Dividing delights: Children, adults and the search for sales

Consumption is now recognized as a defining characteristic of the lifestyle of the Western world. Consumption and information and communication media together hold a powerful and privileged position in today's culture, society and economy. We call the cultural form that arises from the blending of consumption and information and communication media ‘consumer-media culture’. Advertising, diverse media forms and other meaning-making (semiotic) practices are central to consumer-media culture. They remake the meaning of goods in order to sell them. In complex and contradictory ways, consumer-media culture in its many forms has transformed the lives of children, the family and the school and, ultimately, the ‘nature’