Digital consumer and gender bias

Psychologists Dr Magdalena Zawisza and Dr Craig Owen discuss the fascinating topic of digital consumer and gender bias. This talk will focus on big picture questions such as: How are women and men portrayed on the internet in digital advertisements and in social media? What are the psychological effects of such portrayal on us as digital consumers? What is the role of the algorithmic bias in shaping consumers’ online and offline experience? Can digital advertising be regulated in the same way that traditional advertising is?

Dr Craig Owen will follow up with an empirical research case. He will pull back the curtain on the seductive but potentially harmful marketing messages of Flat Tummy Co., a company that sells appetite suppressant products to women with the promise of achieving slim ideals. Presenting women with an impossible dilemma between ideals and reality, Flat Tummy Co. offers an ostensibly freeing and simple, but ultimately dishonest, solution: “to achieve feminine ideals without the associated work, buy our products”.