« Eszter.com »              « E-LIST »              « Research »              « Gallery »

Welcome to Eszter's Weblog Here you will find my thoughts and comments about all sorts of things from sociology, the Internet, academia, teaching, research, books and movies to current events, fun Web stuff, art, gadgets and just about anything else that comes to mind. If the inspiration strikes you during your visit, feel free to leave a note via the comments link.

[Previous entry: "NPM in TANF"] [Main Index] [Next entry: "Similar yet different"] "How pink can you get?" 02/05/2003 Entry Mother Jones has a nice little snippet critiquing various corporate strategies to profit from people's concerns about breast cancer. There are lots of pink ribbon campaigns these days and some are more genuine than others. When makers of vacuum cleaners pledge to give one dollar to the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation for each pink ribbon vacuum sold (retail price around $200-$300) you have to wonder about their commitment to the cause. Previously, I've commented on BMW's Ultimate Drive program, I think they do a better job of connecting to the cause for real and there is a better awareness aspect to that campaign which I do think is quite important. I also found KitchenAid's Cook for the Cure program a bit more convincing since they pledge $50 for each appliance bought, do not cap their overall donation where the vacuum cleaner company does, and I do not recall any price discrepencies between the Cook for the Cure products and the other equivalent products when I last checked. To recap, I think awareness campaigns are really important because people do need to keep hearing about breast cancer to realize that they need to go get checked regularly. Early detection can be a crucial component of fighting cancer and people need to know that. But when corporations see no limit to exploiting people's fear of and concern about this cause it gets bothersome. February 2003 S M T W T F S             1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28   Links of Interest How to win the Nobel Prize Click for Mammogram Play "Match That Blogger" Blogathon 03 Archives Recent entries » Extending Internet access to low-income communities » Shattered » The story behind red alert » Weekend trivia » Would you cut up a book? » Pizza, cholesterol check, the works » Welcome » A different kind of road trip » Allowing comments on blogs » Paddling for bandwidth » The right to a soda.. at any price » Online communities » Silly.. but we all do it » Paris notes » New book on Social Inequality Previous entries May, 2002 - July, 2003 Blogger info Eszter Hargittai Communication Studies Department Northwestern University Evanston, Illinois 60208 blog at eszter dot com Blogs I Visit The small print A few words on what I will and will not post on this blog (taken from my E-LIST entry of January 2, 2002). I have nothing against posting commercial sites as long as they come highly recommended. In fact, I'm quite interested in improving informed consumer choice so I'm very curious to hear about good experiences with online retailers. What I will refrain from posting are sites that require plug-ins or programs that are painful to deal with. Example: I will not post anything that only works with RealOne/RealPlayer as that program is intrusive and annoying beyond belief and I am not willing to reinstall it on my machine (it was hard enough to get rid of it completely in the first place) nor do I want to encourage others to have it. If your site has audio content, please make it available in multiple formats or choose one that can be run on multiple players (e.g. .avi). Feel free to link to my Weblog with or without this graphic button. http://www.esztersblog.com

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.