"declaration" Advertising And The Shanghai People's Consumption Ideology

Shanghai in modern times was .an industrial and commercial society in step with global capitalization. In what shape was the ideology of the citizens in a society like this? What concept was the guideline for their daily life? What brought about their consciousness as consumers, value and self-identification? These are evidently questions of great interest. The basic hypothesis of this dissertation is that in the 1920s and 1930s there was already a consumerism ideology among the citizens. But what the dissertation centers on is not the consumerism ideology; rather, it is a study of how the advertisements in Shen Daily partook in the construction of such an ideology.Research shows that, as a business language suited to the interests of the newly rising capitalists, what these advertisements were trying to sell was not a series of modern merchandises, but a whole set of secular ideology of how to live and think. Through a multitude of advertisement images and languages, they instilled into the minds of the citizens of that time a large body of persuasive and guiding ideas. On one hand, these ideas justified the hedonist view toward consumption; on the other, functions like appreciation of beauty and identification were allotted to consumption. As,a result, secular acts of purchase became something that reflects one's social status, his pursuit of beauty, his patriotism and even his desire to realize his value as a human being. This is essentially what consumerism means. Here we see how mass media partakes in the construction of ideology in modern societies through persuasive advertisement images and languages, and how it controls an ordinary citizen's life and his way of thinking.