“I’m Like Literally Addicted to This": The Implementation of Emotional Manipulation Strategies in Digital Advertising

This essay won or received an honorable mention for The Boothe Prize for excellence in first-year writing. The Boothe Prize recognizes and rewards outstanding expository and argumentative writing by undergraduate students in first-year classes that satisfy the WR 1 requirement. In each award-winning essay, student writers demonstrate clarity of argument, excellent integration of research-based evidence, and compelling prose style.
Juliet Bell reflects on her own experiences as a consumer, interrogates the emotional tactics employed by digital
advertisers, and guides us through the ways in which digital advertisements work as emotional triggers that are carefully curated to influence our decision-making process. Even so, the author concludes by offering a glimmer of hope that having a better understanding of how advertisers manipulate our emotions can pave the way to healthier and happier approaches to consumerism.