Sunday, February 26, 2006

Would You Buy a New Car from this Frog?

Have you seen the ads featuring Kermit ("I Guess It Is Easy Being Green") the Frog promoting Ford's hybrid SUV the Escape? It made its debut as a 30-second TV commercial during the Super Bowl, and it's been tough to avoid ever since.

Just the other day, I ran into the ads three times (in three formats): while watching the Olympics on TV, turning the pages of the New Yorker magazine, and browsing Yahoo! News on the Web.

This is not the first time Kermit and his Muppet friends have been used in an advertising campaign. And it's hardly the first example of so-called "green advertising."

But it may be the first time a big "star" has been used to sell consumers on the environment-friendly features of as big-ticket an item as an automobile, let alone one as environmentally frowned upon on as an SUV.

Who is it aimed it? Will it work? How does it differ from other green advertising campaigns? How will consumers respond?

The following list shows some of the ways scholars have looked at green advertising during the last two decades. With Kermit now leading the charge, is it time for another look?

Banerjee, S., & Gulas, C. S. (1995). Shades of green: A multidimensional analysis of environmental advertising. Journal of Advertising, 24(2), 21.

Carlson, L., Grove, S. J., Laczniak, R. N., & Kangun, N. (1996). Does environmental advertising reflect integrated marketing communications?: An empirical investigation. Journal of Business Research, 37(3), 225-232. O’Neill Stacks HF5001 .J14

Iyer, E., & Banerjee, B. (1993). Anatomy of green advertising. Advances in Consumer Research, 20(1), 494-501.

Kilbourne, W. E. (2004). Sustainable communication and the dominant social paradigm: Can they be integrated? Marketing Theory, 4(3), 187-208.

Kilbourne, W. E. (1995). Green advertising: Salvation or oxymoron? Journal of Advertising, 24(2), 7.

Manrai, L. A., Manrai, A. K., Lascu, D., & Ryans, J. K. (1997). How green-claim strength and country disposition affect product evaluation and company image. Psychology & Marketing, 14(5), 511-537.

Nakajima, N. (2001). Green advertising and green public relations as integration propaganda. Bulletin of Science, Technology and Society, 21(5), 334-348.

Roberts, J. A. (1996). Green consumers in the 1990s: Profile and implications for advertising. Journal of Business Research, 36(3), 217-231. O’Neill Stacks HF5001 .J14

Stafford, M. R., Stafford, T. F., & Chowdhury, J. (1996). Predispositions toward green issues: The potential efficacy of advertising appeals. Journal of Current Issues & Research in Advertising, 18(1), 67.

Zinkhan, G. M., & Carlson, L. (1995). Green advertising and the reluctant consumer. Journal of Advertising, 24(2), 1.

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

New Communication Books at BC

The February edition of New Communication Books in the BC Libraries is now online.

This edition features 15 books added to the collection in recent weeks, including titles in such areas as: Communication Theory & Research; Law & Communication; Television & Radio; and others.

Follow the links on the New Books page to view the catalog records for each of these titles and see if they are available. Links to past editions of New Communication Books are at the bottom of the page.

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

E-Journals: New Issues This Week

New issues of the following journals are available online this week:

Click on a title to access the issue. (Login with your BC username and password is required for off-campus access.)

Friday, February 10, 2006

Islam and the Media: Selected Sources

Parody vs. provocation. Freedom of the press vs. religious sensitivities. The Western media vs. Islamic culture. Reaction to cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in a Danish newspaper has brought these issues to the fore, but they are not new. The following is a selection of books in the BC Libraries on the media and its role in tensions between Islam and the West.

For more on these and other books, see Islam, Arabs, the Middle East and the Media: A Review of Recent Journalism and Broadcast Publications, 1995-2002 in the Spring 2003 issue of Communication Booknotes Quarterly.

Islam and the West in the Mass Media: Fragmented Images in a Globalizing World
Edited by Kai Hafez. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2000. O'Neill Stacks P96.I84 I83 2000
"The so-called 'clash of civilizations,'" writes editor Hafez in the preface to this book, "often results from a lack of communication rather than from contradicting interests and values." Hafez and other contributing authors, from varied disciplines and perspectives, offer different strategies for "improving the information flow and news coverage between Islam and the West."

Reporting Islam: Media Representations of British Muslims
By Elizabeth Poole. London; New York:I.B. Tauris, 2002. O'Neill Stacks P96.I84 P66 2002
This three-part study includes: a quantitative analysis of daily coverage of Britain's Muslim population in two British broadsheets; a qualitative study of a single-year's coverage in two broadsheets and two tabloids; and a focus group-based analysis of audience reaction to news coverage. An additional study, added as the book was going to press, looks at coverage in the immediate aftermath of 9/11.

The Miseducation of the West: How Schools and Media Distort Our Understanding of the Islamic World
Edited by Joe L. Kincheloe and Shirley R. Steinberg. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2004. O'Neill Stacks LC1090.M49 2004
"After 9/11 and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq the ways images of Islam have been embedded in the Western and especially the American consciousness become extremely important to everyday life," writes co-editor Kincheloe in the introduction to this book. He and his co-authors look at the educational and media practices "that help construct these ways of seeing."

Islamic Peril: Media and Global Violence
By Karim H. Karim. Montreal ; New York : Black Rose Books, 2000. O'Neill Stacks P96.I84 K37 2000
Karim, a former journalist and a professor in the School of Journalism and Communication at Carleton University in Ottawa, looks at discourses in the media portraying Western and Muslim societies as irreconcilable enemies. The focus on Islamic extremists in the Western media, he writes, "is not a result of an active media conspiracy against Islam; it can be understood, rather, as the adherence --mostly unconscious -- of a narrow set of meanings."

Covering Islam : How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World
By Edward Said. New York : Pantheon Books, c1981. O'Neill Course Reserve BP52 .S24
Edward Said's 1981 book, along with his Orientalism and other works, provided a foundation from which much of the subsequent analysis of Islam as portayed in the Western media (and Western literature, academia, and other institutions) has taken off. Search Quest for "said, edward" for more by and about the late Palestinian-American author, commentator and professor of literature.

Thursday, February 02, 2006

End of an Era: The Last Western Union Telegram

Before text messaging, before e-mail, before faxes, before the telephone, the telegraph revolutionized the way people communicated with one another over long distances.

This mid-19th century innovation and the network it spawned made it possible for the first time for one person to send their words to another faster -- much faster -- than a physical message could be carried by horse, by boat, or by train.

The telegraph -- "The Victorian Internet" as it was called in a 1999 book of that title -- changed the way personal communication, business, journalism, and many other activities of modern society were conducted.

Telegrams are still in use, especially internationally, but as of last week the Western Union telegram -- practically synonymous with the medium for much of American history -- is no more.

In a quiet announcement on its Web site, the company noted that "Effective January 27, 2006, Western Union will discontinue all Telegram and Commercial Messaging services. We regret any inconvenience this may cause you, and we thank you for your loyal patronage."

As reported in an article on LiveScience.com , the usefulness of telegrams has been in a long decline, hastened since the 1980s by cheap long-distance telephone service, faxes, and, more recently, e-mail.

Western Union itself is not going away, reports LiveScience Managing Editor Robert Roy Britt. The company is refocused on money transfers and, in fact, was spun off by its parent company as a separate, publicly-traded firm -- on January 26th, the last day a Western Union telegram could be sent.

Wednesday, February 01, 2006

E-Journals: New Issues This Week

New issues of the following journals are available online this week:

Click on a title to access the issue. (Login with your BC username and password is required for off-campus access.)