Q Questioning ads is the best way to protect yourself.
Q1. Question any ad: Am I the target audience? What's the benefit? Do I really need it? Who benefits?
Q2. Students often ask about ads: "Can they?" (Legal) "Should they?" (Ethical) "How did they?" (Technical)
Q3. Use the "journalist's questions" asking: Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How. ( 5 Ws & H )
Q4. 200+ Questions About Ads - based on the Intensify/Downplay Schema
Q5. 200+ Questions About Political Rhetoric - based on the Intensify/Downplay Schema

Q1. Question any Ad: Am I the target audience? What's the benefit? Do I really need it? Who benefits?

Of the many possible questions, perhaps just a few simple questions are enough:

What's in it for Me?

What's the benefit? (Protection? Relief? Prevention? Acquisition?)

Am I the target audience? (Now, or later?)

Do I really need it? Or just want it? Can I afford it? That is:
What's your priority for your limited time and money? --

Qui bono?

"Qui bono?" is the basic question that the ancient Romans asked about persuasion: "Who benefits?"

(In most cases involving commercial persuasion, advertising, buyers and sellers have mutual benefits: sellers get a profit, buyers get a pleasure.)

But, don't waste time by worrying about the persuader's intent. In any kind of persuasion (commercial, political, social), assume that all persuaders can justify themselves as having "good" intentions.

Consider consequences, not intentions. Focus on the consequences, the results, of persuasion.

Consequences to whom? To you. To others. To society.

Q2. Student questions about ads commonly relate to legal, ethical, and technical issues; often asking: Can they? Should they? How did they do that?


Legal: "Can they do that?" questions are usually concerned about legality, about laws and regulations. For example, students often ask about deceptive advertising, fraud, borderline cases, comparative advertising, attack ads, and so forth. The most accurate way to answer these is by going to the websites of the regulatory agencies (FTC, FDA, CSPS) or the long-established consumerist groups (CFA, CSPI). Or, for current news, use a search engine (google.com) with several specific terms: e.g. aspirin | advertising | regulations.

Ethical:"Should they do that?" questions are usually about ethics. Because of the diversity of basic beliefs in our society, diverse ethical standards and opinion.

For example, I believe it is grossly unethical for advertisers to target the pre-school audience of kids at home because parents often have to use TV as a "babysitter." But, even PBS has sold out on this, in their daily programs for pre-schoolers, using "proud sponsors" and "soft-sell" ads designed for brand recognition and "feel good" associations. Kids -- 3 and 4 years old -- in their mother's shopping carts easily recognize the logos (Arthur, on Juicy Juice; Chuck-e-Cheese, etc.) on store shelves and have lots of "pester power."

Is this legal? Probably. Is it ethical? Not in my book. We need some ad-free zones for kids at home and in school.

Channel One in the school classrooms is similar.

Legal? Each of the thousands of local school boards has the authority to deliver their students as a target audience to advertisers eager to get into a place and a "day-part" previously secure. Ethical? I don't believe so. (Do you? Does your school board?)

Technical: "How did they do that?" questions usually refer to the amazing technical devices (computer graphics, photography) and editing techniques often used as attention-getters. For more information on these topics, or the inner workings of ad agencies and their production houses, check out the trade journals, or sites such as AdAge.com, or google.com -- using several specific terms.

Q3. Use the "journalist's questions" asking: who, what, when, where, why and how.

Another systematic analysis of any ad can be done by using the "5 Ws and an H": Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How.

These are often known as the "journalist's questions," but, this pattern really goes way back to Aristotle's philosophical theory of causality -- that it helps if we sort out and identify issues into their four causes and two conditions.

This set of questions is especially useful in trying to uncover any relevant omissions of harms relating to the maker, the materials, the design, and the purpose of products.:

the do-er of the action ( who - efficient cause)
the materials involved ( what - material cause)
the design, plan, form, procedures ( how - formal cause)
the purpose, the reason, the end goal ( why - final cause)

and the two conditions of time and place (when and where)


In John Allen Poulos' book, A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper (p.201), he makes the case that journalists need to learn a lot more how numbers and statistics can be misunderstood and manipulated:

"I've argued that the set of standard questions Journalists ask and readers want answered should be enlarged. Besides Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How, it should include How many? How likely? What fraction? How does the quantity compare with other quantities? What is its rate of growth, and how does that compare? What about the self-referential aspects of the story? Is there an appropriate degree of complexity in it? Are we looking at the right categories and relations? How much of the story is independent of its reporting?. Are we especially vulnerable to the availability error or to anchoring effects?

If statistics are presented, how were they obtained? How confident can we be of them? Were they derived from a random sample or from a collection of anecdotes? Does the correlation suggest a causal relationship, or is it merely a coincidence? And do we under, stand how the people and various pieces of an organization reported upon are connected? What is known about the dynamics of the whole system? Are they stable or do they seem sensitive to tiny perturbations? Are there other ways to tally any figures presented? Do such figures measure what they purport to measure? Is the precision recounted meaningful? "

Q4 200+ Questions you can ask about Advertising

Here is an extensive list of over 200 prompter questions, based on the Intensify/Downplay schema, which provides many useful questions about techniques used in advertising. You need not deal with all of these topics, but this list lets you to see the many possibilities available and how they relate to each other.

These questions are especially useful to alert you to the ways of downplaying (by omission, diversion, confusion) which are seldom treated elsewhere. Alas, these questions do not deal with the more complex issues of consequences and social context of ads and advertising. But, they're a useful starting point to see the many possible ways to analyze advertising.

Q5 200+ Questions you can ask about Political Rhetoric

Here is an extensive list of over 200 prompter questions, based on the Intensify/Downplay schema, which provides many useful questions about techniques used in political rhetoric. You need not deal with all of these topics, but this list lets you to see the many possibilities available and how they relate to each other.

These questions are especially useful to alert you to the ways of downplaying (by omission, diversion, confusion) which are seldom treated elsewhere. Alas, these questions do not deal with the more complex issues of consequences and social context of political persuasion. But, they're a useful starting point to see the many possible ways to analyze political language.

A Reflection on Questions:

In his book, Creative Problem Solving, Donald Noone introduces his "Option Generator," a set of prompter questions for creative thinking based on these useful categories: Adapt, Streamline, Reorganize, Change, What Else?, Paradoxical Thinking, What If ... Scenarios. After his long list of suggested questions, he recommends that any promising ideas then be further developed by asking: "To do how much of what by when."

"A question, by its nature, demands an answer. A questioner is unsettled, discontent and searching for something other than what he has. On the other hand, when a person makes a statement and puts a period at the end of it, that's it! Nothing needs to follow to get closure on the thought. Periods do not provoke; judgments do not open the mind; question marks do."

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