CONSUMPTION CULTURE AND CHILDIFICATION IN ADVERTISING FROM THE PROTESTANT ETHIC TO INFANTILIST ETHOS: AN ANALYSIS ON E-COMMERCE SITE ADVERTISEMENTS

Abstract

The meaning and balance of production and consumption activities have undergone transformation throughout the historical process. The general consensus in the literature is that consumption has gained importance over production and has deviated from being a rational action to becoming a symbolic and indicative phenomenon. Within this transformation, the general values system that guides social relationships in the new era, also known as the consumer society, has been intensely questioned. Infantilist ethos, based on childification in various aspects of life, is one of the answers obtained in response to this questioning and establishes a new values system based on childhood in place of the Protestant ethic, which is considered the spirit of early capitalism. This study intends to show how ads, as a mirror of social relationships, involves infantilist ethos features like speed, easiness, simplicity and avoidance of responsibility. In the study focused on e-commerce website advertisements, 85 ads published by Turkey’s two largest e-commerce sites Trendyol and Hepsiburada in the last two years were analyzed using content analysis method. The research findings indicate that elements constituting the infantilist ethos are heavily utilized in the advertisements and the most frequently used elements are convenience and speed.