What we want to know is how prejudice is society against African-Americans. More specifically, does racism play a part in advertising? Wilkes and Valencia (1990) conducted a study on Hispanics and Blacks in television commercials. They looked at the incidence and importance of these groups in commercials. Wilkes and Valencia found that both groups were underrepresented with respect to their proportion of the population.

They also found that the number of Hispanics and Blacks in commercials is increasing. Dominick & Greenberg (1968) reported blacks in only 5 percent of advertisements. Gerbner, et al (1981) reported that blacks were in 20 percent of commercials. But Sterns, et al (1987) reported that 11 percent of ads contained blacks. So in comparison to Sterns, et al, Wilkes and Valencia’s findings are correct with respect to th

We counted advertisements in four magazines. The advertisements we used in our research all came from nationally distributed magazines. We chose Maxim, Men’s Health, People, and Entertainment Weekly. Each of these magazines, we think, represents a certain/different aspect of society. Entertainment magazine represents the entertainment industry. We chose Maxim because it is one of the first and only magazines geared towards men. Men’s Health was picked because we think that health is something people of all races are interested in. We chose People because we thought that it represents society as a whole compared to other magazines. We had total of 157 advertisements.

In choosing the magazines for this study we felt we could receive a fairer representation of what we are studying if we excluded magazines that were predominately African-American. So we chose magazines in which we thought were more mainstream, as compared to those which are geared more towards a specific kind of activity. Whether the activity be rap music or tennis or dancing.

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