REPRESENTATION – Q2How does your media product represent particular social groups?

By Bradley White

MY AUDIENCES SOCIAL GROUP (IDENTITY)

My social group’s identity is mainly based on fashion, age, gender (to an extent) and music interests. My main focus obviously is to attract an audience that are interested in pop music. My age group is being aimed for teenagers but stretches to young adults whilst my gender will mainly be female due to the house style and layout of my magazine appeals traditionally to a female audience. But even though my social group is mainly females it still has content and gossip that attracts a male audience. Being interested in pop music can influence your fashion so often the people who would buy my magazine will wear similar clothing that may be influenced by the genre of pop.

COVERMy cover picture of “Freya Stratford” has been represented as very simplistic and in a way quite mysterious. For example the use of just putting a image with just her upper half so not much of my main story line is revealed (so the reader would feel embiliged to buy the magazine). But still I feel my specific cover artist represents my chosen genre of pop extremely well. For instance the straightened hair with a pinky, red shade of lipstick on clearly identifies pop music as it’s the fashion and style the female pop artists go for. To the right you can see an image of the well known pop star Katy Perry whose style is almost identical to my cover artist “Freya Stratford”. Furthermore my main image has Freya wearing a parka coat which may not be pop related but is very fashionable and fit my audience teenagers (mainly teenage girls). I think the style I have gone for definitely explains my social group and there identity which is explained in the previous slide. Also my cover being a woman appeals to my social group of females.

CONTENTSThe images from my contents page has again appealed to my social group of young teenage girls with an interest in pop music. But this time I have presented Freya Stratford in a more promiscus way which would attract a male audience as she has lipstick on her cheek which may symbolise her being a rebel which would make male audience be interested in her. I also made the finger pointing to her lips also show’s her as a ‘bad girl’ which links to the story line promoted on the contents page. Also the use of the prop of the pink sunglasses further promote this being a pop magazine. I have also used an image in the top left hand corner of my magazine to promote Freya and have unlike the main image presented her as fun and exciting. I have her with pink sunglasses on holding her hair like she’s going ‘crazy’ which is one of the feeling and vibes of pop.

CONTENTS CONTINUEDI have done this to make her seem like she’s at a party and maybe she’s had to much to drink which relates to my audience of teenagers to young adults as they more than likely have experienced that and they feel they are similar to my star Freya Stratford. I also have three smaller images on the left of my page to give insights to other pages and story lines. The top one represents the story line “TOP 10 ALBUMS from 2010 onwards” and is presented as fun and pop like as it had my main story star “Freya Stratford” holding the discs. She is been represented as an idol to my audiences as she is a strong, confident stylish woman. The second image down is a image which is a picture towards the gossip of the “cheating of Beyoncé”. The third picture down is an image of times square in New York where Taylor Swift performed in October 2014 so decided to use it as an interesting story line and I represented this picture as famous and exciting which may interest my readers as they will be able to find out the life of a pop star which many young female teenagers aspire too.

ARTICLEMy article pictures are represent Freya Stratford as a strong confident woman which would appeal to my young female audience as it gives them a role model to look up too. I have also presented her as fun, young and poppy which would appeal to again my target audience of teenagers. I have also tried to present her as promiscuous to expand my target audience to male teenagers as well as female. Having these images would attract boys to see “Freya Stratford” as a celebrity crush which would make them buy the magazine as they would want to find out more about her.