Contemporary pseudo-events: An analysis of the advertising in "Wired" magazine

The dot-corn and technology boom of the mid-to-late 1990s captured the imagination of the public in both the way they thought about and invested in the future. This study looks at the role the advertising of Wired magazine played in promoting the dot-com boom. Daniel Boorstin (1987) claims that pseudo-events, or events that are manufactured, set society's expectations to levels that cannot be attained. This study examines 75 advertisements taken from issues of Wired published in 1995 and uses criteria outlined by Boorstin to determine if these advertisements are pseudo-events. Traits of the design of Wired magazine framed by Stewart Millar (1998) are used to examine the advertisements and relate them to the content of the magazine itself. This study found that the majority of the advertisements studied can be classified as a pseudo-event under Boorstin's definition and that the advertisements did share design traits in common with the magazine as a whole. These findings support the argument that Wired both contained pseudo-events and acted as a pseudo-event, which helped to heighten society's expectations during the mid-to-late 1990s.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts (MA)

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Communication Studies

Grantor dc:publisher

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Year

2002

Author dc:creator

• Schackman, Guy Joseph

Contributors dc:contributor

• Dolores Valencia Tanno

Statement dc:rights

• IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Language dc:language

English

Identifier

https://oasis.library.unlv.edu/rtds/1467

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:oasis.library.unlv.edu:rtds-2466