Public Opinion and the Media Lecture Notes

1. Public Opinion and Popular Sovereignty
1. Introduction
1. Opinion polling, while sometimes complex in its details, is based on the statistical finding that a small random sample of individuals' opinions will, with a high degree of certainty and a small margin of error, accurately reflect public opinion as a whole.
2. Scientific polling got its start in the 1930s with George Gallup, and quickly became important to political leaders.
3. Polling has been defended as an accurate and dynamic way to keep politicians informed of public opinion on important issues and policies. In this light the opinion survey is an impersonal mode of communication between a mass public and political leaders in complex and rapidly changing societies.
4. Yet as we will see, polling has also been criticized as a tool for the manipulation of the public and as a poor substitute for a more participatory form of politics.
2. A dangerous and unreliable public?
1. The principal findings of public opinion and voting studies research can be summed up in four words: most Americans are ignorant of many political facts and issues, uninterested in politics, inconsistent in their views, and inclined to intolerant attitudes towards unpopular minorities. As one writer put it, this research paints a portrait of Americans as "a people that is uninvolved, suspicious, and ignorant when it comes to public affairs" (Sussman 1988, 57).
1. Many Americans don't know who their legislative representatives are, which party controls Congress, or who the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court is. Nor do they understand basic constitutional provisions, such as how judges are appointed or how long a senator's term is. Finally, they are seldom well-acquainted with public policy issues. And abstract support for civil liberties is confounded by popular intolerance of cultural, racial, and political minorities, though this may be changing (text fig. 3.1, p53).
2. A few examples:
1. See "The Wording Makes the Difference" chart.
2. Question-order bias: Asking whether respondents approve/disapprove of the way Reagan is handling his job as president at the beginning and again at the end (Sussman 1988, 42-44).
3. These findings have led many to conclude that "Politics is too distant, too complex, too mysterious, and therefore too frightening for the common man [sic] to be prepared to be involved" (Blondel quoted in Dryzek 1990, 155).
3. Or a public with relatively stable values and preferences that is pre-occupied with private (and sometimes community) life?
1. Another interpretation compatible with these findings is that Americans know what they want, but prefer to leave to politicians the task of crafting policies that will satisfy their agenda.
1. There are, as the text notes (p47), fundamental values that command very broad and enduring support. (See also Exoo 1994, 24-27.)
2. In addition, in any given period, there are likely to be policy principles which decided majorities persistently support. Examples:
1. Most Americans opposed the Reagan administration's efforts to overthrow the Sandinista government of Nicaragua throughout the 1980s (Sussman 1988, 71).
2. Most Americans favored more, not less, environmental protection during the Reagan administration (See Sussman 1998, 72).
3. Unfortunately, leaving to politicians and "state managers" (bureaucrats) the power to shape legislation and policy has obvious pitfalls:
1. It plays into their efforts to manage and manipulate public opinion by first reading it through polling, then using polling information to rhetorically package the policies they want enacted.
2. It suggests that policies are likely to symbolically address the concerns of unorganized or marginal publics while substantively addressing the concerns of organized groups with the wealth, status, and skills to monitor the political process, lobby effectively, and reward politicians that support them while sometimes punishing those that don't.
4. Conflicting assessments of the public's capacity to govern
1. Elite democratic theorists argue that these empirical findings show that it is best to allow only a limited and indirect popular influence in political life. The public cannot be trusted to make informed decisions on complex issues, nor can it even be counted on to uphold basic democratic values. Governance must be largely confined to technical, cultural, and political elites. Competition among them, combined with periodic elections, can hopefully prevent tyranny and correct the worst public policy errors while giving the public a role to play.
1. This may indicate a contempt for the public or a view of it as immersed in private life.
2. An important corollary of this is that the manipulation of public opinion is acceptable:
1. as an unavoidable consequence of elite competition; and
2. because elites are the guardians of liberal and democratic values.
2. Popular democrats respond to this in a number of ways.
1. Normative: Ordinary citizens bear the consequences of government action (and inaction). They are entitled to decide their own futures.
2. Practical: Citizens are likely to be better judges of policies than elites, because the latter are frequently able to insulate themselves from their adverse consequences.
3. Critical social theory: Responsibility for defects in the public's ability to govern lies chiefly with government and corporate elites, who prefer a public that can be led and tutored to one that presumes to lead. (See the sketch of John Dewey's perspective on p45 of the text.)
4. Model of Democracy: Popular democrats make several interrelated assumptions about democratic governance:
1. Popular governance is a learning process: knowledge, competence, and public-spiritedness develop when participation is sustained.
2. Participation needs to permeate society: In order for citizens to gain practical experience in governance, to feel that their participation matters, to see the relevance of participation in and for their daily lives, and to appreciate the connections between personal experience and policy choices, political participation ought to figure in all major institutions, including workplaces, schools, and neighborhoods.
3. Participation requires that all citizens have the requisite resources: If indeed governance has become more complex, then traditional reliance upon the private resources of citizens (leisure time, common sense, etc.) is no longer sufficient. Moreover, time, education, access to communications technology, and other resources essential to participation are very unequally distributed, severely hampering many citizens.
5. Critique of opinion surveys:
1. Surveys create the appearance of collective opinion by aggregating individual responses; real collective opinion is the product of deliberation.
2. Surveys concentrate power in the hands of those who sponsor, design, and administer them. They decide what questions will be asked and what responses will be recorded, who will be sampled and how, and whether the results will be published or not.
3. Surveys are divorced from political action. As a consequence:
1. They are poor indicators of citizens' political intelligence. Apparent ignorance, for example, may simply reflect a reasonable economy in handling information--information that influences candidate choice may be forgotten once the choice is made; detailed information about issues or political institutions may be deemed unimportant due to feelings of alienation and powerlessness.
2. They may not reliably indicate how citizens would act were participation possible. Experiments such as James Fishkin's deliberative poll show that deliberation, even apart from any actual decision-making power, alters citizens' perspectives (text p71).
5. A case study: public opposition to nuclear power
1. Commercial nuclear power began in the mid-1950s, spurred by government promotion and support.
2. Public opinion was strongly pro-nuclear into the early 1970s (2 to 1 margin of support).
3. Most experts argued that nuclear power was very safe; public opposition was irrational, based on unfamiliarity and the association with nuclear weapons.
4. Public opinion, however, became more hostile to nuclear power over time:
1. The process of siting nuclear power stations generated strong local opposition
2. Dissident experts, including some whistle blowers from within the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), argued that safety estimates were biased and the potential for accidents more serious than admitted.
3. Local opposition plus the growth of counter-expertise leads to the emergence of a national anti-nuclear movement. It brings additional issues to the public's attention, including the problems of nuclear waste disposal and evacuation planning. It also engages in massive non-violent civil disobedience actions at several construction sites (Seabrook, NH; Diablo Canyon, CA).
5. The near meltdown at Three Mile Island in 1979 dramatically heightens public apprehensions and comes at a time when the anti-nuclear movement is in a position to offer a well-developed critique of nuclear power and a plausible energy alternative.
6. In the end, public opinion turns 2 to 1 against nuclear power. In addition, technical and political problems dramatically increase the costs of construction and the time required to complete a power plant.
7. The result is a complete halt to new construction and the cancellation of a number of projects already underway. No new plants have been built in over a decade.
8. Were the experts wrong? They certainly made serious errors in calculating the likelihood of accidents and in failing to consider the enormous difficulties posed by waste disposal. Beyond this, most experts failed to grasp that the public was concerned about issues that went beyond a narrow estimate of probabilistic risk, including fears of catastrophe, risks to future generations, involuntary and inequitable risks, technology that was potentially uncontrollable due to lack of knowledge or excessive complexity, and exposure to invisible contaminants.
1. See figure "Dread and Unknown Risks", not available on the course web pages.
9. Some lessons:
1. Technical expertise is often flawed. Hubris, inattention to organizational problems, failure to consider the full range of possible consequences, loyalty to corporate or institutional interests, and other factors adversely affect expert assessments of technologies.
2. The concealed values in technical expertise are frequently at odds with those of the public.
3. The public can become informed on technical issues under certain conditions.
4. The existence of a sustained social movement, of counter-expertise, and of conflict among elites all appear to contribute to the development of a more informed public opinion capable of making hard moral decisions.

1. The Media and Politics
1. What makes the media important politically?
1. Media perform four functions important to politics: monitoring the world to report ongoing events; interpreting of the meaning of events; socializing individuals into their cultural and political world; and deliberately influencing politics (Graber 1993, 4-12).
1. In monitoring the world, media act as collective "sense extensions" that convey impressions of the immense extent of the globe that we cannot directly witness. Monitoring entails selective attention (and inattention); sustained versus ephemeral coverage; ranking of newsworthy events; and the standpoint(s) or perspective(s) from which events are presented. Monitoring is itself an important aspect of interpretation since, for example, an interpretation of the world is implicit in the selection of what warrants news coverage. Monitoring does much to set the political agenda.
2. Interpretation is a complex phenomena, including such things as
1. causation: is a social problem the result of "official policies, the machinations of those who benefit from it, or the pathology of those who suffer from it" (Bennett and Edelman quoted in Graber 1993, 10)?
2. authorization: who is permitted to competently explain an issue or problem;
3. framing: how are the social actors and their actions characterized (responsible, extremist, knowledgeable, ignorant, objective, self-interested, etc.); how are events situated (central, peripheral, decisive, secondary, singular, part of a pattern)?
4. subject construction: which social actors figure in the event (and which are excluded); what roles do they play; what qualities are they imbued with (or denied); what relationships do they forge; which are good and which evil?
5. Through interpretation, events become episodes within larger social and political narratives. In this way, the audience is invited to insert themselves into the action--the episode is part of a story which involves them also.
3. Media socialize people politically by portraying the norms of political conduct (ideal and actual); generating a range of 'acceptable' and aberrant opinions; depicting appropriate and wrongful forms of political action; providing information about distant events; and by characterizing people of different ages, races, classes, ethnic groups, and other subject positions (usually implicitly), continually creating and recreating a universe of personas, social positions and predicaments within which individuals may locate themselves.
4. Through investigative journalism, the muddying of public figures, and agenda building, the media can intentionally shape the political scene.
1. In principle, investigative journalism, or muckraking, involves the following sequence: investigation, publication, arousal of public opinion, policy initiatives, policy consequences. In practice, investigations frequently do not lead to significant policy changes.
2. Agenda building refers to attempts to elevate a story to a position of special prominence in order to capture the attention of national media, the political elite, and the public.
2. The media are sometimes called the "fourth branch of government" in recognition of its critical role in shaping political awareness and opinion. In light of this, we need to ask two questions:
1. How close do the media come to fulfilling the democratic ideal of a "free press" characterized by a diversity of ideas?
2. Do the media enhance or constraint freedom of expression?
3. We can try to answer these questions by looking at ownership and control, the role of advertising, the news production process, and public access and government regulation.
1. Ownership and control: Traditionally, the main threat to freedom of expression came from government, which is why freedom of speech was included in the Bill of Rights. Now, while governmental power remains a danger, the main threat to free expression has become private corporate power. There are three underlying reasons for this:
1. First, competition, which is supposed to provide for diversity and relatively open access, has been limited by increasing concentration. It is estimated that 23 firms dominate the overwhelming majority of U.S. media (Bagdikian 1997, 18-22), and a similar pattern of oligopolistic control is emerging globally (McChesney 1998, 12-13).
1. See chart, "Changing Media Ownership Concentration, 1983-1992".
2. See also, "Some Facts About Media Ownership in Oregon".
3. Additional considerations:
1. The FCC has relaxed limits on multiple ownership and cross-media ownership. Currently a single owner can control 18 AM radio stations, 18 FM radio stations, and 12 television stations (and thus operate in 48 of the estimated 270 broadcast markets in the U.S.).
2. Ninety-nine percent of the daily news sources in the U.S. use either the AP or UPI wire services. "Wire service stories tend to predominate for foreign news and even for national news for smaller papers and stations that cannot afford their own correspondents"
3. Ninety-eight percent of American cities have only one daily newspaper (Graber 1993, 44-47).
4. Yet one significant study, at least, suggests that degree of competition has little bearing on diversity of information. Robert Entman's study of newspaper competition found that in both monopoly and competitive cases, the same narrow range of actors and small degree of disagreement prevailed (Entman 1989, in Croteau and Hoynes 1997, 45-46). The pursuit of profit may matter more, leading to similar behavior by independent firms.
2. Second, the profit-driven nature of corporate media affects the nature and extent of news as well as the portrayals of social and political problems in entertainment shows and other works of fiction. This occurs in a number of ways:
1. Overt ideological control: While decisions by top executives not to broadcast or publish something on ideological grounds are uncommon, they may not be as rare as one might think (or hope). Two examples:
1. Disney/ABC's firing of Jim Hightower (text p144).
2. Simon & Shuster's refusal to publish Corporate Murder, a book about instances of knowing corporate disregard for consumer safety, despite the support of its editorial staff. Its CEO felt the book "made all corporations look bad" (Bagdikian 1997, 27-30).
2. Cost-cutting and revenue enhancing strategies:
1. Reduce the number of journalists; cut-back on investigative reporting.
2. Use more wire service reports.
3. Efficient packaging: rely on the same elites as sources, focus on official events and on a limited number of institutions.
4. Maximize audience share and avoid offending advertisers by concentrating on crime, scandal, and local uplift while avoiding stories critical of actual or potential advertisers (egregious cases sometimes excepted).
3. Dependence on advertising: Advertising is a key source of revenue for all mass-market print and commercial broadcast media. Two-thirds of print media operating costs come from advertising, while for television advertising is the only substantial revenue source.
1. It is audiences that media firms are selling; advertisers generally want audiences that are up-scale, large, likely to be interested in their products, and in a mood to buy. Some implications:
1. News organizations can risk offending an advertiser, but cannot "be too critical of the system of consumer capitalism" because this will jeopardize their relationship with advertisers generally (Croteau & Hoynes 1997, 59). Historically, the transition from a partisan press supported by political parties to a commercial press meant that newspapers went from being advocates for parties to being advocates for business.
2. News that cultivates, or at least does not undermine, a "buying mood", is preferred. "Life-style" coverage is ideal, since it promotes consumption and enables news and advertising to be blended. (On this, see also Graber 1993, 115).
2. Advertisers often try to directly influence content, or respond to content they dislike by withdrawing ads. Examples from Ms. magazine:
1. Ms. did a brief report on a congressional hearing into carcinogenic chemicals in hair dyes. Clairol is outraged and cancels its ads. Despite later changing its hair coloring formula, Ms. gets almost no Clairol ads ever again (Steinem [1990] 1995, 114).
2. Philip Morris is miffed when Ms. readers write in to criticize a test ad for Virginia Slims ("You've come a long way, baby."). They pull ads for all their many brands, never to return. (Steinem notes that cigarette ads became indispensable in the 1980s because, with their banning on television, they became a disproportionate support for magazines.) (Steinem 115-116)
3. Eastern airlines nearly cancels its bulk subscription to Ms. because a vice-president objects to ads for lesbian poetry journals in its classifieds. "A family airline has to draw the line somewhere" (Steinem p117)
3. Advertiser assumptions about readers/viewers indirectly, but powerfully, affect what can be published and broadcast. More examples from Ms. magazine:
1. Ms. gets very few consumer electronics ads because, explain executives for the companies, "women don't understand technology" and rely on husbands and boyfriends to decide what to buy (Steinem p114).
2. Ms. can't get food corporation ads (General Mills, Pillsbury, etc.) because, "no matter how desirable the Ms. readership is, our lack of recipes is lethal" (Steinem p116).
3. Leonard Lauder, president of Estée Lauder (cosmetics), explains that his company won't advertise in Ms. because it is selling "a kept-woman mentality" (Steinem p119).
3. Third, conglomeration--the "media-industrial" complex--which overtook the media in the 1980s and 1990s, has several adverse impacts on free expression:
1. Charts:
1. "The Diverse Holdings of the General Electric Company" (from Graber 1993, 42), not available on the course web pages.
2. "Two Parts of the National Entertainment State" (from text, p143), not available on the course web pages.
2. The scope of ownership interests that might be directly affected by a news story is vastly expanded.
3. The move from family or individual ownership to public ownership, combined with the increase in indebtedness that often accompanies mergers, puts much greater pressure on companies to boost the profit rate.
2. The news production process:
1. Sources: Most of the news consists of reporting what government agencies, political leaders, a narrow set of experts, corporations, and the largest nongovernmental organizations have to say. Nearly all these sources are headquartered in Washington, where the vast majority of political reporters are likewise based. This has a number of consequences:
1. Constrained pluralism: While this undeniably constitutes a plurality of sources of information and points of view, it is a highly constrained plurality. Political perspectives outside the narrow range of the Democratic-Republican axis, forms of expertise critical of dominant techno-economic developments, and the knowledge, outlook and experience of smaller grassroots organizations and marginalized groups (Native Americans, inner city youth, etc.) are seldom consulted or communicated.
2. Graber notes that "Newspeople rarely stir up controversies when established elites agree on matters of public policy. ...The absence of reported conflict makes it seem, often erroneously, that elites as well as the public approve the unchallenged policies" (Graber 1993, 182).
1. Dependency on sources: Some sources are both vital to reporters and powerful: the Whitehouse, the Pentagon, leading politicians. While no person or institution is above critical reporting, "Official viewpoints are likely to be particularly dominant when reporters must preserve access to their special beats, like the Pentagon or the Justice Department, or when story production requires government assistance in collecting or gaining access to data" (Graber 1993, 136).
2. News manipulation by sources: Most of the leading sources of political news are also sophisticated producers of an enormous volume of news-oriented material, much of it carefully designed and delivered with the needs and deadlines of journalists in mind. Dependence on this steady supply of news not only makes media organizations dependent on their suppliers, it gives such suppliers the opportunity to shape what the news--especially news concerning themselves and their interests--will be. In addition, the authority conferred on such official sources helps to maintain the image of objectivity while offering protection from charges of bias and the threat of libel suits (Herman & Chomsky 1998, 19).
3. Some idea of the enormity of public information production comes from figures released by the U.S. Air Force on its public information outreach for 1979-80. See table, "An Example of Source Production" in "Source Production of News and Media Source Preferences".
4. The effectiveness of efforts to shape coverage by supplying it can be seen in a study of the sources of front-page news stories. See table, "A Study of Sources of Front-page News Stories" in "Source Production of News and Media Source Preferences".
3. Newsworthiness: In the selection and packaging of news most mass media outlets adhere to very similar criteria. Audience appeal, within the institutional constraints we've already discussed, is probably the foremost consideration (Graber 1993, 116). Graber argues that the media judge audience appeal by five specific elements: audience impact (personalization); violence, conflict, and scandal; familiarity (well-known people, familiar situations); proximity (hence the appeal of local news plus a few heavily reported sites like Washington that feel 'local'); timeliness; and novelty.
1. These criteria favor stories that are sensationalistic, entertaining, highly dramatic, immediate, fragmented, and shallow. They are shallow because underlying causes, likely consequences, and historical antecedents are neglected. Dramas about the personal lives of public figures (the O. J. trial, the Clinton-Lewinosky scandal) drown out events that may be much more important. Fragmentation makes it difficult to perceive broader patterns or developmental tendencies. The emphasis on immediacy, personalization, and familiarity reinforces the parochialism of American news (Graber 1993, 132). These criteria discourage sustained attention to major social problems, coverage of which is likely to be confined to the dramatic event. Once coverage has exhausted the event's novelty (the first cloned sheep, a rash of nursing home deaths, the killing of school children) attention quickly shifts.
2. As the authors note (p157) audience appeal as a defense of news selection runs counter to the notion of 'objective' journalism.
4. Objectivity: The notion of objective journalism rests on a distinction between 'facts' and 'values' and a dedication to reporting facts and sharply distinguishing them from evaluative statements and ethical expression (editorials). In practice, objectivity depends considerably on media conformity or what the text more narrowly calls pack journalism. If mass media outlets frequently disagreed about the relevant facts to report and where to get information from, the standard of objectivity would be in crisis. Prestige leadership plays a role in this; coverage by the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post makes an event newsworthy, for example (text 156-157; Graber 1993, 48).
3. Government regulation and public access: The chief regulation agency is the Federal Communications Commission, established by the Radio Act of 1927. The FCC is primarily responsible for electronic media. Two forms of regulation need to be considered:
1. Regulation of ownership: The FCC limits the number of media outlets that a single company can own in the interests of protecting diversity. However, during the Reagan-Bush years, FCC (and Justice Dept.) policies were changed. Rules protecting diversity, local ownership, and smaller scale in media were weakened or scrapped in favor of the belief that in order to compete in an ever more international market, American media corporations were best huge. As a result, the FCC relaxed rules against vertical integration, and antitrust lawyers ceased prosecuting businesses for creating monopolies.
1. Deregulation has been followed by waves of mergers and consolidations beginning with GE's purchase of NBC in 1987.
2. The FCC has also made it very difficult to challenge license renewals on grounds of failure to serve the public interest (Graber 1993, 52-54).
2. Public access and fairness rules:
1. Print media can print or refuse to print anything they like (Graber 1993, 66). They can be sued for libel, however such suits can seldom meet the standard of malicious intent or extraordinary carelessness (Graber 1993, 91). Citizens may request the opportunity to publish responses to stories or personal attacks, but papers are not obliged to do so.
2. Electronic media are governed by three access and fairness rules:
1. Equal time: Until 1983, a station that gave or sold time to one candidate for an office had to make the same opportunity available to all candidates for that office. Since then, stations have been free to stage debates among candidates of their own choosing, usually limiting access to the Democratic and Republican candidates (Graber 1993, 68).
2. Fair treatment: The Fairness Doctrine, adopted in 1949, required (a) that broadcasters cover public issues and (b) that they provide opportunities for the expression of contrasting points of view. The doctrine was weakened by court rulings that left it up to the media itself to decide which viewpoints would be aired. And in 1987, as part of the Reagan-era push for deregulation, the FCC repealed the Fairness Doctrine (Graber 1993, 68-70; Croteau & Hoynes 1997, 80-82).
3. Political editorial and personal attack: The political editorial rule provides a right of access to a candidate if the broadcaster has editorialized in support of the candidate's opponent. The personal attack rule provides that when an attack is made upon the honesty, character, integrity or like personal qualities of an identified person or group, the broadcaster will provide those attacked with an opportunity to respond. At present, the FCC is deadlocked over the issue of whether to repeal or continue this rule.
4. Summary: What are the implications for democracy?
1. The concentration of ownership and control constricts the range and variety of information and opinion, while conglomeration worsens this by extending the scope of direct interests that each media organization strives to insulate from criticism. The domination of media by profit-driven enterprises means that the media act as an advocate for business-in-general, though it does not prevent media from criticizing specific corporations. It also makes media highly sensitive to advertiser preferences about news and entertainment content.
2. The new production process tends to reflect--and thus maintain--the constrained pluralism of the political system by virtue of its overwhelming focus on (and dependence on) dominant institutions and the experts associated with them.
3. Finally, the FCC abandoned most public interest regulation of the media. According to deregulatory doctrine, the expansion of competing forms of media (cable, broadcast, print, Internet, etc.) means that there is little need to worry about concentrated ownership, therefore ownership restrictions have been relaxed. The same argument has been used to justify the weakening or repeal of public access protections for broadcast media. If media access is not a scarce resource, then diversity of outlets is alone supposed to assure that a wide range of viewpoints will be aired. Yet the multiplication of outlets actually coincides with a ongoing reduction in the number of owners.
   
   
   

References

Bagdikian, Ben H. 1997. The Media Monopoly. 5^th ed. Boston: Beacon Press.

Bennett, W. Lance and Murray Edelman. 1985. Toward a New Political Narrative. Journal of Communication, v35, pp156-171.

Blondel, Jean. 1981. The Discipline of Politics. London: Butterworths.

Croteau, David and William Hoynes. 1997. Media/Society: Industries, Images, and Audiences. Thousand Oaks, CA; London: Pine Forge Press.

Dryzek, John. 1990. Discursive Democracy. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press.

Entman, Robert. 1989. Democracy without Citizens. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Exoo, Calvin F. 1994. The Politics of the Mass Media. St. Paul, MN: West Publishing.

Graber, Doris A. 1993. Mass Media and American Politics. 4^th ed. Washington, DC: CQ Press.

Herman, Edward S. and Noam Chomsky. 1988. Manufacturing Consent. New York: Pantheon Books.

McChesney, Robert W. 1998. The Political Economy of Global Communication. In McChesney, Robert W., Ellen Meiksins Wood and John Bellamy Foster eds., Capitalism and the Information Age. New York: Monthly Review Press.

Sussman, Barry. 1988. What Americans Really Think. New York: Pantheon Books.

Steinem, Gloria. [1990] 1995. Sex, Lies and Advertising. In Dines, Gail and Jean M. Humez eds. Gender, Race and Class in Media: A Text Reader. Thousand Oaks, CA; London: Sage.