Meet Erica Weintraub Austin
In defense of children

Office number 200A in Murrow East is the office of professor of communication Erica Weintraub-Austin. The most noticeable thing to anyone entering the office … is dozens of brightly colored race cars, trucks, banks, and caps. They are toys in the sense they might delight a child—but each item is a marketing tool and most of them bear a name such as Red Dog, Budweiser, or some other beer. “What mature adult would use this?” Professor Austin asks as she holds up a plastic beer mug and pushes a button near a frog on the lid. The frog, in an animated voice replies, “Bud…. wise….er.”

The toys in this office are research tools. “Determine how much media exposure a child gets,” says Professor Austin, “and then let them choose between the toys. Far too often they are attracted to the beer logos. Kids see a lot of beer ads in videos and magazines and there is no question they are responding positively.”

Although beer advertising plays a big role in Professor Austin’s research, it is part of a bigger picture. She investigates how children make decisions about many important topics such as health, what they will be when they grow up and whether they will be politically involved. It’s an interest triggered by a job she held early on after completing her B.A. in journalism with an emphasis in the arts at George Washington University. She chose her major thinking she would like to publish a music magazine. “At the time, I was doing public relations for a school,” Austin says. “I happened to be in a kindergarten class one day and students were suggesting words for an assignment. It was near the holidays so words like ‘Santa Claus’ and ‘Cabbage Patch Dolls’ were volunteered and then one child suggested ‘kidnapped.’ ‘Kidnapped,’ I thought. ‘Where did that come from?’ The next morning when I pulled out the milk carton it occurred to me. While they came up with this idea to find missing children, it was having a different impact. That’s when I became fascinated by intended and unintended media messages on children.”

Austin’s focus became more crystallized when she did her master’s and Ph.D. work at Stanford. “I knew I wanted to do some kind of teaching, but I also wanted to write and I wanted to do research and I didn’t want the research focus to be limited.” Through her association with the late Steven Chaffee, professor emeritus of communication at Stanford, Austin realized health issues and political socialization were mutually compatible from a research perspective.

In October, Professor Austin’s findings on alcohol advertising were heard in a high profile way. She was invited to testify before the New York State Assembly during hearings to determine whether the alcohol industry targets underage people and whether there should be state measures to counter the ads. Before the sessions legislators might have wondered whether there is evidence that children are influenced by alcohol ads; they were not still wondering after Professor Austin’s presentation. “We’ve seen over and over that the more they want to be like the people in the ads, the more they tend to believe that drinking alcohol will bring them rewards like popularity, fun and happiness,” she told the lawmakers. “An analysis of 757 beverage ads over a six month period from November 1999 to April 2000 showed that 4 out of every 5 beverages advertised in magazines popular with teenagers was an alcoholic beverage.”

For Austin, the testimony in New York is representative of the responsibility she feels to share her findings. “I want to do research that has practical implications. That’s very important to me,” she says.

Austin joined the faculty of the Edward R. Murrow School of Communication fourteen years ago and finds both the university and Pullman a very comfortable and natural fit. Having grown up in State College, Pennsylvania, with parents who were professors at Penn State, the campus environment is second nature. “I think we have the best communication program to be a member of in the country,” Austin says. “We are very strong in research and professional training and there is tremendous respect and collaboration and I think students benefit from that.”

Erica and her husband, Bruce, a statistical consultant and data management systems analyst, met in the orchestra during Erica’s first week at George Washington University. “He played tuba and I played trumpet. In a normal orchestral arrangement we shouldn’t even have been sitting together,” she says with a smile. Fate had its way and now there are two more reasons why Professor Austin will likely feel a continued motivation for research; Noah, 7, and Jimmy, 11. Yes, they do own a television set. No, the boys don’t watch much TV. They do not have cable or a satellite dish and everyone knows what off-air reception is like on the Palouse.