2 - How does your media product represent particular social groups?

For my media product, I wanted the tone of my full product to be influential to a particular social group. My magazine had been made to represent and symbolise my audience to many different social groups. One of them is aiming my magazine at a particular class. I decided to aim my magazine in between the middle-class and high working class (C1). Reasons to this were because I didn't want my magazine to come across as unprofessional, or to look amateur.  I therefore had made my magazine to have a professional look by using elaborate language alongside colloquial, which is coded to create a mode of address that is appropriate for my target audience.  This was due to the fact I wanted my audience to take my magazine seriously, and professional.

When I carried out my research I found out what music type my audience liked, I found that they liked mainly R&B music but also pop and Rap. From knowing what my audience liked I had to represent my magazine at ethnic groups which related to these music genres.  I choose ­to go against and challenge the stereotype of having a white origin magazine; I did this by having all non-white models in my magazine this does not automatically challenge stereotypes but it is different to usual magazines I did this because of the genre of music I am focusing on.  I followed the stereotypes which can be seen within the media for example I chose to include an afro Caribbean model within my magazine which is stereotypical of the Rap genre of music. Within my magazine I also had Asian models presented in my music magazine as this is what I usually see in the music industry. Even though these particular ethnic groups are badly labelled I tried to include them in my magazine but not with following that label I presented them in my magazine as positive role models to my audience. I didn’t discriminate any ethnic backgrounds within my magazine but I choose to challenge the fact of having my magazine as a white British based magazine and followed the stereotype of the music genre I found my audience liked. These negative stereotypes which are featured in magazines is they are in ‘gangs’ or done for ‘crime’ but within my magazine I represented these people as getting somewhere within the music careers and making them look ‘trendy’ and ‘have a good appearance. The ethnic social group was at all ethnic because i my magazine had no particular racial group to aim it at however i choose only to present asian and black afro caribbean people this was just because i had choose stories and names to go with these models, the ethnic group did not matter as long as  i kept my social class to B/C1 in the hierarchy. 

I had to aim my magazine at a particular age group, for this I had to make sure my magazine kept to having the representation of age and that it represented my audience. From my research and the information I gathered, I found what this age group I aimed my magazine at liked and how I was able to represent them in my magazine.  Normal stereotypes of teenage girls were that they are lazy, unorganised, not motivated in life and are not caring. I challenged this stereotype and wanted to present teenagers in a positive way, I wrote stories which were quite educational, were motivating and were about their dreams and aspirations of life (Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs). These stories and pictures would appeal to this age group’s needs and wants. The theories such as the male gaze and Hyperreality would practically appeal to a young group of people such as my demographic as they are aware of how these theories are used but however it is not all teenage girls. So within my I choose to include these theories as this is what they would expect in a music magazine. As my   target audience is teenager they need people to aspire to and be role moles for them at a young age to help them fulfil their dreams in the future (Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs) so in these teenage years they look at the way females are presented and read the stories which will give a guide in life, so this represents my age group. I choose to add these ‘women’ into my magazine and not challenge these theories as they are what my demographic like.

Also within my magazine I had to represent the age of my audience in the way I used typography to communicate with my audience through out my magazine. I had to make sure I kept to professional way of talking because the text would be too childish and immature for this demographic if it was not professional so I had to make sure my stories and headlines would relate to the audience. However I had to use text which could represent them too, this was colloquial language e.g. ‘sexy’, and this is text such as slang and language which teenagers use so I choose to add this text into my magazine because I wanted the magazine to have a professional look because it would make the magazine more appealing to the social group however have a way to represent my demographic in my magazine, this helped with the way I targeted the gender of my audience because I made a magazine that connected to this audience, I used slang because I know females in this age range use slang to talks and socialise so if I included it within my magazine they would be represented because it is terms they use. I added these ‘Slang’ words in Buzz words because I wanted them to be pointed out to the audience so that I would have them in different typographies and bigger size text so that they would appeal to the audience more.

Another way I represented a social group was by gender, in my magazine I wanted to represent the gender of my audience because I wanted my target audience to feel like I know who am aiming my magazine at. The first way I represented my gender in my magazine was by colour, I did this by using a soft light pink, From choosing females as my choice I thought using the colour pink in magazine would be good as it is a connotation which is a colour most females like as it is a girly child-like colour but had sexuality and purity to it as well. However, I felt that my audience would find it too childish if I had the whole magazine in pink so I constructed a mode of address which would balance this out so I choose to add black to the page; black has connotations of power making the page have a hint of masculinity.  I chose to do this because I didn't want my audience to feel as if I couldn't represent them in my magazine so I conveyed that I should make the audience feel as they are independent women.

Another way I represented gender within my magazine was through the use of images, from my images I choose to follow stereotypes of the Male Gaze and Hyperreality. The male gaze theory is the way a camera represents women as it looks at women from a male perspective due to our society being one of patriarchy. The camera is making females represented as vulnerable and submissive to a patriarchal society it is a dominant ideology However, as my audience were females I used this theory because women also aspire to this representation, they feel that they need to be presented in this way to be successful women, they are passive and the males are in control. I chose to represent the male gaze in my magazine with my images as I felt the audience I have chosen would find my magazine more appealing seeing women who are represented like this because they aspire to be like that (Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs). I also added Hyperreality this is the editing of pictures done on applications such as Photoshop to make the picture look more real, it is the interpretation of what people think is pretty when in fact it is not really like this, they have been edited and change to meet the needs of audience. I chose and thought about adding this stereotype into my magazine however I thought my audience would find it more real if they saw pictures like this because they would expect women to be presented Superreal in life.

The image below shows the Barbie way of being represented these two theories suggest that everyone should have the looks and size of a ‘Barbie’ so most people believe this is real life and they should people and be like this themselves. However in my magazine adding these two theories did represent the gender of my audience, I did have a few pictures of males, just so my magazine would appeal to the small minority of the male population who may read the magazine. But I chose to keep these theories in my magazine instead of challenging it as I knew the gender of females see this as an ideal way of looking and being represented. I made this decision from a business point because I felt that if I did it different I would not reach a large enough market to make money for my magazine. The theories i used to represent my audience had to fit in with the images so I had to make changes to each picture to add these theories. I changed the size of my models and I change their colour by airbrushing them because they would fit into the theories because they would represent them.

In the magazine I used colour to represent gender this was because I used the colour pink as it is a feminine colour that relates to females because it is a ‘girly’ colour. I choose to the colour pink because it represents the females however I didn't only want the females to represent all soft and feminine because the demographic of my magazine have a stronger appearance I wanted to give them some power so I added the colours black and grey to balance out the colour pink.

Overall I feel that in the representation of a particular social I had to make sure each of the social groups were represented and that the audience felt that they were represented too. I choose to follow most ways of representations and kept to everything my target demographic liked. I now know the social group’s ideologies and they have a big impact in the choice of my creation of my magazine. The way I used Hyperreality and The Male Gaze helped with my understanding of the representation of a particular social groups.