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

Lucy Hughes

Target Audience - Looking back over my target audience research the main

aim of my magazine was to attract both men and women, however, there was a stronger lean towards the female market rather than male as I felt there wasn’t a rock/indie magazine out there for women.

- My target audience research also shows that I was mainly targeting my magazine to people within the c2 category, as from doing research into professional magazines this is the social group they were going for, and therefore I wanted to target this social group too.

- With regards to ethnicity there wasn’t a particular ethnic group I was aiming for, however, from my target audience research it has shown that rock/indie music appeals more to white people rather than Asians or Blacks.

How my magazine linked to particular social groups It appealed to women by having a strong female character on the front, as this shows that rock/indie music does appeal to women. Having a female on the front would also attract men as they’d want to find out more about the girl.

The events on the cover lines e.g. reading and Leeds festival would appeal to both genders as both male and female are interested in festivals. This would also appeal to certain social groups e.g. people interested in rock/indie music as those bands would be appearing at these festivals.

The informal language used on the front cover would attract students. This is because the text is very easy to understand and isn’t very complex. It shows that the magazine will be simple to read, this would appeal to students as they don’t want a magazine which contains very complex language and is hard to read.

The bands talked about on the front cover would attract both male and females as the bands are popular with both sexes (I found this out from my questionnaire). Also the bands would target people who are interested in rock/indie music as these bands perform this genre of music.

The colours used are linked to the social group of both men and women, this shows that they’re both represented in the magazine.

How my magazine linked to particular social groups With my contents page I feel I have represented women more than men. One way I have done this is through the pictures used, there is no male used which may restrict men from buying the magazine as they may believe its more targeted towards men than women. However, the pictures used represent women well as it shows that women are interested in the rock/indie genre and if a women brought the magazine and saw these female characters inside it would persuade them more to purchase the magazine.

The colours used to represent more the female group rather than male, this is because the main colour used is red and white which appeals more to women rather than men.

Men however, are represented in the contents page through the features. As the bands talked about are heavily male bands which would attract the male audience.

The language used on the contents page represents students as it is informal language, this represents students as after studying hard at college they don’t want to read a magazine that contains complicated text they want easy reading.

The layout of the contents page is a combination of text and pictures, this represents students as it shows that the magazine isn’t very text heavy and it contains a range of pictures and text.

Some of the bands mentioned e.g. busted and mcfly represent people who are maybe into more rock/pop music, so this is another social group that is represented in my magazine.

How my magazine linked to particular social groups

The colours used represent both male and female as the text is a combination of black, white and red like the front cover. With the text being the majority black I think the text represents males more. This is a positive thing as some of the pages in the magazine have represented women more than men.

The image used I think represents men and women, as the image represents a strong female character yet she also looks very rock/indie which would appeal to the men purchasing the magazine.

The layout of the page links to students as it is very easy to understand and read as the interview has been laid out very clearly. The layout of the page also represents younger people as the text used isn’t very complicated and is informal.

The magazine represents more Caucasians through the bands mentioned and the people used in the images. This is because everybody used is Caucasians and the bands are English bands.

The language used represents the particular social group I was aiming my magazine at. This is because the magazine was aimed at students so the language is complex but still simple as students after a long day at college don’t want a magazine which is challenging to read.