Blog Post #12 - Stereotypes

Advertising exists primarily to persuade people to buy things—it is not there to educate; it is there to persuade. However, as a form of mass media, with huge reach, advertising has an unignorably real impact on how people think and feel about certain groups in society.

I feel that advertisers do have a moral duty to avoid stereotyping people. Due to media and the easy access people have to the internet allows advertisers to create adverts which create new stereotypes and reinforce existing stereotypes into young children. Adverts play a large role in television, and all forms of media as this is how free forms of social media; such as Facebook and Instagram can continue developing. From the development in social media, advertisers are now able to create ads which are extremely stereotypical and because these types of ads are becoming increasing acceptable. Due to this, I feel that the creators of these adverts should have a moral responsibility towards creating a more divert world, to reduce conflict and increase tolerability between cultures and races. Although many of the ads being created are not directly linked to educating children, the ads should still educate the children and even adults in being better well rounded people instead of a group of people who are stuck up, biased or even stereotypical towards a group of people; for example, all Americans are fat. Finally, an ad it there to persuade a person to buy a product not to offend people or to make groups of people hate their brand.