Advertising, Portrayal of Women in

The advertising industry can be viewed as a culture industry that engages a network of ideological and dominant institutions. This culture industry produces and reproduces mass culture, effectively homogenizing cultural products and audience identities. Advertisements are the material products of the advertising industry; more important, though, the advertising industry creates ideologies about gender, race, and class, thus reinforcing stereotypes about minority (or subordinate) groups in relation to the dominant social group. The messages in advertisements socialize people and mediate their reality; the advertising industry's function thus carries economic, political, cultural, and social effects. Advertisements can be in many forms, such as print (in magazines or newspapers), television, radio, Internet pop-ups, and out of home (like billboards). The characterization of the advertising industry as a culture ...