Deconstructing Popular Advertisements

[Frank W. Baker]

One of the reasons why visual/media literacy education is not more widespread is that educators haven't had sufficient training in deconstruction. With that in mind, I share the following web resource. The Center for Parent/Youth Understanding has devoted a portion of its web site to Current Popular Culture Advertisements, available to download and deconstruct. One of the reasons this site is so valuable is--you don't have to own the publications the ads come from. Be sure to see the archives as well.
Frank Baker

[Megan Lucas]

That's a great idea. Anther resource that allows older kids to deconstruct adverising is the journal/magazine , Adbusters.
It offers great articles about the sources and intentions of advertisements. They also have a great gallery of spoofs of popular advertisements!