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The purpose of this research was to investigate the nature of the coverage of health issues in magazines, and specifically to compare the coverage in men's and women's magazines Content analysis was used to examine the health information in the six upmarket magazines (Cosmopolitan, Elle, Esquire, GQ, Marie‐Claire, and Maxim) selected for the study, with a wide range of criteria used to analyse the health information contained in them. Interviews with four of the health editors from the sample were conducted in order to elucidate some of the main findings. Unexpectedly, the differences in health information coverage are greater between the individual magazines than between the total women's and men's groups. Overall, men's magazines appear to treat health information in a more informative manner than women's, although both groups provide unusually high levels of information required to change their readers health behaviour. With this level of information provision it is noteworthy that many of these magazines have no clear health information policy, and that their editors have no qualifications or training in either health or science.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the impact gendered media representations of entrepreneurs may have on the reality of female entrepreneurship. It analyses the representation of women entrepreneurs in a women ' s magazine. Media representations influence, firstly, whether women perceive entrepreneurship as desirable and attainable, and thus impact the strength and direction of their entrepreneurial aspirations. Secondly, media representations shape how key stakeholders such as bankers or clients view and interact with female business owners, thereby impacting women entrepreneurs’ business relations and opportunities.

The paper reviews research on media representations of women entrepreneurs, gender inequalities in entrepreneurial activity and work before presenting an in-depth qualitative analysis of a magazine series reporting on female entrepreneurs.

The authors’ analysis reveals how the woman ' s magazine in question portrays female entrepreneurship as focused on traditionally female activities and pursuits and as domestically-centred. Relating these findings to evidence on gender inequalities in entrepreneurial activity, the paper raises important questions about the impact of media representations of women entrepreneurs.

The paper demonstrates the benefits of understanding entrepreneurial activity as work and includes analytical perspectives from the sociology of work in the analysis of media representations of entrepreneurship.

The purpose of this paper is to critically explore media representations of opting-out and how these present particular professional identities as appropriate career choices for women. Through an examination of a UK women's magazine the paper looks at how opting-out in favour of work based on traditionally female housewifery skills and attributes is communicated and justified in the texts.

The paper adopts a social identity approach to a qualitative content analysis of 17 consecutive monthly magazine features.

While the magazine frames women's career choices as unlimited, identity is presented as gendered, biologically fixed and therefore inescapable. The magazine presents opting out as an appropriate route for women based on a “female identity” grounded in traditional female attributes of caring, hosting, baking, etc. However, this leaves women's work open to potentially negative interpretations of these traditional female attributes. The texts appeal to a post-feminist discourse and imply that problems experienced by women in public sphere careers are partly the outcome of the feminism of the 1960s and 1970s.

Future research should study how readers interpret the texts.

The paper demonstrates the explanatory potential of using of a social identity approach in the analysis of media texts.

Medicalization is the increasing social control of the everyday by medical experts. It is a key concept in the sociology of health and illness because it sees medicine as not merely a scientific endeavor, but a social one as well. Medicalization is a “process whereby more and more of everyday life has come under medical dominion, influence, and supervision” (Zola, 1983, p. 295); previously these areas of everyday life were viewed in religious or moral terms (Conrad & Schneider, 1980; Weeks, 2003). More specifically, medicalization is the process of “defining a problem in medical terms, using medical language to describe a problem, adopting a medical framework to understand a problem, or using a medical intervention to ‘treat’ it” (Conrad, 1992, p. 211). Sociologists have used this concept to describe the shift in the site of decision-making and knowledge about health from the lay public to the medical profession.

Describes the differences between informative and non‐informative product advertisements. Uses a sample of 242 advertisements from the October 1981 issues of the UK's highest circulation women's magazines – Women, Woman's Weekly, Woman's Own and Woman's Realm – to analyse the content of advertisements. Concludes inter alia that: Advertisements of less than half a page contained the highest proportion of information “cues.”; The least informative ads were for personal care. The highest proportion of “cues” were found in ads for products in the furniture, furnishings and appliances sectors.

We've been living in a homogenous world, you know a world centered on and seen through the language perceptions of men. The consequences of this for everything that we take for granted, for all our assumptions are very deep. Feminism, in the sense I use it, is a radical complexity thought in the process of transforming itself. It is a kind of breaking open of not only the oversimplification but of the lies and the silence in which so much of human experience has been cloaked. Too much has been left out, too much has been unmentioned, too much has been made taboo. Too many connections have been disguised or denied. (Interview with Adrienne Rich, Christopher Street, Jan. 1977, pp. 9–16.)

The purpose of this study is to examine the influence of fashion magazine content on consumer loyalty behavior and to analyze the differences in fashion magazine content preference and loyalty tendency toward fashion magazines among the identified fashion consumer groups according to their level of fashion innovativeness and opinion leadership.

A structured questionnaire was developed to collect data on the variables in the study. The data analysis consisted of exploratory factor analysis, multiple regression, multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA), analysis of variance (ANOVA), and descriptive statistics including means, frequencies, and percentiles.

Six fashion magazine content dimensions were identified. The results revealed that fashion magazine content was significantly related to loyalty tendency toward a fashion magazine. In addition, respondents' preference for fashion magazine content and their loyalty tendency varied according to fashion consumer group and their level of fashion innovativeness and opinion leadership.

The study has practical implications for fashion magazine editors and marketers regarding how to incorporate fashion magazine readers' wants and needs in relation to the magazine's content, how to position their magazines for targeting different groups of shoppers, and how to allocate the features of fashion magazines in order to promote readership and loyalty toward the fashion magazine.

Despite the importance of fashion magazines as an information source, little research has been conducted to analyze fashion magazine content and its influence on loyalty tendency.

Advertisements are the first point of contact a marketer has with a prospective consumer. It is at this stage that a marketer gets an opportunity to leave an impression in the minds of a reader and to differentiate a reader from a prospective customer. Marketers achieve this objective with the help of two tools of advertising i.e. attractiveness cues and information cues. Given the limitation of time, space and financial resources marketers have been forced into a tradeoff between information cues and attractiveness cues. This tradeoff has given rise to skepticism in the minds of customers and policy makers concerning the balance between the two cues and resulting ethical issues. This paper aims to carry out a content analysis of advertisements in magazines in order to study this tradeoff between information and attractiveness cues in advertisements.

To pursue the research objective, it was decided to collect data through content analysis of advertisements. To judge the level of informative and attractiveness cues in advertisements, classification by Resnik and Stern and Pollay along with imagery questions were used. The classification determines the level of advertising information based on 14 criteria or cues. The classification is an established baseline and has also been tested for reliability in other cultures. To collect data it was decided to use magazine advertisements as these are a preferred means for advertising OTC drugs. In order to select the sample various Indian and US magazines were reviewed. Indian magazines focusing entirely on health and women could not be found; therefore two popular women's magazines were chosen which discussed health topics. For interpreting the content of the advertisements two coders, who were trained in marketing research, were chosen. Data collection resulted in 170 unique advertisements across India and USA.

The results of the study highlighted that, although both US and Indian OTC advertisements were trading off in favor of attractiveness cues, Indian advertisements were more imbalanced. Indian advertisements on an average have 4.83 attractiveness cues out of 6.60 cues per advertisements while US advertisements have 4.55 attractiveness cues out of 7.54 cues per advertisement. Indian advertisements not only have on an average fewer information cues, but also fared badly in terms of the type of cues. The US marketers were found to be more socially responsible in terms of advertisements ethics as compared to Indian marketers in the context of the OTC drugs industry.

The study was limited to OTC drugs; a more detailed study should be carried out to compare advertising content by specific product categories. Difference in scope of magazines used in this study may have influenced the adequacy of sample, as profile of target customers in the two magazines was a little different.

The results indicated that the Indian OTC advertisers needed to re‐evaluate the industry standards and become more ethical and socially responsible to give the industry a global outlook and acceptance.

The paper highlights the need for companies to adopt a proactive and socially responsible attitude and improve information content of Indian OTC advertisements as per international industry standards.

The paper will be of value to corporate and social policy makers and also to marketers.