Question Two - How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Katy Marwood

I have chosen to represent teenagers in my media product. This is because I am a teenager myself and know what kind of things most teenagers like. However, a secondary audience for my media product could be young adults around the age of 20-25 who enjoy music from the genre.

I have shown the models on the front cover of my magazine to be teenagers by the clothes they wear and how they present themselves. I have three models in my magazine – a teenage girl (the main feature) and two teenage boys (free posters).

My main feature is a seventeen year old singer named Oceana, she’s not wearing a lot of makeup so she looks her age and she’s dressed like a typical teenager. Her hair is very natural and she looks like a seventeen year old unlike other celebrities the same age that dress to impress other people and appeal to a wide audience. On the front cover she’s wearing a band t shirt (Arctic Monkeys – a band of the indie rock genre and also a band featured on the front cover) and on the double page spread Oceana is wearing jeans and plain clothes, this clothing choice causes no other social groups to become offended as nothing she’s wearing affects or promotes things like drugs/swearing/ethnicities/ religion/culture.Making Oceana wear clothes that are intended to offend would be very controversial and sales of my magazine would drop and it’s a morally wrong thing to do anyway even though a lot of magazines still do it to attract a larger audience and generate bad publicity. Oceanas clothing choices don’t distract the reader from the main focus of the feature which is her music and her career.  

I took the age of my audience into consideration when writing my magazines double page spread. As the audience is primarily teenagers certain linguistic choices had to be made during the process of writing. I didn’t want my writing to be too formal but I also didn’t want my writing to be too informal as I personally as a sixteen year old think too much of informal language in magazines is very patronising and unprofessional especially if they target audience for the magazine is people above the age of thirteen. So, I decided to write an introductory paragraph which tells the audience background information of Oceana and what she has so far achieved in her short career at such a young age.

My target audience are again represented in my magazine as my main feature is an artist that tries to live life as a normal teenager and thus attends a Sixth Form College. Many teenagers will then be able to relate to Oceana on a personal level and a strong connection will therefore be created with the singer down to the magazines interview. !All of the images used in my magazine of Oceana are very welcoming and do not intimidate/offend the audience in anyway as the models all look friendly and inviting. !My interview is wrote in a very simple “question and answer” format, making it an easy read for the audience.