TV ADVERTISING AS AN IMPLEMENT OF CONSTRUCTING OF MEANINGS

Abstract

The article focuses upon the TV advertisement in Russia. The author examines it in the so-cio-cultural context and considers it to be a social tool of shaping the symbolic world of a person. The institution of advertisement is characterised by statistical variables: the capacity of the Russian advertisement market, the structure of the market of TV advertisement in terms of product groups and the main advertisers; it is also characterised by the images the advertising campaigns of some Russian firms (Erlan, Hopior-Invest, Bank Imperial) have left. The attitude of different members of society towards advertisement is shown through the conception of William Thomas called "defining the situation". The article shows that those who create advertisement - the advertisement community - and those who consume it - the majority of population - define the situation in different ways. As a result advertisement is immanently contradictory, the images are conflicting, and those who create advertisement try all the time to eliminate these contradictions. The author consistently expresses the following idea: advertisement legitimises the existing social system by creating a gallery of images; it also transfers the problem of social mobility and social stratification from the sphere of production, that is connected with the question of property, into the sphere of consumption that is based on an individual's own initiative. Furthermore in modern society advertisement, especially political one, is an institution that shapes the structure of power. The people who control the mass media can organize political forces in any desired way with the help of broad usage of political advertisement.