We draw our advertisements from a sample of magazines taken in September 2005 and March 2006. Though interested in women’s roles in the promotion of wireless products, we selected magazines aimed at range of audiences [young and mature, working class and well to do, female and male; Caucasian and minority] in order to allow a wide range of potential foci. The 108 nonredundant ads used come from 30 magazines (15 from Fall 2005, 15 from Spring 2006) that Barnes & Noble categorized as featured magazines. APPENDIX A lists the magazines categorized by target audience.We note that Coastal Living and Playboy had no wireless ads; Glamour, Field and Stream, and Fortune each had one wireless ad but none of these ads contained portrayals of women; and The New Yorker contained three wireless ads, none of which featured women. Other magazines had many more.
Our analysis included classification and critical readings of the ads we gathered. We sorted the ads according to type of technology included in the ads and then as a direct [an ad promoting this technology] or indirect [an ad for another product that includes a wireless device] presentation. We presumed that the ads for wireless products are more likely to imagine new uses for wireless technologies and that ads for other products which include a wireless device are more likely to reflect thinking about the current uses of wireless products.
Because we are interested in the landscapes occurring in these ads, we then sorted the ads identifying their topographic settings [adventure/escape; recreation/entertainment; worklife; homelife; moving between] and the roles played by women [agent; watcher; object; helper; consumer]. If traditional roles held, we expected that women would be more likely to be agents in the home only.
Lest anyone assume advertisements for wireless devices dominate the pages of magazines, we begin by observing that wireless manufacturers are not the primary advertisers in any of the magazines we examined. Indeed, in our surveys of 30 magazines there were just over 100 ads depicting (or including) wireless technology. These ads were peopled by 158 men and 239 women, and the number differences might indicate that women are portrayed as objects [16] in these wireless technology ads as the general literature about women’s roles in advertising suggests would be the case. But, the only empirical study of computer advertising we could find (we admit Mary Ware and Mary Stuck completed in the 1980s) found men outnumbering women in computer advertisements by a margin of 2:1. So, it is possible that the change in the ratio of women in these wireless ads suggests more acceptance that women use technology. But we need to consider that perhaps all people have less status in wireless ads. People, both men and women, are more likely to be objects of our gaze in landscapes that advertise adventure or entertainment (297 of the 397 total, or 75%). Neither men nor women, it seems at first glance, are very likely to take a more powerful position than object in the presence of the wireless device.
Given the weight of opinion in the literature that women are exploited in advertising, it seems odd that men more often function as watchers (a person with no power to act, only to watch) in the ads than women do. Women fulfill roles they are predicted to play as they sometimes act as helpers (they’re not in charge, per se, but they are interacting with the tech on some level) and consumers. Oddly enough, because men do not consume or help others, their range of roles are more limited than the women in these ads, as they are objects, agents and watchers (in that order of frequency). We think it a promising sign that when people act as agents in these wireless ads women are as likely to be the agents as men are.
Several topographic observations can be made based on the wireless ads we examined. First, as can be expected, mobile phone ads dominate both the total numbers of ads and each landscape depicted in the ads; both the overall coverage of mobile phones in the U.S., and the feature wars currently being waged among the mobile phone/service carrier advertisers make this dominance understandable. Second, mobile phones are the wireless technology most normalized into the landscapes of society, as they account from more than half of the wireless products appearing in advertisements for other products. Third, wireless products are most likely to be advertised in the ambiguous landscapes of entertainment/recreation [17] and are much less likely to be featured as escape, as home life, or as on the move between landscapes.
One way that we might consider the types of boundaries wireless communication ads reflect is to consider how permeable they seem to be. As Christina Nippert-Eng contends in Home and Work, the permeability of the boundaries between home and work are can be tracked by assessing which everyday objects are used in both topographies and which are kept separate. In the case of these ads, we then need to consider to what extent wireless devices travel across the topographic boundaries of work, home, entertainment, escape, and the travel between. Some devices portray strict boundaries of use: PDAs and tablets are found almost exclusively in advertisements for work, for example, while mobile phones (which move fluidly across non-work landscapes) are almost never displayed in a work setting. Laptops are fairly permeable across work and home. Even though laptops almost always appear in advertisements set in an office, they fairly regularly appear in the home as well. Mobile phones, the most widespread communication device portrayed in these ads, moves across most landscapes fairly fluidly but rarely appears in offices; this fluid movement, except in relation to workplaces, is also displayed by MP3 players.
You might assume that mobile technologies—which affordances are developed to move across boundaries—would collapse the categories in the areas of communication, moving freely from home to office to vacation with ease. Why, then, are they not collapsing the boundaries?
There are practical answers related to functionality. Laptops are heavy, perhaps too heavy to drag along on the daily commute. And while it would be appropriate to bring a laptop or PDA into a business meeting at the office, bringing a mobile phone might potentially be perceived as disrespectful to colleagues. MP3 players can store word docs as well as MP3s, but who wants to pull out an iPod at the office? But there are more interesting answers to this question too. Regarding wireless communication devices at work, are we already socialized to prefer technology that is on-task ahead of technology that is perceived as entertainment-related. Particularly in the case of entertainment devices, while they may complete office functions adequately, other workers may frown.
Description of the ads by topographic setting
The topography most represented in the wireless world is entertainment/recreation (58 ads). It mostly appears in magazines geared towards the young, middle class, male, white consumer. Females inhabiting this topography are presented as objects almost twice as often as males (171), but males make a surprisingly strong showing (90). Slightly more male agents than female agents are presented (13 to 10). While there are no consumers or helpers, there are a handful of watchers: 10 males and 6 females.
Our next most visible topography, work life (23 ads), appears largely in magazines catering to the young/middle aged, well-to- do, male, white consumer. Given this demographic, the roles females and males assume are slightly surprising. Men (11) and women (14) frequenting this topography are mostly agents (with women slightly but notably outnumbering the men). They are also relatively evenly cast as objects (9 men, 8 women). Some more traditional expectations do bear out: Males (5) are out-watching the females (1), and females (3) are out-consuming the males (1). Females (2) sometimes help; males do not (0).
Ads featuring home life (11) usually find their way into magazines for young, middle class, white females. Men aren’t home for the most part, but when they are, they act as agents (1), consumers (1), watchers (1) and objects (1) in equal numbers. These ads are much more likely to show women at home as objects (9) or consumers (4). There are a handful of female agents (1) and helpers (1). There are no female watchers. Given the proliferation of females present at work, women have a very long work day in and out of the office.
Of the 11 ads focused on escape—primarily found in magazines for young, white, well-to-do males—males are objects (7) or agents (5). They’re not helpers, consumers or watchers. Females are predictably cast as objects (4), sometimes agents (2), infrequently helpers (1) and watchers (1), and never consumers (0). Our most infrequently represented topography, moving between (8), appears in magazines directed to well-to-do white males of all ages. Only 1 female consumer appears in this topography. She is surrounded by male objects (4) and agents (2).
