Requirements:
1. Introductory paragraph – introduce the topic, say what you did and why it is important or what can be learned.
2. Discuss your sample
– How did you collect your ads? Which magazines/pages/accounts did you look
in? Why these magazines/pages/accounts and not others? How many different
sources (magazines/pages/accounts) do your ads come from? What dates or
time period do the ads come from?
– All samples have limitations; what are the limitations of your sample? For
instance, perhaps the sources you sampled from (i.e., the magazines, the
websites, the social media accounts, the blogs or vlogs, etc.) are not
representative of all the sources where advertisements appear (if so, explain
why). Perhaps you sampled ads for only a certain type of product; what will that
mean when interpreting your findings?
3. Discuss how gender is portrayed in your sample of ads.
few.
– What are the models / actors doing? What message(s) might viewers come
away from the ads with? In what ways do these messages reinforce (or perhaps
challenge) gender roles? Do not talk about all 15-20 ads here; just choose a few
4. Relate your observations of the sample to one of the sociological theories we have
studied throughout the semester and apply the theory to your observations.
– Please note: The goal here is to analyze, not argue that our observations
“agree with” or “do not support” one of the theories (If you choose functionalist
theory, you might talk about manifest and latent functions. If you choose
feminist theory, you might talk about hypermasculinity or the feminization of
emotional labor, etc.).
– State the limitations of applying this theory. What does the theory perhaps not
explain, underestimate, or fail to take into account?
5. Concluding paragraph – make a concluding point about advertising and gender roles
(Make sure that your conclusions are consistent with and/or supported by the
observations you made about your sampled ads).