This article traces the development of acoustic navigation media, or "sonar, " Down into sound" [T]here is more to modernity than meets the eye," writes Emily Thompson (2002, p. 19). No one perhaps knew this better than the operators of underwater listening systems, which were developed in the early twentieth century and which are today known as "sonar." In this article, I suggest that the development of underwater media for ocean navigation and surveillance was motivated and shaped by efforts to control movement across the ocean by military fleets and shipping cartels. These nautical organizations became interested and invested in the use of underwater sound to over-
Throughout the Cold War, the US Navy aggressively explored the sound-making and sound-detecting capacities of cetaceans to help it retain its supremacy in marine battle space. Whales, dolphins, and porpoises were engaged as animals that "see with sound," that produce sophisticated echolocation "clicks," and that harness the ocean's complex acoustic waveguide to detect signals thousands of miles away. Other scholars have touched on the navy's legacy in cetology (whale science), but none have made it their object of study.Our article places this relationship at the center of burgeoning engagements among media studies, sound studies, and marine spatial theory. We focus on the Cold War period, when new interests in submarine warfare facilitated the growth of naval interests in cetology. We understand the dynamic outcomes of these interests in terms of acoustemology-Steven Feld's concept for a theory of what can be known and experienced through situated sonic encounter. At stake in this account is not only the question of cetology's power-laden ways of engaging cetaceans but the role of sound in shifting conceptions of the ocean itself.
As our visual landscape becomes saturated with advertisements and media technologies, the advertising industry is using sound in more ways than ever before to open new acoustic channels between brands and consumers. Through analysis of scholarly literature, advertising industry publications, and three recent advertising campaigns and online commentary around those campaigns, this MRP highlights the way advertisers attempt to use sound and music as a “universal language,” as a way of accessing emotion, and as a technique for engineering responses in audiences. The scholarly literature review identifies two broad approaches to research on music in advertising: the first focuses on harnessing the power of sound to enhance the impact of advertising messages whereas the second approach contextualizes and critiques the use of sound in advertising. Informed by concepts and themes in the scholarly literature, the MRP then turns to an analysis of the use of sound in three specific advertising campaigns: Oreo’ s 2013 “Wonderfilled,” Nike’s 2016 “Unlimited Together,” and Adidas’ 2017 “Original Is Never Finished.” Finally, the MRP identifies dominant perspectives of sound and music among advertising professionals through analysis of fifteen AdAge issues, a popular advertising trade journal, using a coding scheme based on the work of Powers (2010), Scott (1990), and Serazio (2013). Together, these three methods provide an in-depth understanding of the dominant perspectives of sound and music which shape the use of these modalities in the advertising industry.
As our visual landscape becomes saturated with advertisements and media technologies, the advertising industry is using sound in more ways than ever before to open new acoustic channels between brands and consumers. Through analysis of scholarly literature, advertising industry publications, and three recent advertising campaigns and online commentary around those campaigns, this MRP highlights the way advertisers attempt to use sound and music as a “universal language,” as a way of accessing emotion, and as a technique for engineering responses in audiences. The scholarly literature review identifies two broad approaches to research on music in advertising: the first focuses on harnessing the power of sound to enhance the impact of advertising messages whereas the second approach contextualizes and critiques the use of sound in advertising. Informed by concepts and themes in the scholarly literature, the MRP then turns to an analysis of the use of sound in three specific advertising campaigns: Oreo’ s 2013 “Wonderfilled,” Nike’s 2016 “Unlimited Together,” and Adidas’ 2017 “Original Is Never Finished.” Finally, the MRP identifies dominant perspectives of sound and music among advertising professionals through analysis of fifteen AdAge issues, a popular advertising trade journal, using a coding scheme based on the work of Powers (2010), Scott (1990), and Serazio (2013). Together, these three methods provide an in-depth understanding of the dominant perspectives of sound and music which shape the use of these modalities in the advertising industry.
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