The new constitution of Mongolia was adopted on January 13, 1992. It stated that respecting and upholding human rights, freedom, and justice are crucial in Mongolia.

Mongolia has transformed into a vibrant democracy since 1990. Over the past 30 years, a free market economic system has become well established and thousands of commercials have been produced to attract and retain consumers. Advertisement law of Mongolia was passed in 2002. In the statement of law Article 7 – “Illegal advertisement”, the following advertisements shall be considered as an illegal advertisement: “7.4.5. Used the phrase, comparison or description that assaulted nationality, language, race, social origin, social status, age, sex, profession, education, religion or opinions.”

In the current research database and library of Mongolian Universities written in the Mongolian language, there is no empirical study regarding how consumers comprehend content, visual expression, phases of commercials that abused human rights, including discrimination. Article 14.2 in the new constitution of Mongolian affirmed that “No person shall be discriminated against based on ethnic origin, language, race, age, sex, religion, opinion, and education.

Therefore, in this study the following two objectives were set:

How an advertisement audience receives the content and description that discriminated against human beings.

Evaluate Mongolian students’ knowledge and sense of discrimination.

We undertook random sampling with University students. Participants were exposed to three advertisements.

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Figure 1

The first print advertisement was about racial discrimination. Several famous media companies published articles which considered this Dove print advertisement as racial discrimination. This advertisement for using Dove body wash was criticised for implying that ‘dirty’ black women could be ‘cleaned’ into a white woman.

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Figure 2

The second one was about body shape differences. The real beauty campaign rolls out seven different shapes of Dove-branded plastic body-wash bottles. Advertisement agents imply the idea that different shapes of bottles could represent different body shapes of women. But for some, this symbolic expression is offensive and they cannot aesthetically represent the beauty of a woman.

Figure 3

The third imagery of print advertisement was about discrimination on religion and culture. In different religions and cultures, people are sensitive to religious and cultural expressions. Specifically, Saudi Arabia Muslims regard the modifications of religious and cultural symbols as a form of disrespect and prejudice. The majority of Arabians viewed Starbucks’ new logo as racist and discriminatory based on religious differences. The reason is not all Arabians are strictly ruled by religious dress codes. Moreover, when a company thinks about Arabian women, they annotated (compared) Arabian women in Burqa as a kind of negative stereotyping.

Mongolians have a long history and unique culture. Therefore, most Mongolian people perceive discrimination on human body shape, mimicking on religious or cultural difference and racy expression as offensive and hurting someone’s feeling. As a result, the three advertisements mentioned above were chosen for this study.

The purpose was to determine whether the participants perceive the above advertisements as discriminatory or not. A total of 316 questionnaires were collected. Focus group discussions were then conducted to examine the further issues obtained from the results of quantitative analysis.

Seven questions were about general demographic questions, the remaining nine questions were about the correspondent’s knowledge of human rights abuse and discrimination. Some examples of the questions were: In which grade you are studying? household income, gender, residential location, etc were asked. Following up general demographic questions, questions designed to clarify explicit and implicit knowledge of participant’s human rights abuse. For example: do you think this print advertisement implies racial discrimination? Do you think this print advertisement discriminates against people based on their body shape? Do you think this print advertisement discriminates against people based on their religious and cultural differences? 85 (26.9%) were collected from fresher students, 69 (21.8%) were collected from sophomore students, 32 (10.1%) were collected from junior students, 45 (14.2%) were collected from senior students, and 85 (26.9%) were collected from graduate students. Of the total sample, 69.9% were female and 30.1% were male. In terms of household income, most of them 35.4 percent were 300-600$. 261 (82.6%) were collected from Ulaanbaatar city, 55 (17.4%) were collected from rural areas. According to the survey, 95.3 percent of the respondents use social media channels.

In cumulative percentage, 54% of the respondents recognised the discrimination.

The results of the current study show that students are aware of discrimination in advertisements, regardless of gender, location, type of residence, marital status, or source of information. However, our finding was that there are differences in perceptions and knowledge of human rights abuses depending on income level (55% recognised discrimination) and education level (60% recognised discrimination).

The evidence of our empirical study appears to show that critical reading of advertisements were varied depending on income level. In particular, the results of our quantitative research have proven that low-income participants (73% of total respondents) have a low level of awareness, sensitivity, and knowledge about human rights abuse.

Surprisingly, perhaps, graduate students were less able to recognise discrimination. They were less critical of Figure 1 and 3 than of Figure 2. This may be down to the nature of the discrimination or to other factors. We aim to study this further. Our study has revealed a level of uncritical reading of advertisements amongst the students we surveyed. We propose first that Mongolian businesses be educated on human rights in commercial contexts, including discriminatory advertisements and second, that younger people as they become consumers must be educated in engaging with advertisements critically and ethically.

Please see the original article on the link https://www.cambridge.org/.../critical-reading-of.../

BY: Enkhbold Chuluunbaatar is a multidisciplinary PhD who is interested in marketing and management, service design, industry investigation, entrepreneurship, strategic management. He received his PhD degree from National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan and specialized in creative industries investigation. Currently, he is working as a senior lecturer at the National University of Mongolia.

Urandelger Gantulga received her Master and Ph.D degree from Chonbuk National University, in South Korea in 2013 and 2017 respectively. She is currently working as a senior lecturer at the National University of Mongolia. Her main areas of research interests are service marketing, business to business marketing, consumer behavior and e-commerce.

Erdenedalai Batulzii received her political science Master and Ph.D degree in National University of Mongolia, in 2010 and 2015. Currently, she is working as a senior lecturer at the National University of Mongolia. Her main research interests are democracy, political party, election, voter’s behavior, human right and political research methods.