Impact+of+Death-Related+Television+Programming+on+Advertising+Evaluation

Rangan, Priyamvadha, Surendra Singh, Mark Landau and Jungsil Choi. “Impact of Death-Related Television Programming on Advertising Evaluation.” Journal of Advertising 44.4 (2015) p326-337. Article.

This article published in the Journal of Advertising goes deep into details about why companies promote violent content and how that comes into the evaluations of when and where their ads appear during death-related content. There is data supporting the claim that viewers will react differently to advertising during content like “corpses, graphic killings, mutilations and suicide”. If viewer’s emotions are affected and they react differently to advertisements while viewing programming that depicts death-related content, then it could be said that the reactions likely don’t just stop at the advertisements. The studies on how our awareness and hesitance to accept the inevitability of death creates existential anxiety has great value towards how this may relate to violence in the real world. What are our death related thoughts while viewing violent content? This article contains scientific research that goes deep into the psyche on why we choose to entertain ourselves with graphic violence and death.

kimberly corley