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Deception caused by Fast Food Advertisements

“Children’s Recall of Fast Food Television Advertising- Testing the Adequacy of Food Marketing Regulation” is the publication I chose to analyze and compare to the SCI generator. This scholarly publication about the adequacy of Mcdonald’s and Burger King’s advertisements tests their rhetorical features in order to derive a clearer sense of what they are actually portraying, and how they are affecting the thought and decision processes of youthful viewers. Furthermore, The Fast Food advertisement publication possesses many of the same conventions as the SCI generator structurally and with content. By comparing the conventions and pinpointing the most important aspects of publications, we can derive a better understanding of the rhetoric behind them and identify any biased or persuasion tools; Identifying the publication’s true intentions can help us form accurate opinions on the issue and avoid being mislead.

Structurally, the scholarly publication I chose and the SCI generator are nearly identical. They both begin with presenting the reader with an abstract explaining the background, methods, results, and conclusion of the experiment to give the reader a summary or a general understanding of what the publication is about. Then, they are followed by an introduction and an explanation of how they went about conducting the experiment. Both publications include graphs, charts and diagrams,too. Lastly, they both have a conclusion followed by a reference page which adds to the publication’s credibility. The only difference in structure between the publication I chose and the SCI generator is the addition that my publication made, including supporting information-videos showing kids partaking in the experiment. With respect to content, both publications were rather parallel as well. They both possessed sophisticated, academic language and presented facts instead of opinion. They used logos-statistics and graphs- to prove a their findings, and created a sense of ethos through references, examples and supporting information. They didn’t, however, use pathos explicitly because they were experiments that used facts in order to prove a point.

Aside from comparing the conventions of the publication I chose, identifying the most important aspects of the piece was crucial in order to fully understand what it was trying to portray. First off, the introduction is a key component of the publication. It answers the “so what?” question, and presents the reader with a problem the experiment will attempt to answer. In “Children’s Recall of Fast Food Advertising”, the introduction exemplifies the immense amount of money that the fast food industry pours into marketing, and the laws behind such advertisements. Then, it presents the reader with the facts, exposing Mcdonald’s and Burger King for breaking these rules and regulations regarding deception, and introduces their experiment-testing the deceptiveness of the advertisements on youth.

The response assessment and statistical analysis sections were very important as well. These sections explained how the testers went about the procedure, analyzed their data, and explained what the these tests signified. Under the Response Assessment sub-heading, it explains the testing procedure to give the reader a clear understanding of what was actually tested. For example, it says, “Children were scheduled to come to the research laboratory with one parent...While the parent completed a questionnaire, the child was shown one of each of the four types of ads, with each one randomly selected from the ad pool and shown in random order, with the procedure carried out by an internally developed software program that also displayed the ads to the children…”. Under the Statistical Analysis section it states, “Children’s responses, defined as one or more words versus no mention per each category, were dichotomized to reflect any recall or no recall of food, healthy food (i.e., apples or milk), or premium/tie-ins. The proportion of children with any recall for each of the three categories was summarized by ad type, and McNemar’s test was used to determine if the likelihood of any recall differed by ad type.” This clarifies the purpose of these tests and shows what the responses actually mean in order to give the reader a full understanding of the experiment.

In addition to clarifying what the experiment is about, It’s also very important to show credibility. The supporting evidence section and the references page on the Fast Food Advertisement publication were imperative. These exemplified the publication’s use of ethos and made the piece credible. Without these essential components, the reader is left wondering where the facts came from and whether the claim is even logical or where it;s supported.

Identifying the key components of the publication can help derive the most important 
information, but can also tell us a bit about the author’s purpose. In this case, the author of the publications wants to prove a point, but to do so, they must exemplify credibility. With credibility and supporting facts, the the main idea presented by the publication is in fact logical, and can be used to formulate accurate and meaningful opinions on the topic.