Exploring Children’s Advertising Literacy in the Contemporary Media Environment

Scholars from across the world continue to discuss and debate the psychological, ethical and regulatory issues associated with advertising to children. Despite this, research that explores children’s understanding of advertising more holistically (i.e. from more than just a cognitive developmental perspective) is largely absent from this area. Research must consider dimensions of children’s advertising literacy, that is, their ability to recognise, process and understand advertising and marketing messages besides their age and cognitive ability.

Thus, this PhD presents an exploration of children’s advertising literacy, which draws upon an interdisciplinary framework encompassing conceptual and empirical research from two key disciplines: marketing and sociology. This research uses a combination of creative workshops and semi-structured peer interviews with children aged 9-11 years in the UK.

This thesis intervenes in established debates about the commercialisation of childhood and children’s culture. It explores children's advertising literacy in the contemporary media environment, forging a dialogue between research on children’s understanding of advertising and consumption behaviour in light of increasingly digital lifestyles.

Findings support the suggestion that children need to recognise commercial intent, be that an advertiser’s intention to sell or persuade, in order to identify something as an advertisement. However, in contrast to this assumption, findings also indicate that the ability to identify something as an advertisement is perhaps just one element of a child’s overall advertising literacy. It is also important to consider the application of literacy, the process of interpretation and understand that recognition of underlying commercial intent is not the only factor that may influence the way advertising is interpreted, evaluated and understood by children.

In addition to enhancing existing bodies of knowledge, this research highlights six issues for policymakers where the efficacy of current advertising regulations could be improved and proposes a number of recommendations for socially-responsible advertising to children in the UK.