Food references and marketing in popular magazines for children and adolescents in New Zealand. A content analysis

Food marketing is recognized as an important factor influencing children's food preferences and consumption. The purpose of this study was to examine the nature and extent of unhealthy food marketing and non-branded food references in magazines targeted at and popular among children and adolescents 10–17 years in New Zealand. A content analysis was conducted of all food references (branded and non-branded) found in the five magazines with the highest readership among 10–17 year olds, and the three magazines (of which two were already included among the five most popular magazines) targeted to 10–17 year olds. For each of the six magazines one issue per month (n = 72 issues in total) over a one-year period (December 2012–January 2014) was included. All foods referenced were classified into healthy/unhealthy according to the food-based Ministry of Health classification system. Branded food references (30% of total) were more frequent for unhealthy (43%) compared to healthy (25%) foods. Magazines specifically targeted to children and adolescents contained a significantly higher proportion of unhealthy branded food references (72%, n = 51/71) compared to the most popular magazines among children and adolescents (42%, n = 133/317), of which most were targeted to women. ‘Snack items’ such as chocolates and ice creams were marketed most frequently (n = 104; 36%), while ‘vegetables and fruits’ were marketed the least frequently (n = 9; 3%). Direct advertisements accounted for 27% of branded food references and 25% of those featured health or nutrition claims. Both branded and non-branded food references were common within magazines targeted at and popular among children and adolescents, and skewed toward unhealthy foods. This raises concerns about the effectiveness of self-regulation in marketing and emphasizes that government regulations are needed in order to curb children's current potential high exposures to unhealthy food marketing. In addition, magazine editors could take socially responsible editorial positions in regard to healthy eating.

Shifts in media images of women appearance and social status from 1960 to 2010: a content analysis of beauty advertisements in two Australian magazines

Ageing well and successful ageing have become important themes to describe how older individuals should keep ageing at bay. Products and services aimed at controlling ageing have become associated with ageing well. In this study we aimed to analyse the representation of older women in advertisements specific to appearance and ageing. In particular, we sought to explore how ageing for women was presented in the media over a period 50 years and when advertisements began to use the term 'anti-ageing'. A content analysis of 710 advertisements from two prominent Australian women's magazines, from 1960 to 2010, was conducted. Analyses showed that advertisements provided a narrow range of images representing women's physical appearance. The underlying messages were that ageing is problematic and that it had become unforgivable to show any signs of ageing. Text contained in advertisements for beauty products from the two chosen Australian magazines often gave specific and prescriptive advice to women on ways to avoid losing their youthful appearance. It was concluded that media relay powerful messages to spread and modify cultural beliefs informing individuals of a range of options that propose liberation from the problem of ageing.

Being a girl in wartime: Canadian children's religious magazines during the First World War

During the First World War, Canadian children were inducted into certain patterns of behavior based on their symbolic value as the future of Canada and as contributors to the British empire. After the advent of the war, Protestant religious denominations in Canada began using their existing children's publications, such as The King's Own (1900-1925) and Pleasant Hours (1881-1929), to encourage child readers to see the war in ways that reinforced the necessity of duty and sacrifice far both boys and girls. Fiction and correspondence in these publications reflect the magazines' engagement with the war and their efforts to show girls how they could contribute to the war effort. As such, they represent an important intervention into how Canadian girlhood was constructed and refined during wartime. Although girls' fiction in these magazines often emphasises domestic responsibilities, it also offers opportunities to mobilise these domestic skills to support the war effort. Other content within the magazines also presented practical ideas that could be implemented at home and at school, suggesting that girls' participation in the war effort could be easily understood and implemented. Moreover, girls' participation in these wartime activities contributed simultaneously to both national and imperial enterprises. Thus these two magazines represented Canadian feminine ideals within an imperial framework. Importantly, however, the dominant frame far these girlhood ideals is explicitly national. They are primarily understood to be helping Canadians through their wartime work.

Genome sequencing: a grin without a cat

In some types of unicellular algae, the chloroplasts have their own nucleus — a legacy of the time when the chloroplast was a free-living cell. The sequence of the genome in one such nucleus is now revealed.

You can't say no to the Beauty and the Beast : Shrek and ideology

In 2002 the Australian Prime Minister John Howard announced that we are living in 'the post-feminist stage of the debate.' As Anne Summers documents in The End of Equality: Work, Babies and Women's Choices in Twenty-First Century Australia (2003), Howard cut funding for childcare, for the Office of the Status of Women, and for the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. He abolished the Register of Women in the Office of the Status of Women for government appointments, the Women's Statistical Unit in the Australian Bureau of Statistics, and the Women's Bureau in the Department of Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs. Special services for women, given the achievement of gender equality, were obviously no longer required.

Construction of gender in computer magazine advertisements : confronting the literature

Previous studies (Sofia, 1998; 2002; Turner & Hovenden, 1997; Weinstein, 1998) discussed the power relations surrounding the advertisements for computers in computing magazines, in particular deconstructing the imagery and text which manifested the dominant digital discourse of power (Millar, 1998). In these studies, the authors found that women were positioned as incapable and impotent users of computers.  The authors examined a number of New Zealand and Australian home computing magazines published in 2003 and 2004, looking for evidence of the gendered nature of technology or examples of any form which would constitute discrimination against women or other identity categories. The purpose of this research was to determine whether previous arguments were still relevant and current, or whether advertisements had changed to accommodate populist understandings of gender and cultural equity, or reflect improved power relations between the sexes. In this paper we have explored the findings of a study, which, although small in scale, raises larger questions concerning the 'new' ways in which issues of gender influence advertising focused on computers. Whilst there has been a significant reduction in overtly sexist texts, hegemonic understandings of masculinity and femininity nevertheless continue to structure mainstream advertisements with women routinely positioned in passive, non-expert or very limited kinds of roles. The extent to which this imagery reflects broader social patterns regarding the re-emergence of traditional portrayals of women and men in the media more generally will be the subject of future studies.

Connected but not online: a snapshot of generation Y in Australia

Much has been written in the United States about Generation Y and it adoption of, and attitudes towards, media and digital communication technologies.  But relatively little is known about this generation's attitudes to these things in Australia.  This paper provides a snapshot of media and technology use by year 2 and 3 public relations and journalism majors at Deakin University in Australia.  It is based on a survey conducted in March 2006 at the university's Waurn Ponds campus in Victoria.  Because of the nature of the sample, it should be noted that this is a snapshot of one group of students.  It is not possible to extrapolate these findings to other groups in other states or countries around the world.  That is the role of further research.  This survey does provide a revealing snapshot of one group of students at one place in time.  All of the students studied have a mobile phone and all have fast access to the Internet at university.  Almost all have access to the Internet at home (two thirds via broadband).  But they spend far less time on the Internet compared with their counterparts in the United States.  Almost all are avid consumers of broadcast news.  They prefer the print forms of books and magazines.  Yet they appear to be indifferent to the form of the newspaper they consume - print or online are equally acceptable.

The media and the development of the tourism industry during the 20th and 21st centuries: an analysis of four noteworthy cases

The aim of this paper was to explore the role of the media within the context of tourism, specifically with regard to how the media has influenced the activities and perceptions of the tourism sector. In this paper, the term ‘media’ is referred to as mass communication, specifically with regard to newspapers, magazines and broadcasting. It is important to gain a better understanding of the ways in which the media has interacted with the tourism sector, as this information can provide practitioners and academics with insights as to how the media can best be employed to benefit stakeholders of the tourism industry. Lessons can be learned from the past so that the experience gained from it can contribute to best practice in the future. In this way, strategies can be developed to minimise the vulnerability of the tourism sector to damaging or erroneous portrayals of it and its activities in the media.
The case study method was used to explore the role of the media within the context of tourism. Four case studies provided insights on this topic. The four case studies were selected based on their diversity, within the context of the tourism sector, and because they covered a considerable period of time. These variables provided the researchers with a wide-ranging perspective on the topic.
The paper firstly focuses on the 1920’s Waiters’ Strike in the resort town of San Sebastián, Spain, and discusses the role of the media in relation to this event. The second case investigates the use of the media as a destination-marketing tool and reflects on an early manipulation of this process by the German authorities in the documentary Olympia, a film produced for the summer Olympics in 1936. The third case study reports on the manner in which the media has created tensions between connoisseurs of fine food and drink and hospitality industry professionals, and its subsequent implications on service quality. The final case investigates the role of the media in reducing demand for hospitality services in Melbourne on New Year’s Eve 2000.
Through an analysis of these diverse, but important case studies, it can be seen that the media has had, and continues to have, an impact on the development of the tourism industry in both positive and negative ways. The limitations of this research are discussed and recommendations are made for further research that will assist in developing a more comprehensive typology of the media’s role in tourism.

New social orders: reconceptualising family and community in utopian fiction

A study focusing on family and community as they are represented in seven utopian/dystopian fictions written for children and young adults by Australian, American, Canadian, and British writers is illustrated. These novels depict reflections of how various notions of new social orders have impacted on children's literature and how this affects the utopian/dystopian strain, present in children's literature.

Editorial

In the way that submissions to journals sometimes observe a strange synchronicity, this issue commences with three essays focusing on film. Relatively little work has been carried out on the ideologies of films designed specifically for children or of that large body of films regarded as family viewing, and which cater both to child viewers and also to the adults who accompany them. The three ‘film’ essays we present here apply a variety of theoretical and methodological frames to films which in the main fit within the second of these categories—family films.

Editorial

When The Who sang about teenage angst in the 60s, their rock anthem ‘Talking about my Generation’ captured the divide between youth and beyond. Today, another divide – the digital divide – speaks to the issues of access, capital, and input that follow digital technologies. Like the earlier ‘me generation’, the new millennium D(igital) generation remains enigmatic, its members variously praised for their technological wizardry, criticised for their self-absorption, and pathologised for their unsociability. The D generation does not comprise youth alone, but the young are more exposed than others to the influence of new media and digital technologies. And like previous youth generations, they are often viewed as degenerate. A cybernetic degeneration symbolising society’s fears and cultural anxieties concerning the dehumanising prospects of technology appears most vividly in arguments about youth (Green & Bigum’s ‘aliens in the classroom’ [1993] is an apt description in this respect). Such negative rhetoric presents a dystopic view that tempers the more utopian, but equally reductionist visions of new technologies.

Editorial

This issue of Papers presents four essays canvassing a diverse range of theoretical and textual interests. Beverley Pennell’s ‘Ozzie Kids Flee the Garden of Delight: Reconfigurations of Childhood in Australian Children’s Fictions’ tracks shifts in how childhood is conceptualised in contemporary Australian fiction for children, using as focus texts Joanne Horniman’s Sand Monkeys and Odo Hirsch’s trilogy of ‘Hazel Green’ books. This essay argues that cultural discourses around children and childhood have shifted from an emphasis on adulthood and childhood as distinct and separate domains of experience, and from the idealisation of childhood as it manifested in Romantic textuality, to a blurring of boundaries between children and adults. In Australian texts, Pennell sees this shift as incorporating an increasing democratisation of power relations between adults and children, and an appreciation of the diversity of child populations. This essay invites comparative studies which explore the extent to which representations of childhood in Australian texts are similar to those evident in other national literatures for children.

Editorial

In this issue of Papers we farewell Gillian Adams from our Advisory Committee. Gillian has been a referee since 2001, and she has resigned
because she plans to concentrate on ancient and medieval literature for children and thus will not be able to maintain her practice of reading
contemporary material. We thank Gillian for her interest in Papers and for her insightful reviewing of essays submitted for publication, and we wish her well for her ventures into ancient and medieval material, on which she has already published several notable essays.