Business Commons^™

African American In Televised Advertisements: A Content Analysis, Amy Anderson

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The purpose of this study was to analyze African American portrayals in televised advertisements over a sixday period in November 1995. A total of 799 advertisements were analyzed, including 205 that depicted at least one African American actor. Content analysis was used to describe the following, with respect to African American actors: age, gender, day and time of portrayal, occupational role, and products and services advertised. Comparisons were also made between frequencies of actors of different races and amount of time these actors appeared. When compared with previous studies of African American television portrayals, many improvements were observed as well …