How does your media product represent particular social groups?

By Matthew Webb

What is representation?

Representation is the ways that media presents certain groups, ideas, and topics for example in this question it's the ways the magazine presents age, gender and ethnicity. Representation can have more than one meaning. So one audience might think An image of a pig is livestock and food where another audience might think a pig has as much of a right to life as us and it's cruel to eat a pig. Representation in music magazines often use stereotypes for example many rock stars have tattoos as that is what is expected from them. Representation is ideological and it helps to construct the ideological state we live in today.

Age

The age my magazine is targeted at is 16-20 year olds this is shown by the models being that age and also the amount of colour in the magazine as teenagers/ young adults are more likely to read a magazine with colour on as discussed earlier. The age is also represented in the models in the images as they are all quite young meaning the target audience might feel like they can relate to them. The age is also shown by the social media add with a lot of young people using social media but also using it to find out about new products which is something that olders users are less willing to do. Also the younger audience are more clued up on social media.

Gender

I believe that my magazine is aimed at both males and females. But probably aimed more at females. Most of the artists in the magazine mentioned are men so this might make the male readers motivated to learn how to become a music star and in turn read more of GMD as GMD has and often has advice on how to become a music star. I dont think Im being biased to men by including a lot more males in my magazine as I feel it's a fair representation of the rock business as many of the artists seem to be male and this is why a lot of the main covers for rock magazines have a male artist on it. Also the male artists male also attract the females as many females my aspire to have a boyfriend like the artist or just like the boys may be interest in following the artist's footsteps in the rock career. I think girls like the magazine because the stereotype of rock stars is that they are good looking and so they expect rockstars to look good and that is hopefully represented in my magazine, Another note is that females are more likely to read magazine in there spare time where boys are more likely to play computer games as this is the way they have been socialised

Ethnicity

My rock magazine is mainly aimed at all ethnic groups however may appeal to certain ethnic groups as many of the artists in the rock genre are white and the area where the magazine is distributed the main ethnicity is white however the magazine is available to many different ethnicities. The main reason the photos in the magazine are of white rock stars is to backup my comment above that more of the rock stars in the UK are white however future issues could address this and therefore grow our market appeal this first issue will help highlight the areas that need addressing .