All adverts are edits and spoofs. It occupies a legal grey area, only legal on technicalities:
Fair use policy, playing fast and loose with copyright law, and taking advantage of something already in the public sphere…
Many of the adverts skirt close to defamation, of portraying companies in a bad light with the potential of reducing profit
However, ADBUSTERS is satire. It is satirical, and challenges those in power.
Adbusters is anticorporation, anti profit, and anti capitalist.
Anticapitalism is an extremist ideology under UK law. To challenge capitalism is to challenge the government, and the hegemonic norms of society

ADBUSTERS issue 125 - ‘The year of living dangerously part 2’. May/June 2016 front cover analysis and initial discussion

The subtitle ‘The year of living dangerously part 2’ is highly unconventional for magazines, and positions the audience as activists who will take direct action against action against capitalism and other forces. It also suggests and constructs an audience that will put themselves at risk to challenge capitalist ideas. This niche audience will return to the ideologies of the magazine every issue because there is no other magazine doing quite what they are doing.
The lexis ‘post-west’ appears to be a subheading but is actually a coverline. This unconventional coverline lacks any further text to anchor it. Adbusters clearly expects the target audience to be confused, yet want to explore it, a preferred reading. The oppositional reading however, would be to reject the dangerous anticapitalist message, or simply to completely not understand the magazine. There is an assumption that the audience are interested in…
The lexis ‘west’ has connotations of liberal democracy, colonisation, and capitalism. West is presented in contrast to ‘eastern’ countries such as China, Russia, Kenya, India. The image in background, a ‘army person’ serves to anchor this reading by presenting a stereotypical counterpoint to the west. Finally ‘post’ suggests after west, either after western influence has collapsed, or after the existence of the west
The magazine presents a deliberately confusing and atypical mode of address
However, the cover is also simple and straightforward. It relies on an easy to understand knowledge of the world!
The image is grimy, unflattering, unpleasant and even scary. The model is presented without context or anchorage, leaving the audience to speculate on his ethnicity, nationality, ideology, motives and situation. The model resembles a stereotype of a terrorist, and by using these stereotypical assumptions, positions the audience in an uncomfortable mode of address. The term ‘terrorist’ is a value laden term and is completely open to interpretation
Similar to WW2 propaganda posters. However, the cover is confusing, and it is difficult to articulate exactly how it makes meaning. The symbolic code of the camo suggests war, and the symbolic code of the cover line, ‘post-west’ anchors the main image to suggest conflict… but it’s confusing!
The magazine lacks conventional coverlines that would normally indicate to the target audience the content of the magazine. This makes the magazine particularly off-putting to consumers, an anti consumerist ideology???
The lexis ‘post-west’ seems to symbolically refer to the end of civilisation, capitalism, and the capitalist societies of Britain, Europe and America. It also symbolically refers to white countries, white societies, white culture as being superior. This postcolonial ideology has lead to wars and conflicts such as the Israel Palestine conflict, the crises in the middle east, Russia's invasion of Ukraine
The ideologies featured on the front cover almost downplay the potential collapse of civilisation, presenting all global conflict in just two words. The lexis engages a cult, politically engaged audience, who already have existing anti capitalist ideologies
The cover star, the model is constructed through the combined gestures codes of a clenched fist, a screaming fist suggests a sense of angry passion, an engagement in conflict. HE’s wearing a camo vest, which may connote he’s involved in war, conflict, the military. We have no idea what conflict this is, however the anchorage of the lexis ‘post west’, in commination with the MES of his uniform suggest his his ideologies are anti-capitalist and .anti-western
The front cover plays with stereotypes, and constructs a stereotypical representation of an Islamic extremist terrorist. The magazine presents a provocative representation of a middle eastern man that forces the audience to confront our own stereotypical ideologies and potentially latent racist thoughts. It encourages us to consider where this ideology has come from.
Terrorism is subjective. There is little difference between a terrorist and a freedom fighter, aside from perspective.
‘The Year Of Living Dangerously’ - paints activism as a lifestyle choice, a declaration that this is the year we should be living dangerously, to challenge the instability that exists in society. By branding an entire year, Adbusters promote a dangerous lifestyle choice, and also seem to contract their own anti-branding/capitalist ideology.
The cover looks horrible. It’s style is deliberately rough, and the main image obscures the masthead. Additionally, the image is grainy. It seems to proairetically encode a physical capture of the moment, subverting the accessibility of digital photography. Here the high quality digital photograph has a physical, damaged, rough quality, which connotes singularity, it is one of a kind, unique. The image resembles guerrilla marketing, manmade, against law and order, rough and low quality. IT constructs a positive and cool aesthetic. A sense of authenticity. The grain resembles splattered paint, grit or mud, which constructs an edgy and different mode of address. It resembles a printer error, which goes against mainstream, glossy, beautiful lifestyle adverts. It also gives the magazine a homemade, ‘zine style quality, which provides the magazine a subversive, gritty, handmade feel.
Hyperreality: the magazine constructs a contradictory presentation of a badly and cheaply produced magazine, using high end, high production values. It presents a hyperreal expectation and reality of the world, based on our own stereotypes, prejudices and understand
The magazine is deliberately confusing in order to construct a reality where the world we are living in. Conflicts such as the Israel Palestine conflict lack all logic, and resist all interpretation.

Context

• published six times a year by Adbusters Media Foundation, 1989

to present. - Only create Adbusters, and a few other ancillary tie ins

Frequency - bimonthly

Weekly - more potential revenue, yet shorter copies, less information, less time to work with. Requires a substantial amount of money, resources, and staff!

Bimonthly - Cheaper in terms of resources, yet also cheaper in terms of employing staff! However, harder to engage audiences and gain recognition

• Set edition: May/June 2016 - Brexit, Trump

• Price: £10.99* - High cover price! Covers the cost of production and staffing only! However, the price fluctuates, it goes up and down! Currently between 8.99 and 9.99! Highly confusing for customers, and extremely bad business practice. This , coupled with a completely different aesthetic and even masthead per issue means the magazine could never establish a consistent readership… however, perhaps the inconsistency is the brand identity of the magazine!

• Circulation: 120,000 readership (website Apr 2017) significantly smaller than the circulation of mass media mainstream publication, however Adbusters is far more expensive, targets an undefined and niche audience, and there is no paid for advertising in the magazine, and it is anticapitalist, against the hegemonic norms of society

Website: https://www.adbusters.org/

Genre: Independent/ campaigning/ culture jamming

Subtitle: ‘Journal of the mental environment’

‘Based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, Adbusters is a not for-profit magazine fighting back against the hostile takeover of our psychological, physical and cultural environments by commercial forces.’

Our mental environment has been hijacked by advertising companies, and advertising can control us and our secret thoughts...

What examples of this ‘hostile takeover’ can we think of?

Promotional posters in pubs: half off with student discount!
Poster for the Perse independent school at the train station - target upper middle class/executives
Jet 2 Holidays adverts on streaming subscription services based on an online meme
Nivea - TikTok - pop up advert
Tenpin - £10 Thursdays advertised on the TVs
Spot adverts ion paramount plus for funeral service
Promotional emails from an indie music label
Adverts for snapchat premium on snapchat
Right move at the station
Influencers selling products, whether or not they identify it as an ad
Watching TV, range rover ad on Frasier
Tattoo parlours paying for promotional posts on Instagram
Parody adverts an attributed content
Product placement

Christian Louboutin presents Loubiairways - what lifestyle is being sold in this advertisement?

The advert encodes a respect in society, demonstrated through the montage of the respect that the wearers receive
They construct the wearer as being object of a gaze, and reinforces the ideology that to be a spectacle is to be powerful
A confident, exciting lifestyle
These shoes are being worn by confident flight attendants, which constructs the reality where anybody can buy them. However, this is a problematic message, given that these luxurious shoes carry such a huge price tag. It goes against conventional fashion marketing…
The advert encourages the working class audience to spend lots on shoes, potentially through finance!
The queer coded flight attendant buys two of high heels, constructing a reality where spending £2000 on shoes is a potentiality for a working class audience
I constructs a reality through the branded fashion, cultivating a sense of ubiquity. It constructs a reality where everybody is rich. With high heeled shoes cost around £1000 pounds, this luxurious reality is clearly far from many people’s experiences
The majority of people in this advert are white, suggesting a western centric ideology of a society dominated by white people. However, there are token black , Asian and queer characters, constructing a reality of inclusivity
A luxurious yet happy lifestyle is attained through wearing Louboutin's. It constructs an exciting, jet setting lifestyle..
In this world, there is no such thing as poverty, terrorism, war, racism, sexism, ugly people or homophobia. It is a utopia

Exploring the ‘Louboutin - red soles are always in season’ double page spread

The double page spread is typical of te content of Adbusters, presenting a number of different complex elements without anchorage, forcing the target audience to either attempt to interpret the images (preferred), or completely not bothering and turning the page (oppositional)
The spread constructs a number of binary oppositions to shock the target audience. The most shocking is an opposition constructed through collage. The lower half depicts a runway model at a fashion show. She is constructed through the MES of clothing, with the bright colour pink suggesting confidence, and the luxurious silk connoting wealth. Here a reality is constructed where clothes are a form of expression, of self confidence, and a declaration of wealth. Fashion is a STATEMENT, and not everybody can be a model, as it requires social status, financial stability, and a very specific hegemonic beauty standard. The stereotypical combination of high fashion and the confident catwalk strut here constructs a reality that is in direct opposition to the top image. A stark black and white cinematography constructs an uneasy and miserable mode of address. The models here are refugees, immigrants, families, prisoners in detention. The combination of mes constructs intertextual relay, which may mean the audience is reminded of concentration camps like Auschwitz. However, we have no indication who these people are…
The bottom photo depicts clothes as luxury, the top sees clothes for survival. This reflects Gilroy’s notion that people of colour are frequently othered in media, and that we are so used to seeing images of degradation and detainment on the news, that we are left unshocked. Numb to the violence…
Meaning is constructed through binary oppositions. By combining these two disparate images, we are forced to confront the violent reality of the top image, while wanting to fall into the seductive reality of the bottom image. It forces the audience to not resort to escapism when viewing media products, a complex and challenging address.
Different audiences will interpreter, negotiate (Hall) and pick and mix different realities (Gauntlet) from this page
The image constructed the straightforward meaning that we should feel guilty, and high end fashion is to blame for many of the world’s issues
The Slogan ‘Red Soles Are Always in Season’ is presented under an image of chapped, broken feet wearing water bottles as shoes. Here the slogan functions as a double entendre, here referring to bleeding feet.
The DPS uses detournement or culture jamming in order to recontextualise the advert. However, the effect is blunt and manipulative. It forces the audience to feel guilt. However, it is unlikely the audience will purchase luxury goods, constructing a confused message.
The water bottles being worn are rubbish from a privileged society that consume without consequence.
This highly unconventional and confrontational double page spread positions the target audience in a confusing mode of address, with the lack of anchorage and explanation encouraging multiple interpretations.
The MES of the broken shoes in the image on the left connotes harsh realities of the world in which we live in, and demonstrates the producer’s encoding of the preferred reading that we should feel guilty. The shoes are in actuality water bottles, and this coupled with the low production values, with the image being poorly framed and perhaps taken with an old phone camera, constructs a reality where poverty in 3rd world countries distant from the so-called western world
The image is constructed through a number of devices that function as hermeneutic codes. We have no idea as to the identity of the model, the symbolic code of the anchorage of the anchorage of the advertising slogan presents an opposition of luxury and privilege, and the MES of decrepit shoes, the fact the model is black, and the dusty, red sanded floor all function as powerful stereotypes for the target audience. Not only does this construct a sympathetic mode of address…
The image is heavily cropped, functioning as a distancing device, deliberately detaching the audience from the image. Symbolically, this positions the target audience in an uncomfortable mode of address that suggests the ways in which ‘western’ countries distance themselves from third world countries
On the opposite side, we see a beautiful, high quality image of a runway model. This functions as a symbolic code, equating runway models with beauty, confidence, privilege and wealth. This image is interrupted with a diametric opposition, a high quality black and white image clearly taken by a professional war photographer. This image is of some kind of conflict, through the gesture code of the battered, hegemonically unattractive people crying and screaming. Audiences will note the MES of barbed wire, cultivated through referential codes. It is reminiscent of apocalyptic movies , charity advertisements, and historical images of the holocaust, with the referentiality of the stripped pyjamas and the black and white cinematography.
These three images are completely unrelated from one another. However, each communicates a meaning which anchors the primary message, that while in the west we wear luxury designer clothes, in other countries a completely different lifestyle is lived.
Louboutin: iconic, expensive shoes, marked with a red sole. These shoes are impractical by design. Wearing them wears the red sole away, decreasing their value. Here the slogan ‘red soles are always in season’ can be hijacked, and now means blood, scabs, pain and misery.

The role of stereotypes

What are stereotypes? - Breaking down certain groups into a few characteristic traits
What functions do they serve? - They serve the function of making clear and easily identifiable storylines. They can function as tools of oppression, which can be used by those in privilege. They help to put people in groups, helping us to understand the world. And it can help make things clear to audiences, and help producers to make media productions.
What advantages and disadvantages do they provide? - However, they present a limited assumption of the world. Stereotypes are never true… they always approximate the world

Representation - What factors make this term WAY more complex than ‘showing something again?

Representation is a demonstration of the ideology of the producer
Representation is reality
Representation is manipulation. Guilt tripping, fear mongering, ideology warping, changing our perceptions of people
It constructs hierarchies of power. For example the postcolonial racial hierarchy in the UK is established through othering black people through stereotypical roles
It sets hegemonic norms, and it challenges hegemonic norms!
It solidifies stereotypes, which can cause divisions

Explore how gender is constructed in different magazines. Refer to… [30]

What representation theorists can help us to interrogate this question?

Laura Mulvey - the male gaze. Media products are constructed to adhere to the perceived male heterosexual audience. This leads to representations of women typically being sexualised and objectified. Where the audience are women, the female body functions as an aspirational role model to fulfil the male gaze.

Liesbet Van Zoonen - women are presented as a sexualised spectacle, and that men and women are constructed through media language in certain ways and these messages change over time

Judith Butler - gender is constructed by everything and it’s a performance. Gender performativity is how our performance of gender shapes the world around us. For example, in the Crème puff advert, putting on foundation has a real, measurable effect on men. Additionally, these performances of gender performatively affect the audience. For example, the Breeze Soap advert performatively constructs a sense of insecurity and anxiety

bell hooks - We must eradicate the patriarchy! The control of men must end! This is clearly contradicted by the ideology of Woman magazine. Additionally hooks argued feminism is for everybody, intersectional feminism, which again woman clearly does not adhere to

Stuart Hall - Representation. Representations are constructed through codes, and demonstrate the ideologies of the producer. They often use stereotypes, and representations always reconstruct reality

Interrogating gender: what theories and theorists will help us with interrogating and theorising how gender is constructed in Adbusters?

Interrogation is a form of active question. Eg, “as an audience, we are encouraged to interrogate the dominant ideological perspective from a number of angles”
Liesbet Van Zoonen - feminist theory for media studies! Women’s bodies are presented as a spectacle. Gender is constructed through conventions in media products, but these things can change over time.
bell hooks - feminism is a struggle to challenge the patriarchy! This revolutionary ideology seems right up Adbusters street. She argued that it’s a political statement, and feminism is for everybody! Intersectional feminism
Judith Butler - we perform our identity and our gender identity through a series of acts. This is called performance. However, our performance of gender affects the world around us. This is called gender performativity.
Stuart Hall - representations reconstruct reality. Representations are constructed through media language and always reflect the ideology of the producer. This usually takes the form of stereotypes.
Paul Gilroy - postcolonial othering. After the collapse of empire, and the end of the colonies, we still still deeply entrenched racist ideologies in British society. Groups that are othered include queer people, disabled people, poc, women, the working class…
David Gauntlett - pick and mix. Audiences pick and mix gender representations to construct their own identity! The bathtub representation could be emancipatory, challenging, prejudiced.. Without anchorage, it is up to us to work this out ourselves!

Water double page spread

In Osasco, Brazil, there are a number of health problems due to lack of water. This is described in a block of copy, presented as a poorly typeset, ugly, chunky and askew piece of writing. This symbolically encodes the situation that the poor in Brazil must go through, living in chaos and misery.
We need water to live. Without it we would die in three days. We need to wash, for social reasons, and for health reasons. We need water for agriculture. We need it to cook and clean. It’s important haemodialysis. And we need it for sanitation.
This copy is placed in a binary opposition to a real, unaltered advert for a £500 tap from Zuchetti. It is constructed in such a way to connote glamour, luxury, excess, desire
In a 1991 Zuchetti TV ad aired in Italy, an abundance of water is represented as a fun and exciting time. Here water represents cleanliness, chemistry, and a sexually exciting life. In the HIM tap advert, the tap is provided with an anthropomorphic personification of masculinity. It constructs a world where this tap has sexual qualities
By simply printing the Zucchetti Him advert, adbusters construct a comparison between plenty, and nothing. Additionally, by adding no further elements, Adbusters construct a reality where the manufacturer of the tap is completely out of touch with reality. The joke is the tap itself
The advert only becomes truly ridiculous when the audience researches the brand. By becoming familiar with the pricing of luxury brands, this double page spread cultivates the preferred reading that we should be outraged by the price and concept of this luxury product. This helps to establish the audience as fans, by actively interacting with the magazine, the magazine interpellates the audience to accept an anticapitalist message.
In mainstream media, for example the 1992 Zuchetti tap advert, women are presented as objects of visual decoration. A hegemonically attractive woman dashes around, being sprayed with intense water, before finally dropping her towel, causing the performative effect of water gushing out of the plumber’s ears, clearly symbolic of orgasm. This reinforces a traditional, hegemonic ideology that the women simply function to be looked at by a heterosexual male audience.
Earlier, in 1964, the Breeze soap advert in Woman reinforced a similar ideology that to be clean is to be beautiful, as well as sexually available.
However, the image in the top left is highly polysemic, and open to many interpretations.
The image depicts a nude person, possibly a woman, sitting hunched in a plain and straightforward bathroom. The bathroom connotes a working class lifestyle, yet even this is unclear. This woman represents the audience, with a relatable mode of address. The woman sits in the bath with very little water.
The aesthetic of the photograph is candid and voyeuristic, yet the woman is not sexualised in any way. The model is posed in a banal and naturalistic pose. She is positioned in a way that does emphasise her figure
The advert, with it’s observational quality and the MES of the hands resembles a water charity. The image positions the target audience in a position of guilt. Even taking the bare essentials still has an impact on the planet.
The end result is the audience is left in a state of confusion and aporia, with no conclusion. Adbusters wants it’s audiences to think.
On the left page is a panel of copy that is unevenly and messily applied to the page. It is not in a traditional column shape, which is highly unconventional of magazines, and reflects that this is an unconventional magazine, with an unconventional brand identity. Its positioning is off, slightly diagonal, and sitting slightly off centre, which symbolises disorder. There is no context for this article, which allows the magazine to skip any preamble, and instead skips immediately to the issue at hand: the lack of water in a village in Brazil. Residents have to wake up at unimaginable hours and spend three hours sourcing water.

Water is essential because…

It’s particularly important in tropical climates, to feed crops and animals

Water is essential to life, and without it we will die in agony in three days

Water is essential for hygiene

It’s essential for all lifeforms

Yet the double page spread constructs a dichotomy between absolute lack and human suffering and an advert for a tap. The tap is branded Zuchetti, which has connotations of luxury, power, of sanitation, luxury, wealth and fashion.
Taps are a device for regulating and pouring water. They allow access to water that is paid for by the consumer. Yet the Zuchetti advert, placed in the magazine without permission, constructs a lifestyle of consumerism, of luxury, wealth, excess… The advert constructs a reality where the western world takes water for granted. As opposed to a necessity, water becomes a sexualised, exciting lifestyle. In a 1992 Zuchetti tap advert, a woman’s bathroom springs a leak that can only be solved through acquiring Zuchetti taps. Upon seeing a naked woman, water blasts out of the plumber's ears, symbolising sexual attraction. The advert in Adbusters uses the anchorage of the brand name HIM to add a masculine quality to the tap, literally sexualising the tap and the water. This example of commodity fetishism is presented as a large issue. The DPS compares those who are impoverished and the wealthy elite who squander their money. Adbusters tacitly suggests that a capitalist and negligent society is responsible for the poverty in the developing world.
However, like much of the magazine, the message is confused and difficult to parse. The implication could be that we in a privileged position must donate money. However, the magazine lacks an avenue for this to be accomplished.
In the top left of the DPS, we are confronted with a third, disparate element. We see a feminine figure in a bathtub. She is constructed through a high angle shot, which draws attention to the MES of a stereotypically working class bathroom. Her hands are wrinkled through the water, here reflecting an abundance of water. However, the image is not luxurious. The model is hunched, suggesting that there is not enough water in the bathtub. Additionally, her face is obscured, which functions as a symbolic code, constructing a reality where this woman’s experience reflects the experience of the many. Rather than unimaginable luxury, or absolute poverty, this image constructs an unattractive construction of reality. Her life has no issues, yet it lacks glamour, luxury. It suggests that attractiveness can be purchased in a patriarchal, western, consumerist society.
This woman represents the average person. She has something, but not much. The anchorage of the advert and the copy positions the audience in a confusing and contradictory mode of address, where we do not understand how to address the issues with our planet.
This image depicts a naked woman in the bath. However, this image of nudity is in no way sexualised. The shot type obscures her face and provocative parts of her body. It is a binary opposition to the representation evident in classic soap, shampoo and beauty adverts, such as the Breeze soap advert in Woman magazine. Rather than functioning as a spectacle for the male gaze, this representation of a naked woman instead teaches us as an audience a lesson about waste and sustainability.

Sociocultural and socio-political contexts

Woman context – Post-war England in 1964

Ideological perspective – Conservative, sexist, hegemonic patriarchal norms

Key socio-political figures - Alfred Hitchcock, Grace Kelly, Jackie Kennedy

Theory - bell hooks, Van Zoonen, David Gauntlet (pick and mix)

Adbusters context – Canadian, but international in scope, and discusses post-globalisation politics

Ideological perspective – Anticapitalistic, anti-establishment, anti adverts!

Key socio-political figures - Donald Trump, Obama, Benjamin Netanyahu

Theory - bell hooks, Stuart Hall, postmodernism, industries and power, postcolonialism (racial hierarchies still exist in postcolonial society!)

Audience - how can Adbusters appeal to a niche audience?

How have the magazines you have studied constructed their audiences?
Position their audiences?
Are interpreted by their audiences?
Engage their audiences?
Meet the needs of their audiences?

What audience theorists can help us understand how audiences engage with Adbusters

George Gerbner - Cultivation theory - the producer will cultivate their ideology over a period of time, through repetition of ideological values. Therefore adbusters can cultivate audience ideology through the sustained messages of the magazine and the website

Stuart Hall - Reception theory - There are 8 billion possible interpretations for every media product. Our reception can be shaped by our views, our knowledge of the producer, our knowledge, our education, our religion, our age, our sexuality…

Hall simplified this by breaking down to three ways that we interpret the dominant, intended ideologies of the producer.

Preferred - we agree with the ideology of the producer
Oppositional - don’t agree with the ideology
Negotiated - agree with some aspects, but reject others
(aberrant - audience doesn’t understand)

The dominant, intended ideology of adbusters is one of anticapitalism, of direct action and boycott and activism, the idea of radicalism, and of a brutal, ugly, edgy mode of address.

(postmodernism - adverts are drawn in to a fictional world, with diverse narratives in conversation with actual adverts, blending reality with fantasy. A complex and highly involved postmodern mode of address, with cultivates the perspective that we live in a confusing world…)

Clay shirky - the death of the audience - the ways in which audiences interact with media products is far more complex, and Adbusters actively encourages audience research and participation… By taking control of ‘the media’ the audience are invited to negotiate a new version of reality

David Gauntlet - pick and mix/identity - audiences can select, pick and mix what they want to engage with, to form our own identity, forming our own embodiment of the ideologies of the magazine

Henry Jenkins - fandom - organised, active participation! Textual poaching, appropriating the text in different ways, for example, circulation, sharing, and direct action

Reception theory

A process involving the producer encoding their ideology, and the audience decoding this ideology.

However, each audience member will receive this message in a different way.

Factors which may influence reception include age, culture, class, religion, sexuality, politics, gender identity, upbringing.

Hall divided these receptions into three categories:

Preferred reading, where we agree with the message

Oppositional reading, where we disagree with the message

Negotiated reading - agree with some parts, disagree with others

Most media products will encourage audiences to align with the preferred reading, and therefore to accept the dominant ideological message that is being cultivated. This is certainly true of Woman magazine, and especially true of newspapers, which will frequently use manipulative tactics to position and subjectify their audiences.

However, some media products do not have clear interpretations, and will deliberately leave interpretation to the audience. This may include complex, postmodern TV shows such as Twin Peaks and Les Revenants, and of course Adbusters.

Save The Planet: Kill Yourself and audience negotiation

The article takes the form of an excerpt of a book of the same name by author/artist/poet David Joez Villa Verde. The book cannot be found online, and there is no mention of this book on the artist’s website. This suggests that the article potentially does not have widespread appeal.
The intended response of this article is to shock and to cause controversy. This is most apparent in the lexis of the title, which may be read as an incitement to commit suicide. It creates an aggressive and commanding mode of address, which may influence people to take their own lives. Audiences with depression and anxiety will be particularly affected by this blunt message
The title clearly is an attempt to engage the audience using shock tactics, and reinforces that we are about to read an emotionally charged article.
However, from a legal perspective this incitement to suicide is one of very few potentially illegal elements (see below for more)
However, the article is potentially justified through it’s political context. It deliberately shocks the audience in order to make a valid point about the fragility of the ecosystem
Magazine regulation is also far more lax than other forms of media. Magazines are regulated by IPSO, a form of voluntary regulation. Adbusters is niche, targeting a niche audience of those who are likely already engaged, and IPSO will only investigate due to complaints. The readers of Adbusters are already invested in the ideology of the magazine through prolonged cultivation
We can also argue that the article functions as political satire
However, the tone of the article is extreme. It argues, perhaps satirically, that the world would be better off without us. This takes a fiercely misanthropic perspective of humanity
The article positions the audience in a suffocating and panic inducing mode of address. The lexis “make your choice, it’s time to pay, it’s time to go. If you have any heart, you will experience gut pangs, anxiety…”
However, the article functions as a self-reinforcing echo chamber. By being situated in an anticapitalist, anti establishment (and expensive!) magazine, the only people who will read this will share the same environmentalist viewpoint. It can be argued that this article is completely useless, only provokes anxiety, and gives no resources or suggestions for how to change the world

Appeal

Audiences may be sympathetic to the message

Audiences may feel the gratification of feeling smart, and that their own ideology is justified

Anxious audiences may actively seek out depressing content to ease their anxiety

It can function as a means of escapism, and can put our troubles

Doomers, the depressed, and doomscrollers will take pleasure in wallowing in this depressing view of the world. It constructs a version of reality where there is no point in trying

Visual style - harsh black and white, bland, messy, ugly… all appealing to a niche audience!

The assumption that we, the audience, can understand the satirical and complex mode of address makes the audience feel intelligent! An important gratification

Education - the magazine encourages a preferred reading of researching and finding out about these situations. E.g. 350ppm

A niche magazine, against the mainstream! This can be an appeal because audiences will take gratification from being different from the norm!

Activism and charity - the implicit suggestion that we should be helping out in a variety of ways

A cult audience - allows the audience the opportunity of a sense of unity with other anticapitalists

Escapism…

Self-righteousness - allows the audience the gratification of being on the right side of history

Relatability! - audiences who disagree with their government, discrimination, and environmental collapse will relate to the ant conformist ideology

Unique selling point - magazines are completely different from issue to issue: a unique physical experience! Consumerism????

Active participation

After three pages of misery, anxiety and perpetuating an ideology of doom, there are presented a few opportunities to change the world. (active participation, Henry Jenkins).
Advice includes “create alternative models of consumption in your community” is vague, and lacks any practical elements. It is vague, and only emphasises the nihilistic quality
We have only ever lived a period of late stage capitalism and ‘collapse’, which means we have no reference for a future outside of capitalism and capitalist constraint
It concludes with asking us to acknowledge our fear….

Examples of actual illegal content under various UK laws

Promoting extremist ideology, for example terrorist ideology
Depictions of self harm and suicide that glamourise the act
Sharing personal information about private citizens
Naming children under 18
Incitement to racial hatred
Actual abuse and exploitation of children
Murder…

While adbusters clearly does not engage in the vast majority of these regulatory faux pas, it does, however advocate suicide... in an ironic and satirical way. The use of satire as a discursive mode is a common justification among much edgy media. And while this article takes a miserabilist approach, there are many examples, most notably on the website, that provide a positive, life-affirming approach to activism.

A-Level Media Studies

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Tuesday, 24 February 2026

Adbusters: complete analysis