Advertising and pseudo-culture: An analysis of the changing portrayal of women in print advertisements

This study investigates the use of mass media, specifically advertising, in cultural transformation projects to weaken cultures and replace them with a crafted pseudo-culture. We rely on Adorno’s theory of pseudo-culture to examine how political ideologies shape cultural transformation using mass-mediated ad images. Following a content analysis and a semiotic analysis of print advertisements over a period of 48 years, we identify five major themes underlying pseudo-culture formation and the advertising strategies implemented to support these themes. This work also identifies four major tools used in pseudo-culture formation and demonstrates how pseudo-cultures may be formed, promoted, and abolished. The available download on this page is the author manuscript accepted for publication. This version has undergone full peer review but has not been through the copyediting, typesetting, pagination and proofreading process