An ethical case against “responsible” gambling advertising: A UK context-based, semiotic perspective

Abstract

Gambling advertising has hardly been subjected to moral scrutiny, and ethical evaluation is long overdue. In this paper, I put “responsible gambling” messages of UK marketing campaigns purporting efforts by the gambling industry to encourage safer gambling to ethical scrutiny. A UK context-based “semiotic” analysis serves as a prelude to the assessment of the moral blameworthiness of gambling advertising. Drawing mainly from Kantian deontological ethics and Ross' prima facie moral duties, a theoretical framework built upon the key issues of honesty, the avoidance of deception, non-maleficence, and legitimacy is proposed. The semio-ethical evaluation leads to an unambiguous verdict of moral wrongness. In addition to a novel approach combining semiotics and ethics and radical legislative implications, the study contributes to developing a better appreciation of how a higher-order semiotic reading of textual signs used in gambling advertising can at least help mitigate the social cognitive conditioning of public perception.