BAN Junk Food Advertisements!

[Source: Media.canada.com]

In a few recent articles on The Australian, the issue of banning junk food advertisements has been raised, especially by parents.

In an article titled "Parents want junk food ads banned", there are a vast majority of parents who support bans on these commercials to children, especially television advertisements (The Australian 2008 i).

In fact, they are so strongly against it that they also slammed the media watchdog for failing to restrict these sort of advertisements during children's' television time. (The Australian 2008 ii)

Walsh (2006) says that a picture could evoke possible scenarios and readers could respond to it differently. In this case, these junk food advertisements have evoked anger in their audience - mainly the parents. On the other hand, the target audience have a different respond to it. It creates a desire in them to want the advertised products.

Additionally, Schriver (1997) stressed that "document designers who misunderstands their audience and their frame of reference can create documents that evoke confusion, and in some cases even anger." Again, this statement is totally relevant to the above stated scenario.

References

The Australian 2008, Media watchdog attacked for not restricting junk food ads, viewed 9 November 2008, <http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,24254710-2702,00.html>

The Australian 2008, Parents want junk food ads banned, viewed 9 November 2008, <http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,23720989-27698,00.html>

Schriver, KA 1997, Dynamics in document design: creating texts for readers, Wiley Computer Publication, New York.

Walsh, M 2006, ‘The ‘textual shift’: Examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal text’, Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, vol. 29, no. 1, pp. 24-37.