Politicizing Consumer Culture: Advertising's Appropriation of Political Ideology in China's Social Transition

Abstract

China's ideological transition from a communist country toward a consumer society provides an unprecedented context in which to explore the rise of consumerism in a contemporary society. We examine how advertising appropriates a dominant anticonsumerist political ideology to promote consumption within China's social and political transition. We show how advertising reconfigures both key political symbolism and communist propaganda strategies through a semiotic analysis of advertisements in the People's Daily. Our structural framework of ideological transition extends Barthes's myth model and examines ideological transition in advertising from the macroperspective of political ideology. This framework goes beyond the transfer of cultural meanings and can help to explain ideological shifts in other societies.