The Rhetoric of Children’s Social Media Advertising 1

Provisional Title: The Rhetoric of Children’s Social Media Advertising

Research Proposal:

Rhetoric in Advertisements Towards Children on Social Media

Children’s advertising is a topic discussed and researched extensively. Many research

documents have been made with focus on the effects of advertising food or goods to
 The Rhetoric of Children’s Social Media Advertising 2
children. From unhealthy food advertisements (Kelly, B, 2010) to the effects of social

media advertisements (Olbrich, R., Schultz, C. D., & Bormann, P. M., 2019) to even

sports betting advertisements (Pitt, H., Thomas, S. L., Bestman, A., Daube, M., &

Derevensky, J., 2017). Many explanations of the effects of children’s marketing have

been made. There has not, however, been extensive research done into improving the

rhetorical methods used by advertisers in order to further improve marketability of

products. In my research paper, I intend to ask marketers and businesses: “How can

rhetoric within social media advertisements be made more effective?”. This topic is an

extremely important one simply due to the overwhelming majority of people who use

social media and, thus, see advertisements almost constantly. In my research, I intend

to study the rhetorical methods used not only in social media advertising, but also

observe past examples of effective advertising and create new rhetorical methods of

social media advertising. Through studying the rhetoric in advertisements aimed at

children, while also consulting many scholarly sources about children’s advertising, I am

looking to show that there are ways advertising can be improved and made more

effective. I plan to do so by taking information about the effects of advertising, and

applying it to ads currently being used in social media, seeing how they can be

improved with my research.