Academic Centre
ASPRI leading researcher, UF FSS associate professor Marita Zitmane and Doctoral student of UL FSS Communication programme, ASPRI research assistant Elza Lāma have participated in ECREA 2022 9th European Communication Conference,ir Arrhus, Denmark (October 19-22) with individual reports.
Marita Zitmane participated in the section "Tools, Views, and Challenges in Crisis Management - Critical Reflections on Practice and Possibilities" with her paper "Advertising as a tool in the management of Covid-19 crisis".
Abstract:
In the spring of 2020, when Latvia faced the Covid-19 pandemic, the message “home, soap, 2 meters” (SPKC 2020) was repeated as a poem to the public, teaching the public how to behave in the new Covid-19 reality, what to do and not to do. In its concern for society, the state used advertising as a source of information about desired behaviour. Historically advertising has helped inform people, teach new skills, change public opinion, creating new traditions and habits. However, both responsible public authorities told and taught the public what the new reality was, the behaviour they wanted, and the commercial brands used Covid-19-influenced messages in their communication. One of the specific manifestations of advertising communication is social advertising campaigns, which provide the audience with messages about socially desirable behaviour for the benefit of society (Moriarty et all 2018). Unlike commercial advertising, in which the main beneficiary is the advertiser, the main beneficiary of social campaigns is the public. Social campaigns aim to influence and bring about behavioural change. Social campaigns are aimed at 1) adopting new behaviours, 2) rejecting potentially undesirable behaviour, 3) modifying current behaviour, or 4) refraining from already known undesirable behaviour (Lee & Kotler 2020). Areas of socially desirable behaviour vary widely, so social campaign strategies and approaches may differ, offering specific approaches based on the identified social sphere. In the case of the Covid-19 pandemic, socially desirable behaviour is inherent in health communication. The report looks at advertising messages in the early stages / first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, introducing society to the reality of the Covid-19 pandemic. The advertising communication messages of Latvian state health institutions, as well as the advertisements of Latvian companies, which reflected the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on our lives, have been chosen as the analysis material. The study uses case study analysis for the research of advertising campaigns by state institutions and commercial brands, as well as a method of narrative analysis for the analysis of advertising texts and visual messages. The presence of the media is inevitable in the experience of the crisis and living through the crisis. The Covid-19 pandemic was and is experiencing a strong media presence. Advertising communication was and is an important part of this experience. The crisis has highlighted the social function of advertising, which can serve as a tool for managing society. The study found that commercial brands played a crisis management role in the early stages of a pandemic by informing people about socially desirable behaviours, encouraging and supporting them in the early stages of a crisis, more strongly than communicating with public authorities.
References
Moriarty, S., Mitchell, N., Wood, C., Wells, W. (2018). Advertising & IMC. PRINCIPLES & PRACTICE. New York:
Pearson. Lee, N., Kotler, P. (2020). Social Marketing. Behavior Change for Social Good. Sixth Edition. London: SAGE
Publications SKPC (2020). Mājas. Ziepes. Divi metri. Youtube.com, 3. Apr. In: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDdwb-txS2c
Elza Lāma participated in the section "Mediatization and Social settings" with her paper "Mediatization of contemporary motherhood: exchanging support and normalizing experience on Twitter".
Abstract:
Social media has influenced almost any part of our everyday life, including motherhood, transforming and extending the experience to online platforms. Mothers in Western neoliberal societies turn to Facebook and Instagram, and other social media sites to narrate their story, gain advice, as well as to challenge or perform the role of an ‘ideal mother’, reproducing or defying the dominant discourse of ‘intensive mothering’ (Hays, 1996). As some researchers suggest that traditional media constructs news through a masculine prism, ignoring or rendering themes of interest to women un-newsworthy (North, 2016), social media may add a new dimension to the discourse of motherhood: a “safe space” (Archer & Kao, 2018), or even a “place of resistance” to redefine one’s mother-child relationship (Orton-Johnson, 2017). Social media provides a ‘break’, an ‘escape’ form the grips of rigid social norms, returning the voice to the woman and letting her lead her own narrative. Recent research of motherhood discourses and mothering practices in social media has mainly focused on the evidence of mediation and mediatization (Lee & Chen, 2018; Das, 2019), exploring, how mothers use Facebook and Instagram (Locatelli, 2017). However, limited attention has been brought to examining in depth how Twitter as a platform may be used as a “portable” community (Chayko, 2007), especially for new mothers. Therefore, this paper aims to study the mediatization of motherhood through a seemingly unlikely source for support – Twitter. Data has been gathered from 15 phenomenological interviews with mothers, who have identified themselves as Latvian-speaking “Twitter-mothers” and use Twitter to share their experience, engage in conversations, and exchange emotional support regularly. This paper provides an in-depth analysis into the motivation for using an asymmetric social media platform for constructing individual narratives and portraying the reality of motherhood, as well as gaining valuable information and advice, emotional support and even “offline” or physical support, bearing evidence how the mediatization of motherhood may favour contemporary mothers.
References
Archer, C., & Kao, K. (2018). Mother, Baby and Facebook Makes Three: Does Social Media Provide Social Support for New Mothers? Media International Australia, 168(1), 122–139. doi:10.1177/1329878X18783016
Chayko, M. (2007). The Portable Community: Envisioning and Examining Mobile Social Connectedness. International Journal of Web Based Communities, 3(4), 373–385.
Das, R. (2019). The Mediation of Childbirth: ‘Joyful’ Birthing and Strategies of Silencing on a Facebook Discussion Group. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 22(5–6), 495–510. doi:10.1177/1367549417722094
Hays, S. (1996). The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Lee, Y.-J., & Chen, H. (2018). Empowerment or Alienation: Chinese and Korean Immigrant Mothers’ Perception of Mobile Media in Constructing their Social Role and Facilitating Parenting Practices in the US. Mobile Media & Communication, 6(3), 390–406. doi:10.1177/2050157918763981
Locatelli, E. (2017). Images of Breastfeeding on Instagram: Self-Representation, Publicness, and Privacy Management. Social Media + Society, 3(2). doi:10.1177/2056305117707190
North, L. (2016). Still a ‘Blokes Club’: The Motherhood Dilemma in Journalism. Journalism, 17(3), 215–330. doi:10.1177/1464884914560306
Orton-Johnson, K. (2017). Mummy Blogs and Representations of Motherhood: “Bad Mummies” and Their Readers. Social Media + Society, 3(2), 1–10. doi:10.1177/2056305117707186
