Esther Rozendaal's PhD thesis has been awarded the 2012 Dissertation Award by the Children, Adolescents, and the Media Division of the ICA.
Esther Rozendaal's PhD thesis has been awarded the 2012 Dissertation Award by the Children, Adolescents, and the Media Division of the ICA. The dissertation, entitled "Advertising Literacy and Children's Susceptibility to Advertising" was selected from all European and US nominations of this year.
The members of the award committee applauded the strong contribution her work has made to the field. "The work that she pursued has the conceptual rigor, methodological sophistication, and theoretical creativity that characterize exceptional research." Esther Rozendaal will receive the award at the annual meeting of the International Communication Association this May in Phoenix, Arizona.
The dissertation
Rozendaal's dissertation covers two areas of research that expand our knowledge on children's advertising literacy (i.e., advertising-related knowledge). The first part addresses the development of children's advertising literacy into adult-like levels. The second part focuses on the role of advertising literacy in reducing children's susceptibility to advertising effects. In doing so, this dissertation not only deepens the existing theoretical and empirical insights on children's advertising literacy, but also contributes substantially to the societal and political debate on children and advertising. When debating the fairness of child-directed advertising, a crucial first step is to obtain an accurate picture of children's level of advertising literacy and of how this literacy is related to their advertising susceptibility.
