Search results

This paper aims to build on Fred Beard’s study of the world’s archives to identity historical advertising and marketing ephemera, published in this journal in 2018, by focussing on resources available in Europe to augment his survey.

Online searching, supplemented by literature emanating from the business archive sector, led to the identification of 177 repositories or online sites in Europe holding advertising and marketing archives of significance for researchers. These are set out in two accompanying tables.

A wide diversity of European archives that are open to researchers is revealed in this paper. Many are the archives of the business themselves, but a number of collecting repositories are also listed, brought together for the first time.

This paper focusses solely on Europe but does not claim to be comprehensive, as the study was time-limited and readers will, no doubt, know of resources that the author has missed. The findings relate mostly to Western Europe, so there is scope for further study to encompass archives in the former eastern bloc. Exploration of sources in Africa, Asia and Latin America would further supplement Beard’s original study.

This research brings together the broadest list of advertising and marketing sources open to researchers in Europe published to date. As Beard’s focus was more on the Americas, this examination redresses the balance with an array of European sources which, it is hoped, will contribute to the greater use of many little-known or under-researched resources by researchers across the world.

The purpose of this study is to respond to the Journal of Historical Research in Marketing special issue call for discussions that can assist advertising and marketing history researchers locate primary sources of interest to their research by describing the resources available through the online family history websites Ancestry.com and FindMyPast.com.

Brief histories of Ancestry and FindMyPast are presented, based on publicly available records and secondary sources. This paper explains the types of data researchers can access via Ancestry.com and FindMypast.com, the costs of access and then provides some examples of how these resources have been used in past research by marketing and advertising historians.

Family history websites such as Ancestry and FindMyPast can provide researchers with access to a wide variety of data sources, such as census and voting records; immigration records; city directories; birth, marriage and death records; military records; and almanacs and gazetteers, but at a cost. In some cases, paying for digital access to records is more convenient, timely and can cost less than travelling to access these same documents in physical form. Depending on the researcher’s geographical location and the country from which records are sought, this can add up to quite a cost savings. When using these sources, it is wise to determine which database contains more of the records you are searching for; Ancestry tends to have better US and Canadian resources, while FindMyPast covers the UK better.

Researchers interested in conducting advertising and marketing history research need access to primary data sources. Given restricted travel budgets and, indeed, restricted travel under COVID-19 conditions, gaining access to primary sources in digital form can allow researchers to continue their work. At any time, gaining access to digital records without having to travel can speed up the research process. Researchers new to the field, and those with many years of experience, can benefit from learning more about family history databases as primary data sources.

The creation and dissemination of fake news can have severe consequences for a company’s brand. Researchers, policymakers and practitioners are eagerly searching for solutions to get us out of the “fake news crisis”. Here, one approach is to use automated tools, such as artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms, to support managers in identifying fake news. The study in this paper demonstrates how AI with its ability to analyze vast amounts of unstructured data, can help us tell apart fake and real news content. Using an AI application, this study examines if and how the emotional appeal, i.e., sentiment valence and strength of specific emotions, in fake news content differs from that in real news content. This is important to understand, as messages with a strong emotional appeal can influence how content is consumed, processed and shared by consumers.

The study analyzes a data set of 150 real and fake news articles using an AI application, to test for differences in the emotional appeal in the titles and the text body between fake news and real news content.

The results suggest that titles are a strong differentiator on emotions between fake and real news and that fake news titles are substantially more negative than real news titles. In addition, the results reveal that the text body of fake news is substantially higher in displaying specific negative emotions, such as disgust and anger, and lower in displaying positive emotions, such as joy.

This is the first empirical study that examines the emotional appeal of fake and real news content with respect to the prevalence and strength of specific emotion dimensions, thus adding to the literature on fake news identification and marketing communications. In addition, this paper provides marketing communications professionals with a practical approach to identify fake news using AI.