Equipping children to outsmart advertising through philosophy

Abstract

The focus of this study is basically exploring the concepts of advertising brainwash and the imagined reality, and how it has developed a gruesome threat that devours the children’s imagination. It also highlights how the Lebanese curriculum of Grades one to five ignores critical thinking that can be acquired by customized philosophy in the form of children stories, which in turn creates media literacy and equips kids to specify their own identities and shape their own world. Thus, the theoretical framework relies on mass communication theories: Propaganda (seven persuasive devices that convince the audience that elite’s interests are theirs) and Inoculation Theory (vaccinating the audience against advertising effects). The conceptual framework includes advertising appeals and effects, philosophy of the real and Lebanese children education. Hypotheses were validated through three different methodologies: a content analysis of seven Lebanese ads that aired between September and November 2013, during the only two Lebanese kids’s shows: Mini Studio on MTV and Kazado on OTV; three focus groups of seven pupils each, between six and ten years old, of both sexes, randomly selected from distinct private and government schools in Shouf and Metn areas; four in-depth interviews with academic, psycho-pedagogy and advertising experts, in addition to a testimonial with a 17-year-old child whose experience is a living example of what this thesis is about. The study tackled only one aspect affecting critical thinking development; therefore a long-term quantitative (for generalization) and qualitative research is needed to explore this development in different angles through age.