Analyse Media Representation In Last Years Coursework Production.

As a part of my AS Media coursework, I created a music magazine targeted towards a specific market, using all my own original photos and content ideas. When creating the product, I was able to learn a lot about not only the conventions of the specific genre, but the magazine industry overall, taking on specific design techniques and ‘rules’ as well as new terminology. In order to carry out the production process, I learnt about the importance of research, especially considering the use of representation in the media, specifically similar existing products to allow me to gain inspiration for my magazine. In order to make my magazine a successful product, I had to ensure that the content of my magazine and the appearance was going to portray and attract my target audience appropriately. The idea of media representation looks at the way in which the media portrays the diverse society we live in today. The other way to look at this idea is the idea of stereotypes, where the media portrays a certain image or idea about a specific group of people in society. For example, ‘Essex girls’ are portrayed to wear nothing but pink, have bright orange tans and bright white teeth.

Firstly, in terms of representation, I had to consider the actual genre of my magazine – who was it aimed at? ‘Sound’ Magazine was aimed at mostly teenage and young adult females with an interest in music genres such as alternative rock and indie rock. As this is a music genre I was familiar with prior to research, I knew the basic interests and characteristics of this target market – they like to play music, listen to music and attend music events. They are quite feminine but in terms of fashion they like to follow slightly alternative trends. Because of this particular stereotype, I chose a colour palette and other design features to suit these people more so that they would be more drawn to my magazine compared to others on the market. I used warmer pastel to suit the more feminine side of my target audience, whilst I used more vivid oranges and black for the finer details to connote the ‘edgier’ side of my customers. Not only did these colours reflect the personalities of my target audience well, but I also chose them as I felt they reflected some of the album covers of some of the artists who were likely to be featured within the magazine, such as The Script, Ed Sheeran and Kodaline.

Looking at theorists such as Blumler and Katz (1974), who proposed the idea of the Uses and Gratifications theory, “readers can relate to the characters of a media platform through ‘personal identity’” which is also something I tried to portray through the images and models I used alongside the content. By using a model that resembled the stereotype I was trying to portray – i.e. someone who played the guitar and was interested in the ‘boho’ fashion trend – I believed that my audience would be able to make a more distinct connection with the magazine. If my audience can seriously relate to not only the contextual content of a magazine, but the appearance side as well, they are more likely to continuously support and buy the magazine, which is my optimum ‘goal’ as the producer of this product. I do believe however that I made a mistake in the planning of this magazine, as although the target audience is mostly female, I have completely forgotten about the male attention that my magazine could get, and so I should have therefore considered also featuring some male models within the content to appeal to this side of the target audience as well, which would have improved the overall quality and performance of the product.

         Similarly, I had to consider the representation of women within my media product. Stereotypically, women are often portrayed in a negative light within the media, especially in magazines due to the images that publishers decide to publish. Publishers will make models look more desirable by using the ‘prettiest’, the ‘skinniest’ and those who are wearing the least amount of clothes – this is to conform to Mulvey’s 1975 theory about the Male Gaze. By doing so to female models, magazine producers will hope that men will be attracted to buy the magazine, purely to look at the revealing images. With my magazine, I attempted to challenge this representation of women, not only because the majority of readers will be women anyway, but to also make my female models more like inspirations or role-models for my female readers. I made my model pose in a way that portrayed her as strong and confident, and by making the images particularly big, they appeal to my female-based target audience, inspiring them too to be like this.