Abstract
This article analyzes how producers of advertising construct children as an advertising audience. Previous research has argued that marketers are bound to present children as competent and savvy to legitimize their own practices. Drawing on interviews with Swedish producers of child-directed online advertising, this study shows that marketers are not destined to portray children as competent as the idea of the vulnerable and incompetent child was an important construction among the Swedish producers. The Swedish producers constructed a multifaceted and ambivalent image of children, mixing the idea of the vulnerable and dependent child with the idea of the competent child. This study contributes to the wider understanding of media producers’ constructed audiences, particularly regarding how culture and media regulation shape the notion of the child audience among producers.
Keywords
Advertising directed at children is often seen as morally questionable. Critics argue that children are vulnerable and susceptible to the influence of advertising and marketing, and therefore in need of protection (Livingstone 2009b). Buckingham (2007, 2011, 19, 85) and Cook (2000, 502; 2007, 42; 2011) maintain that marketers who promote to children need to address this morally charged context. Marketers legitimize their practices by constructing children as competent, savvy, and independent consumers who are skeptical to the claims of advertisers and not easily influenced by advertising (Buckingham 2007, 2011; Cook 2000, 2007, 2011). Cook (2011, 258) states that constructing children as competent makes “marketing to children not only morally palatable but, in some cases, akin to a civic duty.” This polarization between critics and proponents from the industry in their descriptions of children as vulnerable versus competent has also been identified in debates about advertising to children in the United Kingdom (O’Sullivan 2007). Similarly, Serazio (2015) analyzes how marketers construct U.S. teens and young adults as “digital natives.”
According to these studies on how marketing professionals construct children, there seems to be some form of “marketers’ logic” regarding how children are described as competent and savvy. Buckingham states that “marketers are bound to present children in this way, in order to deflect accusations that they are merely exploiting them” (Buckingham 2011, 21), and that “marketers are bound to argue that advertising has very little effect” (Buckingham 2007, 17). However, these studies are primarily made within a British and American context, using mainly published trade materials and marketing literature.
Sweden constitutes a somewhat different case when it comes to children and advertising, due to the ban on television advertising directed to children under the age of twelve years (see Jarlbro 2001, 71). The Swedish law is often presented as an extreme case and has been described as “[t]he political incarnation of the innocent child” (O’Sullivan 2005, 373). However, in contrast to this, child-directed Internet advertising has not been prohibited in Swedish law. The Internet has, consequently, opened up new arenas for marketers to target children. In 2014, almost eleven billion crowns were invested in Internet- and mobile advertising in Sweden (Institute for Advertising and Media Statistics [IRM] 2014). However, how much of this advertising was “child-directed” is not known, and these numbers do not include newer forms of advertising, such as “advergames,” as these are commonly placed on corporate websites and are not “paid” advertising in the traditional sense.
Swedish children spend much of their leisure time on the Internet. In the EU Kids Online survey, from 2010 it was found that Swedish nine- to sixteen-year-olds’ daily Internet usage was around two hours (von Feilitzen et al. 2011, 10). This was high compared with the average among European children, which was around one and a half hours each day (von Feilitzen et al. 2011). In 2014, the time Swedish children spent on the Internet had increased and the daily usage among nine- to fourteen-year-olds was two hours and thirty-four minutes (Nordicom 2015, 125). It is difficult to estimate how much advertising children are exposed to online. Thirty-eight percent of nine- to fourteen-year-olds report having seen advertising on an average day while using social media and watching video clips (Nordicom 2015, 105). However, advertising in other popular online spaces, such as digital games, is not included in these numbers.
Drawing on interviews with Swedish producers engaged in producing child-directed online advertising, the present article questions the supposed marketers’ logic presented in previous research and contributes to the understanding of how marketers construct children as an audience across different cultural contexts. On a more general level, this study also contributes to media studies of producers’ constructed audiences, which primarily have focused on adults. Few studies deal with media producers’ ideas and expectations about the child audience (Buckingham 2008, 225; Lemish 2013, 2). Existing studies on child audience constructions have largely centered on producers of entertainment and news programs (e.g., Buckingham et al. 1999; Lemish 2010; Matthews 2008; Seiter and Mayer 2004), while producers of advertising have received little attention in previous research.
To theorize and contextualize the advertising producers’ audience constructions, the following section engages in a deeper discussion on the construction of children as media audiences in media production, public discourse, and academia, and how these constructions connect with wider cultural assumptions about children and childhood.
The Constructed Child Audience
“Children” and “childhood” are socially constructed categories that have different meanings in different cultural, social, and historical contexts (Bond 2014, 11). Views of children as media audiences are intimately linked to broader conceptions of children and childhood, especially the images of the “vulnerable” versus the “competent” child (Livingstone and Drotner 2008, 9). Likewise, the notion of “the audience” is a social construction, shaped by the historical, societal, and institutional contexts in which it emerges, and the various interests and agendas involved (Ang 1991, 2; Hartley 1989, 227). Media audiences are understood and described in multifaceted ways in the public debate, in academic research, and in the media industries (Butsch 2008; Hartley 1989, 227). While “audiences” in general are commonly subject to moralizing and concern (McQuail 1997, 21), there are particular audience subgroups that are more often than others framed within a moral context. “Moral panics” or “media panics” are more often about subordinate groups, such as children and the working class (Butsch 2008, 118; S. Cohen 2002).
Production studies scholars commonly emphasize that “audiences” among professionals in the media industries are socially constructed (Turow and Draper 2014, 644; Zafirau 2009, 190), and thus speak of the audience as a useful fiction (McRobbie 1998, 152), an invisible fiction (Hartley 1989, 227), an imagined audience (Caldwell 2008, 223), and a constructed audience (Havens and Lotz 2012, 114; Turow 1982, 97). As stressed above, few studies analyze how media producers construct the child audience. However, one important theoretical contribution is made by Buckingham et al. (1999) which identifies four discourses surrounding the child audience among British television producers: the protectionist discourse of the vulnerable child, the child-centered discourse, the child as an active and powerful consumer, and children as citizens. Among these discourses, the idea of the active consumer was particularly important among the producers, whereas the idea of the vulnerable child was less prevalent. What all the producers agreed on was that the child audience “has special characteristics which distinguish it from adult audiences” (Buckingham et al. 1999, 148). Lemish’s (2010, 107) study on television producers from around the world also identifies these four discourses and similarly stresses the dominance of the discourse “children as active media consumers.”
Although the idea of the vulnerable child seems less prevalent in the media industries, this image has a dominant position in the public debate and academic research (Buckingham 2000, 105). Children are commonly regarded as a “special audience” that is in need of special attention and protection (James Potter 2013, 64–65). Children are considered more vulnerable and susceptible to negative media effects, mainly media violence and advertising (Messenger Davies 2010, 75), due to their presumed immaturity and lack of experience (James Potter 2013, 64–65). Children are predominantly defined in terms of what they cannot do (Buckingham 2000, 13–14, 109; Gauntlett 1998, 122). The idea of children as a vulnerable special audience connects with the idea of childhood as a protected space, separated from the adult world (Hartas 2008, 3), and accentuates the age-based power hierarchy between children and adults (James et al. 1998, 4). Children are chiefly looked upon as dependent and incomplete “human becomings,” which is in contrast to the supposed complete and independent adult “human being” (Lee 2001, 5). In this view, the adult serves as a “standard adult” through which children are interpreted and compared (Lee 2001, 8–9), and through which children’s perceived incompetence is determined (Wenzer 2004, 323).
The idea of the competent child audience and consumer has had less prominence in the public debate. However, the “competent child audience” is also present in media and childhood studies (Livingstone and Drotner 2008, 9), something that Buckingham (2007, 17) describes as an unexpected political alliance between marketers and academic researchers. Children are here seen as beings and social actors in their own right, although recent childhood studies present a more complex understanding of children, as well as adults, as both “being” and “becoming” (Sparrman and Sandin 2012, 9–14). With the advent of the Internet, the idea of the competent child has gained some strength in public discourse. Discussing the view of children as Internet users, Livingstone (2009a, 181) proposes, “[Children] are widely heralded as ‘the digital’ or ‘internet generation,’ supposedly natural ‘experts’ in using the internet and so, for once, a source of wisdom rather than innocence or ignorance.”
The construction of children as competent and savvy media users is part of the wider cultural idea about “the competent child,” an image that is considered particularly strong in the Nordic countries (Brembeck et al. 2004, 7). In a discussion on the Swedish conception of the child in the postwar welfare state, Sandin (2012, 128) proposes that children are viewed as competent and independent agents, and that this view of childhood “is based on similarities with adults, not differences” (Sandin 2012, 130).
Brembeck et al. (2004, 21) argue that the constructions of children as “competent” and “vulnerable” represent two opposing ends on a continuum—something that highlights the ambivalent view adult society has of children (Livingstone 2009a, 8). Both constructions are in different ways present in the Swedish society, where the ban on child-directed television advertising reflects the idea of the vulnerable child. The Swedish ban was established at the beginning of the 1990s after the introduction of commercial television channels in the 1980s had sparked concern regarding the effects of television advertising on children (Schultz Jørgensen 1992, 13–14). The law was motivated with reference to young children’s lack of critical thinking, and that children have difficulty understanding the commercial intent of advertising (Swedish Parliament 2015, 121). In addition to this, the law was also motivated with regard to television as a particularly powerful medium (Swedish Parliament 2015). The Swedish law only applies to television channels broadcasting from Sweden, as the European Court of Justice “has determined that channels shall be subject to the law of the country from which they transmit” (Jarlbro 2001, 71).
Method
To study advertising producers’ constructions of the child audience, this article draws on interviews with eighteen Swedish advertising agency practitioners and marketers in advertising corporations conducted in 2013. The empirical data comprise thirteen individual interviews, one group interview with two participants, and three e-mail interviews. Among the participants there were seven women and eleven men, and they worked for both national- and multinational corporations. The participants were selected based on their engagement in producing banner advertising on websites popular among children, and branded entertainment on corporate websites, such as “advergames.” These advertisements promoted child-relevant products such as toys, ice cream, and candy, and children’s media. Thus, the selection criteria were based on media placement, product relevance, and appeal to children, all of which are established categories for identifying “child-directed” advertising (cf. Sandberg 2011, 226–27).
Before the interviews, the participants were informed about the study and ensured anonymity. The face-to-face interviews were semistructured and lasted between forty-five minutes and one and a half hours, and took place in meeting rooms at their workplace, or in cafés. The researcher initially defined the concept of “children” as denoting children up to the age of twelve years, to focus the discussion on younger audiences. The first part of the interview centered on their advertising practices, such as the advertisement’s aim and target group, and these questions often led to spontaneous descriptions of children. To elicit more discussions about children, the interview then focused on questions that were more specifically related to children as an advertising audience, such as their views on how advertising affects children, and whether or not they believe that children can differentiate between advertising and other media content.
The audio-recorded interviews were transcribed verbatim, and the transcripts and the e-mail interviews were analyzed using Jonathan Potter and Wetherell’s (1987, 167–69) method of discourse analysis. This discourse analytical approach understands speech as action-oriented and as having particular functions within social interaction; speech is used to construct specific versions of reality to achieve certain goals, such as self-representation and justification. As specific versions of reality are constructed to fulfill certain goals in particular contexts, Jonathan Potter and Wetherell argue that one can expect variability in discourse, rather than consistency. The interview transcripts were initially analyzed for patterns, regarding both the variability, that is, differences between accounts, and the similarities between accounts (Jonathan Potter and Wetherell 1987, 168). The analysis focused on identifying descriptions of children in relation to advertising and concentrated specifically on identifying categorizations that could be interpreted as part of “the vulnerable” and “the competent” child audience. For instance, depictions of children as easily influenced and as lacking the capabilities to cope with advertising were seen as part of the idea of “the vulnerable child audience.”
After identifying the various constructions of children, the analysis focused on how to understand the functions of these constructs. In analyzing functions of discursive constructions, such as self-representational goals, Jonathan Potter and Wetherell (1987, 33) stress the importance of context. In line with this approach, the present article departs from the assumption that the wider cultural context, as part of the more local context of the interview situation, has implications for the ways in which the producers construct the child audience.
Constructions of Children as an Advertising Audience
The Swedish advertising producers constructed a multifaceted and ambivalent image of the child audience, which contrasts to the clear division between marketers and critics put forward in previous studies. The results section initially focuses on how some producers constructed children as “vulnerable and incompetent” and also combined images of the “competent” child. Thereafter, the section focuses on how other producers constructed children as “dependent” consumers but “competent” advertising audiences.
The “Vulnerable and Incompetent” Child Audience
Several of the interview respondents adopted a critical stance toward child-directed advertising based on moral grounds and tried to avoid the identity “producers of child-directed advertising” by, for instance, claiming that their advertisements were directed at parents and the family, or that they did not “usually” advertise to children. These producers tended to construct children as easily influenced and as an incompetent advertising audience regarding their ability to identify and understand the intent of advertising. These constructions are central to the idea of the vulnerable child audience (James Potter 2013, 64–65), and these producers, consequently, argued in accordance with how critics commonly discuss advertising to children. This way of constructing children as an advertising audience can be understood as a way for the producers to represent themselves as morally responsible marketers, by positioning themselves within the public view on children and advertising.
In the following quote, which is characteristic for this line of reasoning, one account manager stressed that children interpret advertising as information, thus lacking the ability to identify and understand the persuasive intent of advertising, and are therefore more easily influenced than adults: “Children believe what one says, they take it [advertising] as information, I think. They are more easily influenced than adults, of course.” When discussing children’s lack of advertising competencies, the producers described children as “uncritical,” “unfiltered,” and as having difficulties in “distinguishing between messages.” One art director stated when talking about why he “normally” did not produce advertising to children: “They are totally unfiltered and take everything in. It feels like hitting below the belt.” The ability to filter and select information is considered a basic function of the human mind (R. A. Cohen 2014, 19). The idea that children “take everything in,” as expressed by the producer, positions children as not yet cognitively rational, as human becomings (Lee 2001, 5). Most producers spoke generally about the categories of “children” and “adults” in this way. However, some producers described children as developing beings that gradually gain the ability to identify and understand the intent of advertising, and that children have probably acquired this competence at ten to twelve years of age.
In line with critics of advertising to children, the producers stated that advertising has strong and negative effects on children’s mental and physical health. Advertising was said to create mainly exaggerated material needs and wants, as well as negative social values, stress, and discomfort, and lead to the consumption of unhealthy food, all of which are often criticized effects of advertising (Messenger Davies 2010, 61). When discussing the negative effects of advertising, the producers did not refer to their own practices but spoke about advertising in general, or made reference to advertising on television, something which indicates a medium specificity when it comes to the construction of the “vulnerable” child media audience. One brand manager said, “Children are obviously affected by advertising that comes before or after children’s programs. The child wants to buy that toy or those unhealthy cereals.”
Children’s nagging on their parents, the so-called “pester power” (Buckingham 2011, 152), was commonly emphasized as a negative consequence of advertising. When explaining why, according to the respondent, the corporation does not advertise to children, one digital manager said, “All parents know what it is like when children nag about something, and most parents don’t like it and the same goes for us.” By repeating “I want” three times, the producer evoked the repetitive and annoying aspect of children’s nagging: “I think it [advertising] can have the effect of ‘I want, I want, I want.’” Children’s “pester power” was depicted as something parents must be protected from by not targeting children with advertising. This connects with the idea of the “willful” and “evil” child who threatens the order of adult society, and who therefore needs to be tamed (James et al. 1998, 10; see also O’Sullivan 2005, 374).
Children were constructed as a special audience that was contrasted to adults, something that also links to the idea of children as vulnerable. The focus lies on what children cannot do (Buckingham 2000, 13–14, 109; Gauntlett 1998, 122), as expressed in the following quote where one account manager explained why she considers advertising to children problematic:
I think it is . . . I mean all brand communication can involve less serious companies, or brands that seek to portray themselves as serious. Grown-ups know that, but children don’t, that you say you are something, but you are something else.
In the quote, the producer generalizes children when emphasizing their lack of critical understanding. At the same time, the producer stresses the critical competencies of adults. Children were also constructed as different from adults in regard to dealing with advertising effects. One digital manager said comparing children and adults: “Wants are created there as well, but we can resist it. We don’t usually nag our partners ‘give me this, give me this, give me this.’” Adults were constructed as having the competence to handle the effects of advertising, and to sort and filter messages. One account director also criticized child-directed advertising by contrasting adult rationality with child irrationality:
When you are an adult, when you are a human being that can think rationally, you can openly say [in advertising] what you want . . . children are not there yet, and cannot make independent and rational, long- and short-term decisions.
The idea of children as a special audience also links to the idea of childhood as a special phase in life that should be separated from adult society (Hartas 2008, 3). Producers said that children need a “free zone” and that they therefore should be left alone by advertisers. Advertising makes children come into contact with the commercial world prematurely, as stated by an art director:
The biggest risk is that they [children] get stressed, and that they enter consumer society too early. It’s like letting them go fifth grade when they go first grade. It’s like racing ahead when you show them the economic system too early.
Advertising as the hallmark of consumer society is here depicted as a danger to children, with its negative impact on children’s well-being. Behind this line of thought, we can discern a view of children as innocent and vulnerable to the commercial world, which should be held separate from childhood and introduced gradually.
From “Vulnerable” to “Competent”
The same producers who positioned themselves as critics and constructed children as vulnerable and incompetent also, at particular occasions during the interviews, used images of the competent and less vulnerable child. Children were portrayed as less affected and more competent in relation to the producers’ own advertising practices and when they spoke about their own children. This variability can be understood as having specific functions for the respondents, that is, to legitimize their own practices, and to portray themselves and their children in a favorable light.
When constructing children as vulnerable and incompetent, the producers spoke about advertising in general, or made reference to television advertising, as discussed above. However, later in the interviews, when asked about the effects of their own advertisements, the producers particularized their own practices (Billig 1984) and stated that their own adverts probably had very little effect on children, had a positive effect, or simply stated that they did not have any idea about the potential effects. One art director said, “I believe that it [the advergame] passed by very quickly. It was like a mayfly, like a Popsicle, a ‘good bye, next,’ that you don’t even remember the taste of, so, no, there were no major effects I believe.” This contrasts to how this person spoke about advertising in general: “The effects [of advertising] can stress them [children] out. The most important risk is that they get stressed, and that they enter consumer society too early.”
These ambivalent images of the child audience were only constructed by respondents engaged in producing branded entertainment, while producers of banner advertising were more straightforward about the effects of their adverts on children. To depict branded entertainment, particularly “advergames,” as having little effect on children contrasts with research showing that children are affected by these advertising formats due to the integration of persuasive messages in entertaining and engaging contexts (van Reijmersdal et al. 2012). This way of reasoning among the producers can also be understood as a variant of the third-person effect which implies that individuals commonly, for self-enhancing purposes, claim that media messages have a stronger impact on other people than themselves (Perloff 1999). To argue that their own advertisements had less effect than advertising in general can, in a similar vein, be conceptualized as “a producer version” of the third-person effect, used to downplay the problematic aspects of their own work.
Some of the critical producers stated initially in the interviews that children are uncritical and unable to distinguish between different sorts of information. In contrast to this, later in the interviews, the producers stated that they believe children have an advanced advertising literacy and that they are able to identify and understand the aim of advertising, and in this context the producers made reference to their own children. One marketing manager, when asked why he believes that child-directed advertising is immoral, responded, “Because they cannot critically evaluate it, put it in a context. Many times they take information uncritically.” Later in the interview when asked if he believes that children can understand the purpose of advertising, the very same producer said,
It depends on what age. But I know for sure, I have a four-year-old and a seven-year-old and my seven-year-old knows absolutely what it’s about, that this is something that you should buy. And the four-year-old, yes, he understands what it is.
In this quote, the producer stresses the competence of his own children, and that they are able to understand the intent of advertising at a rather young age. One creative director also said,
I have been to my son’s class and talked about how advertising works to lure people, and they had the opportunity to draw their own adverts where they should sell candy to children . . . my children know a lot.
Consequently, by stressing the competence of their own children and the incompetence of children in general, the producers in these instances also engaged in particularization (Billig 1984). Previous research has also shown how media producers draw on experiences from their own everyday lives to understand their audiences (O’Boyle 2009; Ross 2014, 162; Zafirau 2009), and O’Boyle (2009, 573) argues that this “can leave practitioners with a very blinkered understanding of consumers.” The tendency to use their own experiences during the interviews can also be a sign of a lack of knowledge regarding children’s advertising literacy. Several of the respondents were explicit about their lack of awareness concerning children’s advertising literacy and how advertising affects children, and stated that they had not thought about it before. When asked about the effects of advertising on children, one producer said, “I don’t know [laughter]. I don’t think much about it. I don’t know.” Previous production research has, similarly, shown that producers feel detached from an audience they do not seem to know (cf. Zafirau 2009).
The “Competent and Dependent” Child Audience
In contrast to producers who were critical of child-directed advertising for mainly moral reasons, other producers distanced themselves from child-directed advertising based largely on strategic grounds and argued that they, for instance, advertise to parents, or parents and children. These producers mostly constructed children as dependent consumers, but competent advertising audiences, thus combining the idea of the vulnerable and dependent child with the idea of the competent child. As dependent consumers, children were said to be dependent on their parents and constructed as not having money of their own to spend, nor making purchase decisions. Children’s “pester power” was considered their only means of power, and children were consequently described as solely an “influence market.” This contrasts to the assumption that marketers in general view children not only as an influence market but also as having a substantial amount of their own money to spend, that is, a “primary market” (Valkenburg 2004, 83–84). One creative director stated that the advergame he was involved in producing was aimed at both children and parents:
It is advertising directed at children and parents. It’s not very smart to produce advertising directed at children, as it is not children that make the purchase. So if you have a commercial goal with your communication, you have to think that it is the parents that control the wallet. Even if the children say: “Please, can’t we buy this?” If it is a communication that you don’t like, and you think: “Oh, hell, they’re taking advantage of my children here,” then you won’t buy it.
As shown in the quote, children are constructed as part of the “family audience.” Parents are described as critically reflecting on the fairness of the commercial message, and that their approval or disapproval regarding the ways in which their child is addressed has direct consequences for the decision to purchase or not. This tendency, to place children within a family audience, can also be seen as a strategy to avoid the problematic identity “producer of child-directed advertising.” The producers, consequently, considered it legitimate to say that they direct advertising to the family, but not to children alone.
Positioning children as dependent, these producers were not critical of child-directed advertising based on the argument that children are more vulnerable as audiences, but instead portrayed children as a competent advertising audience. One advertising agency CEO said,
I think that children, of course they have different perspectives and experiences, but children are extremely skilled when it comes to understanding what advertising is, they are very aware, that is my experience. Children can see through and understand much more than adults think.
In the quote, children are constructed as a competent advertising audience, and in contrast to the above-mentioned ideas of the “unfiltered” and “uncritical” child, children are here described as having the ability to “see through and understand.” Most producers spoke generally about the category of children; however, the same producer quoted above assumed that children’s ability to understand the intent of advertising develops at an early age, when children are able to read and distinguish between text and images.
Among the producers that constructed children as a competent audience, there also existed the idea that children today, due to the Internet, are more competent, as expressed in the following quote:
I actually experience that today, with the Internet . . . children learn much quicker than I did as a child . . . there are studies saying that children have the competence to handle more messages faster than we could. (Advertising agency CEO)
It was also put forward that children’s advertising literacy was improving with new media, as stated by one creative director:
Even if a child psychologist would make a study on this, to see when they can decode it [advertising] properly, I think that after some years this age will be lower . . . just see how they use an iPad.
In the quote, we can see how children’s abilities to master digital technology are assumed to go hand in hand with the development of critical skills. This connects with the idea of the competent child Internet user (Livingstone 2009a, 181), and is in line with Serazio (2015), who analyzes how marketers construct teenagers and young adults as “digital natives.”
While the critical advertising producers stressed the negative effects of advertising on children, these producers downplayed the effects of advertising and focused instead on positive effects. Other factors than advertising were proposed as influencing children, such as family, friends, and celebrities. The argument that other factors than advertising play a greater role is a common argument within the industry to downplay the effects of advertising (Jarlbro 2001, 89). Children’s “pester power” was looked upon from a marketer’s perspective and depicted as something positive and desirable: “Advertising is information, we inform that the product exists . . . I think that it is fantastic [emphasis] if they [children] come and say ‘Mummy, I want this’” (advertising agency CEO). Here, the child is not described as an “evil” child who disturbs the parent, but someone who politely asks for a new product. To portray advertising as information, as done by the producer in this quote, is also a commonplace argument within the advertising industry that is used to legitimize advertising by connecting it to freedom of speech (Cronin 2012, 47).
Children are commonly viewed as a special audience (James Potter 2013, 64–65) and this construction was also present among the respondents in this study, as described above. However, some producers collapsed the idea of children as a special audience by erasing the boundary between the categories of children and adults. Both age groups were presented as equally affected by advertising. One creative director said, “We [adults] have no control. We think that we have control; that is the difference. We think that we are not affected, but we go and buy that perfume and hope to get that girl.” The collapsed special audience also functioned as an argument against the Swedish ban on child-directed television advertising:
They [politicians] try to protect the children . . . It’s like they’re saying “Children can’t handle it, but I can.” But can they defend themselves against advertising? No they can’t, because they are still there watching the adverts on television. (CEO)
To emphasize that advertising is effective on both children and adults, and that they are equally “incompetent,” can be seen as a critique toward adults’ lack of self-understanding, and understood as part of the image of the competent child, as this construction is based on the similarities with adults and not the differences (Sandin 2012, 130). Constructing adults and children as equally affected makes children seem less incompetent as there is no comparison with a “standard adult” (Lee 2001, 8–9). To stress the effectiveness of advertising can also be seen as part of a marketing discourse cultivating the belief that advertising is an effective commercial tool; an idea which is pivotal to the advertising industry (Cronin 2004, 342–43).
Discussion
This article reveals the conflicting ways in which Swedish advertising producers construct the child audience. These ambivalent audience constructions should be understood as intimately linked to how the producers, within the interview situation, wished to present themselves to the surrounding society. Caldwell (2014, 735–36) argues that encounters between academia and the media industries should be understood as “cross-cultural interfaces” where producers are engaged in marketing themselves and managing the information they give to researchers. To protect their own image and the corporate reputation, the Swedish producers needed to adapt to the strong negative view on child-directed advertising that exists in Sweden. The ban on child-directed television advertising makes it highly controversial to be associated with the practice of advertising to children, and all producers, in different ways, tried to avoid this identity.
Some producers evoked the image of the vulnerable child and positioned themselves as critics. By arguing that their adverts were directed to parents and the family, and by emphasizing the negative effects of advertising, particularly television advertising, the producers presented themselves as morally responsible marketers. The presence of the “vulnerable child audience” among the Swedish producers shows that marketers are not bound to portray children as competent, and that the “marketers’ logic” presented in previous research is not the only possible “logic” among marketers.
Other producers constructed children as competent advertising audiences and as dependent consumers which only compose an “influence market.” Through this construction, the producers distanced themselves from the practice of advertising to children, arguing that children were targeted as part of a family audience. This ambivalent construction of children can be seen as a way to avoid being associated with a practice that might have a damaging effect on their self-image and their corporations. At the same time, this ambivalence also serves the purpose of legitimizing child-directed advertising and fending off future regulation. If children are considered competent and critical, no regulation on child-directed advertising online is needed.
Producers who positioned themselves as critics also referred to the image of “the competent child” when prompted to speak about their own advergames. This construction is in line with the marketers’ logic put forward in previous research and reflects a view of online advertising as less problematic than advertising on television. This view also echoes the Swedish ban on child-directed advertising, where television is portrayed as a particularly powerful medium. The ambivalence concerning the effects of advertising on children also reflects an awareness of which arguments and positions are considered legitimate in different situations; on the one hand, children are portrayed as highly affected, while the producers’ own advergames, on the other hand, are said to have little effect. In front of another audience, such as their own advertising agency or marketing department, these producers would probably have argued differently.
Buckingham et al.’s (1999) and Lemish’s (2010, 107) studies on television producers stress the dominance of the view of children as active and powerful media consumers. The present study shows a somewhat different picture, where the idea of the vulnerable child had a central position among the producers. There are obviously differences between marketers and television producers. For instance, marketing is more functional as it aims to promote products (Hesmondhalgh 2013, 17), while public service broadcasting also has children’s well-being and needs as its objective (Buckingham et al. 1999, 164). In light of this, it was rather unexpected to find that advertising producers construct children as vulnerable and emphasize the harmful effects of the media. However, when taking into account cultural context, this construction among Swedish marketers becomes more understandable.
As highlighted in this article, the majority of research on marketers’ constructions of the child audience is made within an American and British context. This reflects the broader Anglo-American bias in media research (see Curran and Park 2000), a bias which becomes problematic when results are, implicitly, generalized to apply to all producers. Future research should, therefore, conduct further comparative studies to gain a better understanding of how children are constructed as an audience across cultural contexts.
Conclusion
This study contributes to the understanding of media producers’ constructed child audiences in several aspects. First, previous research has identified the image of the vulnerable child as primarily part of public discourse and academic research, and as having a less prominent position among media producers. This study highlights how the image of the vulnerable child can have a central position also among media producers. Second, children have principally been presented as a “special audience” that is different to adults. The present study shows how the idea of a “collapsed special audience” exists among producers, where children and adults are constructed as equally affected by the media. Future research could further investigate this construction of the child audience, and the functions it has among producers. Third, previous research has not sufficiently studied how culture shapes the notion of the child audience. The present study shows how culture and media regulation contribute to the construction of the child audience among media producers. Jacobs (2007, 76) proposes that values not only shape law, but law also shapes values. The implication of such a perspective is that media production studies need to pay attention to cultural context, in particular media regulation, when investigating constructed audiences.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Helena Sandberg, Gunilla Jarlbro, Tobias Olsson, and two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This study was supported by the Swedish Research Council (Grant 421-2010-1982) and the Crafoord Foundation (Grant 20100899).