Advertising morality: maintaining moral worth in a stigmatized profession
Advertising morality: maintaining moral worth in a stigmatized profession
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DOI：
10.1007/s11186-018-9309-7
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发表时间：
2018-04-01
影响因子：
2.9
通讯作者：
Dromi, Shai M.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Cohen, Andrew C.;Dromi, Shai M.
尽管大量文献研究了个人如何应对耻辱，但有关专业团体如何应对自我认知挑战、遵守明确道德标准的文章却少之又少。在本文中，我们询问专业群体成员如何在面对道德耻辱时保持积极的自我认知。借鉴实用主义和文化社会学，我们声称专业社区拥有将其成员所从事的工作的各个方面与对共同利益的具体理解联系起来的叙述。这些叙述使专业人士能够对自己的工作有益于社会保持共同的看法，并将自己视为有道德的个体。作为一个案例研究，我们重点关注广告业，该行业长期以来一直被视为剥削性资本主义机制和文化退化的同谋。我们对三个美国广告公司进行了总共九个月的实地考察和七十四次采访。我们发现广告从业者使用叙事来展示他们的工作为共同利益做出贡献，将自己描绘成在此过程中关心他人的道德个体。我们分析了三种流行的叙述：账户驱动的叙述，它将道德美德与关心客户联系起来；创意驱动的叙事，将关怀与有意义的广告制作联系起来；以及战略驱动的叙事，即关注为消费者和品牌寻找有意义的关系。
Although a great deal of literature has looked at how individuals respond to stigma, far less has been written about how professional groups address challenges to their self-perception as abiding by clear moral standards. In this paper, we ask how professional group members maintain a positive self-perception in the face of moral stigma. Drawing on pragmatic and cultural sociology, we claim that professional communities hold narratives that link various aspects of the work their members perform with specific understanding of the common good. These narratives allow professionals to maintain a shared view of their work as benefitting society and to perceive themselves as moral individuals. As a case study, we focus on the advertising industry, which has long been stigmatized as complicit in exploitative capitalist mechanisms and cultural degradation. We draw on nine total months of fieldwork and seventy-four interviews across three US advertising agencies. We find that advertising practitioners use narratives to present their work as contributing to the common good, depicting themselves as moral individuals who care about others in the process. We analyze three prevalent narratives: the account-driven narrative, which links moral virtue to caring for clients; the creative-driven narrative, which ties caring to the production of meaningful advertisements; and the strategic-driven narrative, which sees caring in finding meaningful relationships for consumers and brands.