Michael Prieler

Hallym University · Media School

This study analysed gender representations in a sample of 100 Rwandan music videos. Some of our findings were in accordance with those of previous studies focusing on other countries, including the findings that in videos men clearly outnumber women and women are sexually objectified through the use of clothing, gaze, partialising, and sexually sug...

This study analyzed the positive and negative body talk of male and female adolescents cross-culturally with an emphasis on the role of appearance-contingent and others’ approval-contingent self-worth. A cross-national survey in Austria, Belgium, Spain, and South Korea among 12- to 16-year-olds (982 female and 993 male) found that (1) positive body...

This study analyzes 157 unduplicated Cambodian television advertisements for differences in gender representation. The findings indicate gender differences for several variables, including the degree of dress (more men than women were fully dressed and more women than men were suggestively dressed), the setting (more women than men were at home and...

The present study examined the relationship between appearance-related social comparison on social networking services (SNSs) and body esteem in a cross-cultural context (three European countries, i.e., Austria, Belgium, and Spain, versus one Asian country, i.e., South Korea). The role of self-worth contingency on others’ approval was considered to...

Research has constantly revealed that depressive symptoms usually include negative cognitions about the world, the future, and the self, termed the negative cognitive triad. More recently, research on the stress generation hypothesis found that depressed individuals self-select themselves into situations that resonate with their depressive symptoms...

This study conducted a content analysis of 442 television advertisements from Hong Kong, Japan, and South Korea to determine their representations of ‘Others’. Findings reveal that in East Asian advertisements, Others are overrepresented, mostly non-celebrities, and depicted in major roles, which is in contrast to previous studies in the United Sta...

There is a lack of comparative research on nudity in television advertising. Building on cross-cultural theory, we examined countries’ gender indices and preclearance policies as predictors of nudity. We also tested the influence of a main actors’ gender and age, as well as the role of product categories. We sampled N = 1,755 TV ads from 13 countri...

Despite the increase in the percentage of older people around the world, older people and particularly older women are quite underrepresented in the media. This article gives an overview of the representation of older women and men, starting with a short literature review showing that older women and men are nearly invisible in the worldwide media,...

A significant amount of previous research has examined media usage patterns among American and European adolescents. However, a recent update on adolescents’ daily media habits in the changed media environment is missing. Moreover, little is known about differences between countries. The current cross-sectional study among Austrian, Belgian, Spanis...

The present study analyzed whether the face-ism phenomenon, which argues that the media visually depict men with more facial prominence compared to women (whereas women are shown with greater body prominence), exists for self-selected photographs worldwide. Based on a content analysis of a sample of 6286 profile photos drawn from online dating site...

This paper explores the role that citizen journalism is playing in democratising the mainstream media in Rwanda. Through in-depth interviews with journalists from two radio stations and by using the public sphere theory as a theoretical framework, this research sought to answer the question as to whether citizen journalism in Rwanda propels media d...

This study analyzed how “Others” are represented in East Asian television advertisements, and whether such representations support multiculturalism. We conducted a content analysis of 442 television advertisements from Hong Kong, Japan, and South Korea to determine their representations of Others. Findings reveal that in East Asian television adver...

This study analyzed 157 unduplicated Cambodian television advertisements from 2016 for differences in gender representation. The findings indicate gender differences for several variables, including the degree of dress (more men than women were fully dressed and more women than men were suggestively dressed), the setting (more women than men were a...

This paper explores the use of social media in the public sector workplace in Rwanda, a country that encourages new media technologies in all areas, including public institutions. In particular, we investigate how public employees reconcile job-related and private uses of social media in the workplace. To answer this question, in-depth interviews w...

This study aims at exploring how information and communications technology (ICT) is accessed and used by women and men in Rwanda. Specifically, we analyze the factors that contribute to the gender digital divide in Rwanda. In addition, we assess the importance of equal access to ICTs between genders. Rwanda is a particulary intersting case study, s...

Despite the increase in the percentage of older people around the world, older people and particularly older women are quite underrepresented in the media. This article gives an overview of the representation of older women in the media starting with a short literature review showing that older women are nearly invisible in the worldwide media and...

There is extensive research about gender representations in advertisements, but little research has been conducted regarding gender portrayals of older people. Based on a content analysis of 2,972 Japanese television advertisements from 1997 and 2007, we identified gender stereotypes of older people including: a higher percentage of depicted older...

In this study, 432 television advertisements from Hong Kong, Japan, and South Korea were analyzed to determine their representations of older people. Findings demonstrate that in East Asian advertisements, older people are highly underrepresented, appear in major roles, mostly alongside younger people, and older men clearly outnumber older women. T...

Although there are numerous studies on gender-role portrayals in television advertising, comparative designs are clearly lacking. With content analytical data from a total of 13 Asian, American, and European countries, we study the stereotypical depiction of men and women in television advertisements. Our sample consists of 1755 ads collected in Ma...

Advertising in the Aging Society uses large-scale content analysis and questionnaire surveys to present insights into the impact of aging populations on the advertising industry. As the most aged society in the world, Japan demonstrates that the implications of population aging upon societies, businesses, and economies are vast. This book specifica...

This study analyzed whether face-ism theory, which argues that the media visually depict men with more facial prominence compared to women, who are shown with greater prominence of their bodies, is valid in East Asia. A comparison of two Western (United States and Sweden) and two Eastern (Japan and South Korea) cultures suggests that face-ism theor...

In this chapter we present and discuss research on the representation of older people in Japanese television advertisements based on a content analysis of around 3,000 television advertisements. The chapter is structured as follows: We first discuss the theoretical background of this study. The following section will give an overview of the importa...

This chapter aims to contribute to the state-of-the-field of research on older consumers and advertising in general and the Japanese older consumer in particular. It focuses on the advertising usage and consumer response to the portrayal of older people in television advertising based on a large sample survey conducted in Japan. Our empirical study...

Population aging is a powerful megatrend affecting many countries around the world. This demographic shift has vast effects on societies and economies as well as businesses and the advertising industry. In the preceding chapters we have presented findings from a comprehensive research project on advertising in the aging society of Japan. As explain...

This chapter looks at advertising practitioners’ views on the use of older models in advertising in Japan (see also: Hagiwara et al., 2010; Kohlbacher, Prieler, & Hagiwara, 2011b, 2014). Our content analysis of television advertising (Chapter 3) seems to suggest that advertising agencies are relatively reluctant to feature older models, especially...

This chapter will give a short introduction to Japanese advertising (including advertising agencies, advertising media, and television advertisements) and then introduces some of the so-called specialties of Japanese television advertising and offer common explanations and discussion of these characteristics. We will conclude, however, that most of...

The motivation for this book is grounded in several reasons. First, older people are of interest in our study because of their rapid increase around the world and specifically in Japanese society, as well as their increasing importance as a market segment (Coulmas, 2007; Kohlbacher & Herstatt, 2011). Siano and associates (2013) argue that “Understa...

This study analyzed 394 U.S. Spanish- and English-language television advertisements from 2013 for differences in gender representation. The findings indicate a high prevalence of gender stereotypes in both samples. For example, more females than males were depicted as young and were usually shown at home. Males were generally fully dressed, wherea...

Gender representations in television advertisements have been a subject of academic research for many years. However, comparatively few studies have looked into television advertising’s gender representations in Confucian societies, particularly from a comparative perspective. This study compares the representation of males and females in 1,694 tel...

The article “Social media effects on young women’s body image concerns: Theoretical perspectives and an agenda for research” by Perloff (2014) extends the study of media effects on women’s body image concerns by including social media. His article is important because of the increasing use and unique nature of social media, and it can provide an av...

This article presents results from a survey of advertising practitioners in Japan focusing on their opinions about the communication objectives and stereotypes, specifically the effectiveness of older spokespersons, their general views on older models in advertising and the effectiveness of older models by product category. We find that these opini...

The representation of social groups in advertising has been a major concern in academia. However, research focusing on older people has been scant and mainly conducted in Western countries. In Japan, the country that has been most affected by demographic change, this research area has received little attention. Through a content analysis of a syste...

This study analyzed 254 unduplicated primetime Philippine television advertisements from 2010 for differences in gender representation. Two coders independently coded the entire sample and achieved an intercoder reliability of greater than .700 for each reported variable. The findings are based on chi-square analyses and indicate a high prevalence...

There have been few studies on gender representation in television advertisements featuring a Confucian culture. Based on a content analysis of 322 television advertisements, this article presents results of gender stereotypes, including females portrayed as younger and thinner than males and product categories reflecting typical gender association...

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Choosing the right models and portraying them appropriately are crucial tasks in marketing management and advertising creation. The way older television viewers feel represented by a company has an influence on the overall company image and purchase intentions. This chapter reports that despite a strong increase in older people in Japanese televisi...

This content analysis of 306 Japanese television advertisements featuring older people (50+) analyzed differences in representation based on gender. The results revealed that both genders were underrepresented in comparison to demographic reality. This disparity was even more pronounced for older females, who appeared in less than half as many comm...

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Although non-Japanese actors have appeared in Japanese television commercials for years, little systematic research has been conducted on them. Using a sample of 20,000 commercials, this article shows that the inclusion of ‘Others’ in TV commercials conforms to an artificial ‘racial hierarchy’ that mirrors Japanese society’s perception of racial gr...

OLDER PEOPLE IN JAPANESE TELEVISION ADVERTISING: A SURVEY AND CONTENT ANALY- SIS-BASED STUDY Abstract: This article presents results from a survey on the image of older people in Japan and a content analysis of how they are represented in Japanese TV commer- cials. The representative survey resulted in 720 responses from people between 15 and 65 ye...

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About 10% of Japanese commercials show elderly people. They advertise a relatively small range of product categories, such as pharmaceuticals/health products, financial/insurance plans, and food. Elderly people are the main target group, especially for the first two product categories, and often are the only age group that appears in the ads. In co...

Japan’s advertising industry is the third largest in the world, nevertheless relatively unknown in the West. This article discusses often-cited specialties of Japanese advertising and analyzes whether these are really special to Japan or based solely on the referent system of the United States or some form of exoticization by foreign scholars and/o...

This paper deals with the representation of the family in Japanese TV commercials. Based on empirical research conducted in 2004 and 2005, it argues that Japanese commercials tend to depict the family and its members in highly stereotypical ways. Mothers are almost always shown doing some kind of housework, at times supported by their daughters, pr...