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Pushing Products and Blaming Consumers [1]

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Date: 2023-04-04

After introducing the latest revenue enhancing strategy, “affiliate marketing” in US newspapers, particularly the prestigious Washington Post, I detail its consequences for news and information. Increasing media commercialism positions readers as consumers instead of citizens to be informed and often downplay reporting critical of the environmental consequences of consumer society. I then address reporting on a key area of planetary destruction—the continued extraction and burning of fossil fuels (and consumer plastic production)—and the promotional messaging that obscures the industry’s connection to climate change. I present recent research into the new practices of promotion of the oil and gas industries and demonstrate their historical transition from climate denial to the present messages that comprise the “discourses of delay,” now prominent in advertising design. These are contrasted to activist campaigns that focus directly on discursive and visual persuasion, exposing the misleading marketing and advertising for the fossil fuel industry. I illuminate a number of analytical topics: (1) the contradictions of commercial media designed to sell products to consumers while blaming consumers for climate change, (2) a close look at Op-ed piece about the climate disaster in the Washington Post, (3) information about the extractive industrial practices that still dominate US energy policies resulting in planetary destruction, (4) identifying the discourses of delay and how they mislead the public and help prevent the transition to alternative, sustainable energy, (5) counter messaging that challenges corporate persuasions and encourages citizen participation and working toward earth-affirming solutions to our environmental crisis.

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[1] Url: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003124870-38/pushing-products-blaming-consumers-robin-andersen?context=ubx&refId=b8db5b37-9c0a-4552-96b0-30e858b6cefa

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