My archival research began by looking at newspaper articles from 1960. I found that there was a surprising amount of advertisements for cigarettes and I thought that was very interesting.
As I was looking at this I considered the outrage that would come from an advertisement today for cancer sticks. I thought that it was ironic that advertisements for cigarettes populated the school newspaper so frequently but today such ads would never been seen in newspapers let alone the school newspaper.
I found it interesting that something like cigarettes were much socially accepted at the time because they were not seen as a dangerous and cancer causing device. The presence of the ads in the newspaper compared to the smoking ban on campus displays a huge shift in the values of the people on campus who enforce the rules against smoking and the people who follow those rules.
Not only does the evolution of ads display the values that advertisers target by using appeals to ethos, pathos, and logos, but it shows the changes that come with time.
Although my time in the archives provided we with some interesting finds, I found it very frustrating while I was attempting to decipher what the finds meant. I had no clue how to draw any conclusions about looking at old newspapers until I sat down for some office hours. I needed clarity and after talking it over with my professor, I learned that I needed to research in other places to find out more about the artifacts that I was examining.
It is interesting how times change, but even though everyone knows now that cigs and stoges are pretty much the leading cause of lung cancer and can pretty much kill you, people still smoke them. And by “people” I mean a lot of my friends, my family, the weird guy that pulled up next to me at a stoplight last week, and a lot of random strangers (and although I hate to admit it, I would be lying if I have turned down every cancer stick that someone passed my way).
I always wonder what societal norms we have today will soon be in the same category of cigarettes in the 1960s. Maybe that fact we keep our phones in our faces 24/7… that would be a nice change!