In earlier posts, we’ve highlighted instances in which contradictions in U.S. culture become glaringly clear. In one, suggestive advertising accompanies an article critiquing a video game in which the player rapes a woman. In another, CNN asks whether Jon and Kate Gosselin are getting too much media coverage, and then tempts you to read more media coverage about Jon and Kate Gosselin. In a third, neighbor billboards carry hilariously contradictory messages.
I found another example that left me shaking my head. Via Racialicious, I found myself reading a Time magazine article reporting on recent research that shows that, even when black and whites are portrayed as equal on television, viewers come away with subconscious anti-black bias that actually translates into bias in real life. The findings are pretty dismal.
Two paragraphs into the article, there was a promotional link… for television (see the bolded, red parenthetical sentence):
So, yeah, television is likely inculcating you with racist views; “the transmission of race bias appears to occur subconsciously, unbeknownst to the viewer”… but don’t let that stop you from enjoying awesome TV!
The second promotional link, halfway through the article, was just salt in the wound:
And, of course, they couldn’t let your thoughts linger on social justice issues when there are great TV series out there to see!
The final paragraphs:
Maybe they are hoping that we’ll watch the top 10 TV ads and episodes more critically?
These promotional inserts may very well be automatically generated, but the article is dated Dec. 17th, so clearly no one at Time has been alerted to, or cares about, the possibility that they may trivialize the message of the article, or even draw people away from it as early as two paragraphs in. What Timewants is for you to waste as much time on their website as possible. Apparently any ideological commitment to fighting racism is secondary at best.
Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
Comments 10
maus — December 31, 2009
What a crock, television isn't designed to be digested "actively and astutely". The solution to stereotype-reinforcing television is to STOP WATCHING once you are cognizant and conscious, not to continue supporting their advertisements and rewarding crap programming.
Jeffrey — December 31, 2009
I work in media and the only idea behind those links is to bait people for more clicks. Page views reign supreme and those types of list are great because they generate multiple clicks (people looking at all 10 pages).
So there is a strong chance that the writer had no control over the decision behind the links. I read Time on-line alot and see these links frequently.
That being said, it does undermine the message of the article and I don;t think Time really cares.
Andrew — December 31, 2009
Well...maybe I'm old-fashioned, but it seems to me that ANY promotional link threaded through a serious article trivializes it and degrades the whole experience.
But this example isn't actually contradictory like the others, since the article doesn't advise swearing off TV or even call out specific shows that might happen to also appear in that "top 10." And since it's other Time Magzine content that's being promoted, the message is not "watch more TV!" so much as "read more fluffy articles about TV!"
Appropriately enough, the practice of interrupting articles with ads feels just like watching TV anyway.
AR — December 31, 2009
A lot of what you call "contradictions" in "US culture" are really just examples of how "US culture" as such does not actually exist, but is an abstraction for hundreds of millions of individuals who vary in many different ways. Naturally, not all of these people are going to be on the same page about everything.
In any case, automatic ad generation is going to have amusing results. Whenever this sort of thing comes up, I am reminded of this example.
ACLS — December 31, 2009
Time's website is one of the worst I've come across in terms of that kind of click begging. The links are clearly procedurally generated and frequently undermine the article at hand. I've also noticed they use some kind of javascript to automatically append a "Read more at [URL]!" to your clipboard whenever you copy text. Time's website is sufficiently obnoxious that I've become inclined not to read their articles at all anymore.
Noelley B — January 5, 2010
I think it's important to remember that most ads like that are automated, and the software just looks for matching keywords. Time probably didn't even look at the links on that article.
Roy Rhodes — January 5, 2010
Honestly, I think we're being trained to read these articles with a kind of reflex judgment that alerts us to the difference between content and ad content. Little changes like odd space breaks, font differences, etc. cause me to skip over these kinds of ads without paying much attention to them, leaving the integrity of the content unchanged. That's just my experience, and it would be worthwhile to have actual studies done on the way peoples' ability to recognize advertising vs. content.
All that to say, the incongruity doesn't really bother me.
jenni t — January 6, 2010
i am sad to see that at Sociological Images you apparently have no clue how media and big websites are made in practise, and then make it a big number. kind of like pointing out the awkward ad-combinations of starving children and McDonald's or something that u sometimes see, its just coincidences that seem funny or sad even, but coincidences without meaning nevertheless. and possibly such that can be hard or impossible to avoid without surreal manhours put into it, which then again doesnt make sense.
those links are automatically generated and its not as simple as 'clickety click' to remove them either (probably, as this type of pages typically have a basic construction and the article is just fed there through a feed or some content management system). it might be possible to remove them or change them, yes, but it is going to take perhaps 15 minutes of someones time or more, and for an editor thats a lot. nobody is being hurt here, so its not priority #1 to make this page 'perfect', its just rather amusing i think.
in the end i'd say its at least good they published the article rather than not just because the 'ads' make it odd. i think the links actually in a way just underline the message, rather than take away from it. for these mediahouses and sites to manage, they need clicks to get the advertisers, so they put these links to get those clicks.
its unfortunately very rare these days to just get great meaningful content for free and no ads or annoying links or whatever.