How does your media product represent particular social groups?

How does your media product represent particular social groups? 

I think the social group my magazine is based around is a male or female audience around mid 20’s which are in to band music or alternative music. I have chosen this social group because its stereotypical for being mostly males and I have incorporated this within the magazine by using the blue colours. These darker colours are associated more with the male gender therefore it will attract potential buyers who are interested within this music gender. Also within the pictures and articles it refers to females which is going to attract males rather than other females.

Within my research I based this around scene audiences however I felt this ideology was difficult to recreate and the audience was too narrow as there is all types of different scene cultures to cater for. Therefore I changed my ideas to fit a different range of audiences within my magazine. I then changed this idea to a magazine that fits more social groups, the genre is a rock band genre and I’ve added articles on up and coming bands and reunions within my articles. This is due to this stereotypical view is of fans who enjoy a variety of different bands and always look for new ones to listen too. Also they are stereotyped to go to garage gigs and also spend a lot of money on concerts such as ‘Leeds fest’. This social group becomes bigger each year and the market is growing for wider magazines with less mainstream bands featuring within it. I think this is the approach I have achieved within the design of my magazine.

Also by using the photographs of younger people within the magazine, I think this appeals to a younger audience. This is due to the fact that they get the impression that the articles are relevant to themselves as they can relate to the age group of the artists. All this information is conveyed by just using the conventional photographs within the pages of the magazine. I think this is useful as most people tend to judge an article on its appearance rather than what the content is. If they can visually see something interesting and relatable, they are more likely to read the article and take an interest and buy the magazine.

Within pricing my magazine I decided that the price of £1.30 per month. When making the decision on the pricing of my magazine I looked at prices of other magazines and compared them. I also realistically asked different people what they would be prepared to pay for the product per month. I think the price I ended up with is a fair price and with the target audience being so wide and including a lot of people many copies would be sold within the high street.

When looking at my reader profiles I considered the medium age for all the reader profiles that I found. This helped and allowed me to identifying the target audience I was aiming for looking at NME and other reader profiles it showed a pattern of the age range of purchasing music magazines. This age range was from 18-22, therefore I am trying to aim my magazine at this age range. However also from looking at the statistics of the reader profiles I’ve learnt that overall less men purchase the magazine than women, I found this interesting as the ideology and conventions of the magazine were very male stereotypical. Using this information I adapted my magazine to be more neutral, however still maintaining the male ideology because it seems successful to the major magazine companies.