Age Stereotypes

This is a Prezi I have made about our classwork on how different age groups are associated with different stereotypes.

Magazine Genres and Conventions

This is a Prezi I have made about conventions and genres. I have included some things to look out for and how it affects my magazine.

Magazine Moodboard

This is a mood board I made about the genre of music I will use for my magazine. the genre is alternative/indie rock. I used fonts that I liked and thought may go well on an alternative/indie rock magazine, band logos, albums and magazine mastheads related to the rock genre.

This is a spider diagram I made in class. The spider diagram is of bands and singers I listen to and the larger the size of the band means the more I listen to them.

Audience Profiles

National Readership Survey - ABC1

Magazines can aim their magazines at a target audience based on their social class. For example, Q magazine attracts a wealthier audience from higher social positions (72%), whereas, NME attracts an more evenly spread audience from different social groups (51% in ABC1).

Target audience profiles refer to a detailed appraisal of one's characteristics.

Demographic Profiles - quantifiable statistics of a population. Some of the most frequently used demographic variables are age, job, location, gender, education, income and nationality.

Psychographic Profiles - reflect common activities, interests and opinions as well as attitudes and values of those people.

The Use Of Colour

This is a Prezi I have made about our theory lesson on the use of colours and their connotations and what things and feelings they are associated with.

Deconstruction of Heat Magazine Cover

Heat is a weekly gossip magazine published by Bauer, one of the oligopoly of magazine publishers. Oligopoly means when there are a few companies dominant in the market.

The Gossip Magazine Genre

The gossip magazine genre specialises in maintaining the reputation of celebrities who would have been replaced by others and keeps them in the public eye. Katie Price and Peter Andre are good examples of this as they are constantly being tracked and shown by heat and other gossip magazines.

The Representation Of Women In Gossip Magazines

In gossip magazines, the female celebrities shown are often portrayed in a vulnerable and weak manner and are often shown as the 'female victim'. Women are usually either sexualised and objectified for the male gaze or represented in a negative way to satisfy the curiosity of the target audience.

Target Audience Of Gossip Magazines

The target audience of gossip magazines is usually white people, urban residents, females, working class people. The audience also tends to be between the ages of 18-35 years old, while people between the ages of 35-55 years old are considered to be the secondary audience.

How Does Heat Magazine Communicate With It's Audience?

Colour scheme

The cover uses bright, saturated primary colours (reds, blues and yellows) and high key lighting which anchor the codes and conventions of the Gossip magazine genre and identify target audience.

On the front cover of the heat magazine cover, there are more pictures than there is text. This is also another key convention of Gossip magazines.

The Masthead

The masthead is left justified in red, lower case, serif, blocky font but the flicks make it appeal to women more and make more elegant and, finally, the magazine cover uses shadowing to make the text more creative and recognisable in terms of brand identity – the style of the font would stereotypically appeal to a female target audience.

Above the masthead is a banner (sell line banner) that again references familiarity in terms of UK celebrity, Katie Price (Jordan). The mode of address is direct and upbeat as shown by the exclamation mark. Also, in lower case, the text “And gets off with a man half way through” positions the audience into understanding the sexualised nature of the article which addresses the conventions of Gossip magazines.

In the top right corner of the magazine there is an image that has been deliberately skewed to show a range of text and images. Gossip magazine covers are usually cluttered and try to maintain the reader's attention through different photographs and text styles.

The image could have both a dominant and an oppositional meaning – the dominant meaning suggests that the curvy female image is aspirational while the oppositional meaning could suggest the exploitative nature of the image.

Another feature of gossip magazines is the use of exclamation marks. On the whole magazine that is being deconstructed, there are 8 exclamation marks. This also portrays a very upbeat mode of address and the audience is targeted in quite an excitable way. The exclamation marks make the reader feel as if the story is exclusive and makes them feel inclusive.

Continuing, the feature in the bottom left's cover line reinforces cultural stereotypes and shows a surprise that men would want to go out with women with no make up.

finally, the lead story is again exploring the ups and downs of the life of another celebrity, Cheryl Cole, who the magazine frequently runs stories about. The magazine has chosen to use negative pictures of Cheryl Cole to maintain the presence of the celebrity in the public eyes.

Binary oppositions are used (“from this to this”) to reinforce this representation. Her aspirational image is sexualised and she is framed in medium shot in a revealing dress but is given a film like title, “The Recluse” which opens her up to be the subject of cultural stereotyping anchoring her ‘female victim’ representation.

Conventions Of a Magazine Cover

This is a Prezi I have made on our work on the different conventions of a magazine front cover and the different features often used and found and their purposes.

Semiotics and Symbols

This is a Prezi I have made showing our classwork on semiotics and symbols and the different approaches people and producers take to media. There is the constructionalist approach, the reflective approach and the intentional approach.

Representations Of Women

Male Gaze, Fashion, Advertising and the Pose

There are now books on the representations of women in the media. These are:

- John Berger's book Ways of Seeing provides an accessible introduction.

- Laura Mulvey's famous essay on the Male Gaze launched an important insight in the field of cinema.

Bechdel test

To pass the test, there must be at least one scene in the film where there are two or more women with no men present, talking about a subject other than men.

Erving Goffman

Erving Goffmann's gender advertisements theory is useful here because he focuses on poses common too magazine advertisements. Goffman points out that commercial photographs involve carefully performed poses presented in advertisements.

Cant and the Recumbent Position

Cant is when women tilt their head at an angle in photographs. Cant is combined with putting a finger in the mouth or touching the face in a child-like way. These poses have become so common in advertisements so we don't notice them. Also, the recumbent position is the name of the laying down position.

The Male Gaze

John Berger says "women watch themselves being looked at". Women learn to look at themselves through the eyes of an imagined man because the ideal spectator is always assumed to be a male. As a result of this, female models in adverts addressed to women 'treat the lens as a substitute for the eye of an imaginary male onlooker'.

Male And Female Stereotypes

This is a Prezi I have made about the different stereotypes associated with males and females. I have described what the stereotype is and also included a picture reinforcing that stereotype.

Gender Representations

This is a Prezi I have made about our classwork on Gender Representations. we discussed the different representations of men and women, different attitudes towards men and women and Erving Goffman's theories.

Magazine Feature Analysis Film Magazine

This is the film magazine I chose to analyse for my magazine feature analysis task.

Magazine Feature Analysis Football Magazine

This is the magazine analysis task I have carried out. I had to find two non-music related magazines and analyse the different features of the covers. I decided to use magazines of two different genres, so I chose to use a football magazine and a film magazine.

My First Media Post

Hello and welcome to my first A level media studies blog post. The main task of the project is to make a music magazine cover a contents page and a two page spread for the magazine. Also, the additional work and planning needs to be recorded in a blog, this blog! I am excited and am looking forward to working on this blog. So far, I love media studies and can't wait to get started with this project. In this blog I will talk about the different tasks completed over the course. Some of the parts involved are planning, the main task itself and the evaluation.

Thanks, Luke B