Page 35 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

1 | Al-Jazeera

of unrenewable fossil fuels and one of the worst offenders for releasing harmful
levels of emissions into the atmosphere.
Advertising influences society and culture on many levels. It compels us to
define who we are and what will make us happy. In a very real way, advertising
propels our consumption lifestyle and is intimately tied to a set of market rela-
tionships that drives the global economy. Only by understanding the broader
role advertisements play in culture, the environment, and the globe will we be
better able to make choices about what to buy and how we want to live.

see also Body Image; Branding the Globe; Hypercommercialism; Media and Elec-
toral Campaigns; Media Literacy; Pharmaceutical Advertising; Political Enter-
tainment; Product Placement; Ratings; Representations of Women; Television in
Schools; Video News Releases; Youth and Media Use; Women’s Magazines.
Further reading: Andersen, Robin. Consumer Culture and TV Programming. Boulder, CO:
Westview Press, 1995; Andersen, Robin, and Lance Strate. Critical Studies in Media Com-
mercialism. London: Oxford University Press, 2000; Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. New
York: Penguin Books, 1974; Ewen, Stuart. Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and
the Social Roots of the Consumer Culture. New York: Basic Books, 2001; Frank, Thomas.
The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture and the Rise of Hip Consumerism.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997; Frith, Katherine Toland, ed. Undressing the
Ad: Reading Culture in Advertising. New York: Peter Lang, 1998; Goldman, Robert, and
Stephen Papson. Sign Wars: The Cluttered Landscape of Advertising. New York: Guilford
Press, 1996; Jacobson, Michael F., and Laurie Ann Mazur, Marketing Madness: A Sur-
vival Guide for a Consumer Society. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995; Jhally, Sut. The
Codes of Advertising: Fetishism and the Political Economy of the Consumer Society. New
York: Routledge, 1990; Marchand, Roland. Advertising the American Dream: Making Way
for Modernity 1920–1940. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985; McAllister,
Matthew P. The Commercialization of American Culture: New Advertising, Control and De-
mocracy. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1995; Quart, Alissa. Branded: The Buying and Selling
of Teenagers. Cambridge, MA: Perseus Publishing, 2003; Turow, Joseph. Niche Envy: Mar-
keting Discrimination in the Digital Age. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006; Williamson,
Judith. Decoding Advertisements. London: Marion Boyars, 1978.
Robin Andersen

al-Jazeera

The Qatari-based Al-Jazeera satellite channel, the first 24-hour all-news net-
work in the Arab world, has been surrounded by much controversy since its
inception. Its uninhibited critique of authoritarian governments has infuriated
many Arab officials, who have not been used to seeing a broadcast network that
is not appeasing their policies. Its exclusive broadcast of tapes by Osama bin
Laden and his lieutenants and its unvarnished reporting on the wars in Afghani-
stan and Iraq and the most recent war in Lebanon have catapulted it into the in-
ternational media spotlight. It has been heralded by its admirers as a beacon for
freedom of expression, and accused by its critics of sensationalism and biased
reporting. Indeed, some U.S. officials charged the station with anti-American
bias for its coverage of the “war on terror.”