Exam questions 2, 4 & 5OLIVIA COTTERELL

Examination questions

Q2: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Q4: Who would your audience be for your media product?

Q5: How did you attract and address your audience?

Who my target audience was

Gender: predominantly female Age: 15-30 Ethnicity: predominantly white females Education: college students (depends on the age) Social class: Middle class Disability: None in particular Lifestyle: Always listening to rock music in their spare

time, loves going to gigs, a part time job in a music shop.

Why I chose this kind of audience to target?

I chose to target this age range of females as I thought that these ages were the most popular at buying magazines (as people of an older generation may want to read about more formal subjects in a newspaper). I chose to target females because I think that males and females have very different styles and tastes in things like music, fashion etc… Therefore I wanted to focus more on one genders likes and preferences over the others.

Targeting young females (depending on the age) would be a good task for me as I am a teenage female myself so I can appreciate what kind of things that they like to see/hear/read, so this put me at an advantage.

My example target audience individual

Age: 18 Gender: Female Ethnicity: White/British Social class: Middle Class Education: College Disability: None Lifestyle: Attends college 4 days a week and has a part time weekend job at HMV (a

music store). Any free time she has she spends listening to rock music and she is forever searching for gigs/concerts to attend because she loves rock music.

Style: Her favourite colour is black and she loves to wear leather jackets. She likes to stand out from the crowd and be different by mixing leather with tassels and lace etc…

‘A day in the life of Eva’

*ADD VIDEO*

Sub culture groups

A typical sub culture group that rock music magazines tend to target are ‘punk rockers’, ‘rock chicks’, ‘goths’, ‘loud mouth’ etc… So quite a few extravagant groups of people. This is usually quite an obvious trait as we see the models on the front covers of rock magazines wearing similar clothing (their look inspires their readers). They all like to stand out from the crowd and wear what they please.

The vast majority of the females who are part of these sub culture groups like to wear a lot of dark make-up e.g. black eyeliner, black/red lipstick, black nail polish etc… To give themselves a very dark and dangerous look. For many years a lot of male punk rockers also like to wear dark make-up like eyeliner therefore their sub culture male audiences also like to do the same. This is because they like to fit in and create their own ‘styles’.

My magazines sub culture groups

Similarly to other rock music magazines, my sub culture target audience group would be ‘punk rock chicks’, ‘rock chicks’ etc… This is because that is the look my model on the front cover is portraying. Therefore this is appealing to my sub culture groups.

I also targeted them by the colour themes of my magazine (black, white and red), the articles that they would enjoy reading (which I found out with my questionnaire from my focus group) and the general look to the magazine.

Representation: Age

The way I represented age in my magazine was with the age appropriate articles I wrote about (as the cover lines displayed on the front cover) like make-up tips, up coming tours and also including free posters. I thought this was an age appropriate gesture as people of an older generation may not be interested in free posters.

Another way age is represented in my magazine was because the models that I used are the same age as my target audience. Therefore the readers may find my magazine more appealing as they feel comfortable in the fact that it suits them and their age.

Also the clothes that my models are wearing throughout my magazine are also ‘trendy’ rock clothes. This will appeal to my target audience age group as they are more likely to want to keep up to date with fashion.

Representation: Gender

I chose to target predominantly females for this magazine (although it may also appeal to males too). The reason that I chose to do this was because males and females have very different tastes in things like fashion, hobbies and even music. Therefore I wanted to focus more on one genders likes and preferences rather than just generally covering both.

One way I represented females in my magazine was by writing an article about ‘rock make-up tips’. This article about make-up is stereotypically a female interest rather than a males and I thought this would be an interest to my target audience.

Another way I represented the female gender in my magazine was by having the majority of images and articles throughout the magazine about females. My front cover, contents page, double page spread and most of the free posters were all images of females. I thought that this would be of an interest to my female audience because they may idolise and feel like they can relate to female artists more than male artists. This is because they may live similar lifestyles, they can follow their fashion trends etc…

As my main target audience are females, I have included images of males in there too (my free posters inside) as they may prefer to have larger images of males to keep. On the other hand this may have the same effect on males, they may enjoy reading about female artists and being given large posters of females. This is because females find males attractive and vise versa. This is evidently shown through the male/female gaze by Laura Mulvey. Therefore, overall feature this targets a wider audience range.

Representation: Ethnicity/social class/disability.

My main ethnic target groups was predominantly white females. This is represented by me taking photographs of white people. This may attract my main ethnic group more as this is something they can relate to.

The social class that I was targeting was middle class people. This is why I made my magazine a reasonably affordable price so that they could afford to purchase it each month. I chose to target this social class group as that is the most popular group. Although this is not made obvious through my magazine.

My magazine isn’t particularly targeted at any type of disability as I think that is hard to portray. Also I didn’t want to target any specific disability as I didn’t want to segregate any different groups or forms of disabilitys.

Representation: Colour theme

My house style consisted of three main colours: Black, red and white. I chose to use these colours as my colour theme because they are very

bold colours so they will stand out off of the shelves in stores for people to see. Another reason why I chose these colours was because they are very rock related themed colours. They’re very dark, powerful, dangerous colours and this will appeal to my target audience. I chose to use such bold colours as they represent key traits that my target audience like e.g. danger, blood, gothic, darkness etc… Also when I carried out my questionnaire, this house style was the most popular one chosen by a selection of people from my target audience. Therefore I know these colours appeal to them more than others would (like pink or green).

Representation: Font

Throughout my magazine I used a lot of bold fonts. I chose to use these styles of fonts as they stand out off of the page so they’re easy to read, so this is part of the codes and conventions of a magazine. Also they represent my target audience well because they like things to be big, bold, outgoing and drastic. So I tried to portray this as best as I could through the fonts that I chose to use. This represents rock music well as other fonts would be used for other genres of music magazines like pop.

Representation: Photographs

I decided to take a range of different photographs for my magazine as my target audience answered in my questionnaire that they prefer to see more images rather than too much writing.

In the photographs I took, the models wore clothing that represents the genre of rock music. They wore a lot of dark clothing, rock t-shirts, black jeans, dark makeup, chockers (accessories) so they had that overall edgy rock look to them. This would be eye catching for my target audience as they would like to follow these fashion traits and like what my model’s were wearing.

I also chose to include 6 free posters in my magazine as a feature. This would again attract my target audience as it was a free gift for them. The images that I chose to use for those posters were of the girl band, the main artist and of a male playing a guitar. I chose to use this images as they’re all different in their own way and I thought they would all appeal to my target audience.

Representation: Language

I used different types of language to attract my target audience. I thought that this was a really important to use the correct language because I chose to use the ‘wrong type of language’ for a rock magazine, my target audience wouldn’t enjoy reading the articles.

“Rock chick” – rather than “female artist” “Rock star” – rather than “musician” “Epic”- rather than “exciting” There are a few examples of different rock styled terms that I used rather than just

basic words that may be used in other magazines like pop. I also used punctuation like exclamation marks so that the phrases and words

sounded more dramatic and loud, as this is how my target audience speak and address things.

How did I attract my target audience?

With all of the representations and reasons why I chose to do them in the slides above, they are mainly the reasons how I attracted my audience. I tried to use the correct tone of language, colour themes, fonts, images etc… All so that it was eye catching for my target audience. One important feature that I used for my magazine was including free items inside (potters). This would have attracted my target audience as they feel as though they were getting more for their money by receiving a gift inside the already purchased magazine. Using direct address in my main image on the front cover, this would have attracted my audience to the magazine as the image of the model would draw them in. As the model looks straight into the camera, The audience on the receiving end feel as though she is looking straight at them which instantly puts the magazine on a more personal level with the reader.

Overall with all of the different features and techniques I used to create my magazine, all together it would have attracted my audience because I created it to suit them.

How did I address my audience?

The main image on my front cover that I chose to use, my model is using direct address and looking strait at the camera for the picture. Using direct address through my main image addresses my audience because they feel like the model is really looking at them and trying to get their attention. Also the language I used throughout my magazine was used to address my target audience as I thought that using the correct tone of language would attract them on a more personal level as this is the language they use on a day to day and what they’re used to.