Measuring Social Values: A Content Analysis of Sunday Comics and Underground Comix

This research seeks to document the social distribution of materialism as a value in American society by content-analyzing character and commercial symbols in Sunday comic strips and underground comix books. Unexpectedly, underground comix showed more concern with and more positive portrayal of materialism and more endorsement of wealth and material comfort as goals. The findings indicate the pervasiveness of a consumer culture in the mid-twentieth century and suggest that the baby boom generation, reared in material abundance, may be unabashedly materialistic. Content analysis of media such as comic art is advocated as a technique for measuring the distribution of social values of concern to consumer researchers.

[1]  W. Henry.  Cultural Values do Correlate with Consumer Behavior , 1976 .

[2]  F. Nicosia,et al.  Toward a Sociology of Consumption , 1976 .

[3]  R. Flacks,et al.  The Changing Social Base of the American Student Movement , 1971 .

[4]  Jill H. Kasen.  Whither the Self-Made Man? Comic Culture and the Crisis of Legitimation in the United States , 1980 .

[5]  Leisure and popular culture in transition , 1975 .

[6]  J. Levin,et al.  Hippie Values: An Analysis of the Underground Press , 1970 .

[7]  A. Berger.  Comics and Culture , 1971 .

[8]  H. H. Kassarjian.  Content Analysis in Consumer Research , 1977 .

[9]  R. Belk.  Worldly Possessions: Issues and Criticisms , 1983 .

[10]  C. Reich.  The Greening of America , 1970 .

[11]  R. Belk,et al.  Materialism and Magazine Advertising During the Twentieth Century , 1985 .

[12]  C. Sanders.  Icons of the Alternate Culture: The Themes and Functions of Underground Comix* , 1975 .

[13]  Social Values and the Sunday Comics: a Content Analysis , 1983 .

[14]  Donald E. Vinson,et al.  The Role of Personal Values in Marketing and Consumer Behavior , 1977 .

[15]  J. Gutman.  A Means-End Chain Model Based on Consumer Categorization Processes , 1982 .

[16]  M. Friedman.  Are Americans Becoming More Materialistic? a Look At Changes in Expressions of Materialism in the Popular Literature of the Post-World War Ii Era , 1985 .

[17]  Ronald Levitt Lanyi.  Trina, Queen of the Underground Cartoonists. An Interview , 1979 .

[18]  Ralph K. White,et al.  Value Analysis: The Nature And Use Of The Method , 2012 .

[19]  M. Friedman,et al.  The Changing Language of a Consumer Society: Brand Name Usage in Popular American Novels in the Postwar Era , 1985 .

[20]  Daniel J. Boorstin,et al.  The Americans: The Democratic Experience , 1974 .

[21]  R. Flacks.  Social and Cultural Meanings of Student Revolt: Some Informal Comparative Observations , 1970 .

[22]  A. Mattelart,et al.  How to Read Donald Duck: Imperialist Ideology in the Disney Comic , 1971 .

[23]  R. Belk,et al.  Images of Ourselves: The Good Life in Twentieth Century Advertising , 1985 .

[24]  Russell W. Belk,et al.  Three Scales to Measure Constructs Related to Materialism: Reliability, Validity, and Relationships to Measures of Happiness , 1984 .

[25]  Orrin E. Klapp,et al.  Collective Search for Identity , 1971 .

[26]  David W. Stewart,et al.  Consumer Behavior and the Practice of Marketing , 1980 .