Citizen or consumer? : advertisements and their effect on youth identity in Malta

Abstract

This research agenda attempts to reveal whether individual agency is expressed in the interpretation of advertising or rather as shown further on in the hypotheses section, whether agency itself is produced by the very act of interpreting advertisements. This brings us to the question: Citizen or Consumer? Are our actions as social beings our own or are they the byproduct of advertisements? This question will be handled by looking at the meaning behind the activity of consumption and by uncovering the reasons to which citizens as consumers choose goods over others. This dissertation will examine whether advertisements indeed effect young people and the way they look at themselves in respect to the citizen versus consumer discourse. It also reveals how advertisements help to form a youth identity further by inducing in youths the belief, that the ideas illustrated on the various types of media are ultimately their own desires. The idea of advertising itself is merely a concept which is responsible for the creation of desires and which induces in social beings; mainly in youths as in the case of this dissertation, a need to consume.