Notion of power

Notion of power

So, I’m going to talk about the notion of Power but first we need to define what power is. For me, power is the capacity of doing something, the ability to exercise authority on a person or a group so that they can do what you want. Basically, the power is a force based on the legitimacy and the constraint.

There is a lot of types of power in our society like the politic power, the money power, the military power, the power of the population, the power of the knowledge…

For this presentation, I have chosen to talk about the media power and more precisely the power of advertisement because he seems very important for me given that we can found it everywhere.

The question of this presentation is “How the media and the advertisement’s power influence our way of life and put pressure on us?”

To answer to this question, I have picked up three documents.

Advertisement exists because of the consumer society which want us to buy more and more things. The founding principle of the consumer society is that when we see any advertisement, we should have the desire to buy it even if most of the time we don’t need it. Advertisers want our attention. In order to attract us, they used eye-catching images which will create an emotional impact, in a positive or negative way to make sure that we will remember In order to incite us to buy the latest phone, the new Chanel’s perfume etc. advertisers have a lot of technics and are always searching new technics to create desire. This industry can be very creative. As we can see in the video Advertising - What psychological tricks do they use there is five major principles to attract people. For instance, there is the principle of scarcity: we want what not many people have, to feel superior and unique. They are manipulating you by imposing deadlines or by telling you there’re just one left. We can also quote the principle of authority: For example, if Cyril Lignac do an ad for a food processor you will be more likely to buy this product because you know that if Cyril Lignac uses it means that it’s a good product and maybe you will be a good cook like him by using the same equipment (that is absolutely false). Everyone has been exposing to this trick (a été) and certainly had been fooled at least once.

Secondly, I will talk about effects of advertising that are very well mentioned (très bien mentionné) in the video effects of advertising. As I said before, advertisers want our attention. They try to convince you that if you will use their products, you will be like the people depicted in ads.

To arouse our interest, ads or at least major of ads doesn’t shows the entire truth. Sometimes there’s an opposition between the product they show and the real product: for example, ads’ hamburgers looks more appetising than the hamburger you have in front of you which seems to have done the First World War. Furthermore, the industry that sold you illicit products like tobacco and alcohol make us believe that it’s all good, that yes, all your friends smokes so why don’t you? But no ads show car accidents, ethylic comas, hard smoker with no tooth…

Moreover, ads can cause huge damages and more particularly for young people. Indeed, all ads are retouched and shows perfect but unrealistic body, a body that you will never reach. Because of these ads which distort their perception of reality, a lot of teenagers stop eating properly, become anorexic and start despising their bodies…

To conclude, this part, this video show that advertising’s industry is ready for anything even the people’s life to sell its products. What stricken me in this video is the power of the ad and the power of images.

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