Question 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

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Evaluation Question 2

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I believe that the social group within my target audience is well represented within my magazine and just from looking at the front cover you can see that the readers are sophisticated and outgoing. This is mainly through the colour scheme that my magazine employs but also due to the images I have chosen to use. There is quite a lot of black and grey throughout my magazine and the gradient on the front cover portrays my audience as being mysterious and unique. I have also chosen these colours as opposed to colours such as pink and purple as I understand that darker tones are not only going to be more appealing but they also fit in better with the magazine’s genre and promote a relationship between the readers and the indie/rock genre.

The cover model on my magazine looks dominant, successful and superior on the page. She takes over most of the space and a few sell lines surround the image. This suggests that she is an idol to the readers and that the magazine understands how important and influential the artist is to the lives of the readers. Also, the body language of my model throughout the magazine suggests that she is dominating the issue and that she is a mainstream artist. However, it is made clear that she and the readers share similar interests as she is wearing a reading band from the gig. The audience are therefore promoted as being lively and energetic. I have tried to give the model a natural look, make up-wise as I believe that readers of my magazine are likely to adopt a similar look and aren’t the type of people to be too obsessed with looks.

I have also tried to style the model in a way that members of my target audience would dress to suggest a link between them to illustrate my social group as being stylish but, at the same time, they have their own unique style and don’t tend to follow trends as much. I incorporated an image of my cover model with a guitar in to the magazine to suggest that the readers don’t just enjoy listening to music but they also look for other ways to involve themselves in it. The body language of my model changes throughout the magazine as she appears intimidating on the cover but on the double page spread she comes across as being much more open and friendly. This shows that the readers of my magazine are friendly and approachable but uphold a powerful and intimidating manner in contrast to how readers of a pop magazine may be portrayed.

I envision readers of my magazine to be strong fans of the genre of music and not just the particular artist featuring in a certain issue which is why I have included a different, free A4 poster every week of a different artist. This also represents readers of my magazine as being loyal and devoted fans of the indie/rock genre. I have used a Polaroid effect to create a frame for some of the images on one of my double page spreads. The facts that I have chosen to use Polaroid frames suggests that the social group of my magazine is interested in vintage style and that they are also classy and appreciate music of older, classic artists instead of constantly listening to chart music like readers of pop magazines might do.