Violence Hidden in the Commercials Discourse on Social Media Sociological Reading

Abstract

The study aimed to answer the main study question: What are the impacts and forms of hidden violence in commercials discourse? The researchers used the qualitative approach, and a number of in-depth interviews were conducted, distributed into focus groups consisting of 25 individuals, five heads of families, and three specialists in management and marketing in the governorates of Bethlehem. The study reached the following conclusions: Violence hidden in the Commercials discourse appeared when the social media surfers were involved in social media and raising their volume of consumption, reaching waste on one hand and extravagance on the other, which resulted in anxiety as indicated by the interviewees. Moreover, the interviewees exhibited the extent to which they were impacted by violence hidden in commercial discourse when the latter permeated their social status, which is always navigating in search of their absent identity among the attractive commercial. The interviewees could not restrain themselves from moving through the commercial content. Furthermore, violence hidden in commercial discourse manifested itself in arousing the desire hidden inside them. They expressed that they oftentimes find themselves unconsciously involved in search of attractive trademarks and other competing ones. Besides, violence hidden in commercial discourse had an impact on the predominance of foreign products and the melting of domestic ones. It was noticeable that most of the interviewees purchased the foreign product at the expense of the domestic one. This creates a state of a feeling of contradiction between the status of fluid global values and the landmarks of a scattered national identity. Finally, the two researchers noticed that the power of violence hidden in commercial discourse had transcended the roles of many of the classical sociological variables. Therefore, the variable of controlling the electronic virtual context had a powerful impact that contributed to spreading consumption and the exercise of power on social media sites.

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