Advertising and Promotion Management Commons^™

The Prevalence And Influence Of The Combination Of Humor And Violence In Super Bowl Commercials, Benjamin J. Blackford, James W. Gentry, Robert L. Harrison, Les Carlson

Department of Marketing: Faculty Publications

The growing concern over violence in the media has led to vast amounts of research examining the effects of violent media on viewers. An important subset of this research looks at how humor affects this relationship. While research has considered this subset in television programming, almost no research has explored this in the context of advertising. This paper builds on the little research that exists by examining the effects of combining humor and violence, as well as the theoretical approaches that underlie these effects. A content analysis is conducted to identify the prevalence of violence, humor, and the combination of …