Eriesha Artis
November 15, 2012
Research Methods

For my research proposal I will show how: food advertisers exploit children in ways in which negatively effects their eating habits. I choose to do this topic because according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, obesity now affects 17% of all children and adolescents in the United States - triple the rate from just one generation ago. I feel like a big part of that 17% is influenced by food advertisers. When dealing with advertising one isn’t worried about how their advertisements may affect others, they are only worried about the best way to get the best profit and if exploiting children will help get them that profit, they are ok with that. I say food advertisers exploit children because the word exploit means, to make productive use of or to make use of meanly or unfairly for one's own advantage, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary. Food advertisers unfairly make productive use to their own advantage. The theories I plan to use are framing and priming.
Framing is related to the agenda-setting theory but expands the research by focusing on the core of the issues at hand rather than on a particular topic. The origin of framing theory is that the media pays attention to certain events and then places them within a field of meaning. Framing is an important topic because it can have a big influence on the audience it reaches. According to The Art of Framing Fairhurst & Sarr (1996) “framing consists of three elements: language, thought and forethought. Language helps us to remember information and acts to transform the way in which we view situations. To use language, people must have thought and reflected on their own interpretive frameworks and those of others. Leaders must learn to frame spontaneously in certain circumstances. Being able to do so had to do with having the forethought to predict framing opportunities.” Priming is used to enhance the effects of the media by offering the audience a prior context, a context that will be used to interpret later communication. Priming tells us whether something is good or bad, depending on if it is communicated effectively.
I plan to give parents questionnaires and put them in focus groups. The questionnaires will have questions that basically ask them if they but name brand or store brand food for their child(ren)’s. They will also have questions about their child(ren)’s favorite children’s television station and favorite show. In focus group of different parents we will talk about some of the same things that were on the questionnaires, the only difference is I want them to bring their children but two at the maximum. In the focus group there will be store brand and name brand food (snacks) for the children, my main focus is to see which brand of food the children will pick up and how much of that food they plan to eat. To be fair I will also put out healthy foods, juice, soda and water. With the name brand food, I will get the food with cartoon characters on the boxes like Spongebob, Dora, Fairly Odd Parents, Scooby Doo and Looney Tunes. I will show a small 15 minute cartoon and then put on a food commercial of a snack that I have on the table, this will help prove my point of the exploitation of children.
This is a very important topic because food advertisers need to take into consideration the harm they are potentially having on children. If they choose to exploit children at least let it be in a more healthy way.