QUESTION 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Gender

My magazine features all male characters within the music features. As my cover page features a medium shot of a male singer. My sub images are all of the said band and devotion of my contents page and stories within the magazine are to bands that are dominated by the male gender. I chose to do this as the stereotypical indie band are of male gender and I wanted to follow the conventions of the normal bands that are more popular in the charts today and seen to be successful. This matches up to my audience in different ways as although more girls answered my survey, girls enjoy and are more likely to listen to male bands and invest in wanting to know about them than they would into girl bands that aren’t seen to be that successful in this genre. Personally I would say that males are most likely to purchase music magazines of this genre as they are likely to be aspiring to be the same as those featured within the magazines. Males are therefore featured to be more dominant and successful within my magazine but in a way that females would also take interest in; for example within the article the researcher asked about girlfriends of the band which is things that females would want to know and be interested in finding out about.

Age

My magazine represents males throughout my magazine from an age of 17 to around 25, this matches to the audience of my magazine. I chose to represent this age throughout the magazine as I feel that this will attract my audience to invest in the magazine as they can relate to the age of the bands shown. I think that my age range of people in my magazine is of this because this is commonly the age range of indie rock bands as they are quite a new thing to be making a comeback so its important to show up and coming bands within this magazine to make it different from others. My magazine supports the stereotypes that this age range are very into festivals as the bands that I have represented are touring and going to various festivals and enjoy to party and host gigs. This I believe is a good thing as my audience is of the same age so they will be going to festivals and enjoying this type of music through going to see them live as this genre of music will be most pleasing when seeing them live. I like the way that I have represented this social group of age within the issue as I feel that all of it slots together perfectly within each story and the images featured as they are all in a gig setting.

Class within the magazineMy magazine I feel is focused on working class as I feel that this class would have more access to instruments and be more likely to take an interest of music through their education and opportunities. Having the tools to pursue it and having the resources to get started will fuel them to purchase a magazine of this sort. Also as this is not a budget magazine selling at £2.50 so this would probably appeal more to the working class market as they would more likely want to spend money on the magazine with the competitions featured inside this could appeal to the class of the audience buying the magazine more which is what my audience would most likely be as they would be students and studying with university fees. This class are most likely to go to gigs which is a feature which is shown quite a lot with the bands used within the magazine is that they are live bands that tour which is what people will enjoy and most like about the bands is their ability to perform to an audience. Most of the bands featured in the magazine will be from a working class background giving them the ambition to do something different and something that can improve their lives forever. Working class people seem to have more determination to succeed.

Ethnicity

The ethnic minority featured in my magazine mostly is white British males as this is an English magazine and mostly indie rock bands are of a white origin with the exception of some of mixed race. I involved this ethnic group in my magazine purely by chance of who is successful and a new up coming artist which is what I want to feature mostly in the magazine. I do not believe this represents my audience as Great Britain as a whole is a mixed race society so it could be anyone who takes an interest in this magazine and its genre as its growing in popularity very fast in the past year so it would be a diverse audience. There are only positive representations of ethnic groups inside my magazine as I would want my audience to be diverse and everyone to be interested in my magazine and what it has to offer. I would go on to include many ethnicities into my magazine so that I can get the age range of my audience to as many people as possible to broaden my magazines expectations in the future of the many artists that can be included.