How does your media product represent particular social groups?

GenderThe magazine features a female front cover model. This female is a new and rising celebrity which my audience will relate to because of seeing her on, for example, music channels. The celebrity persona is the thing that attracts my audience to the magazine not necessarily the gender of them. However the actual magazine features a mixture of both female and male.The way the females are represented is in a much more powerful and edgy/modern way, than say how females are represented in Q magazine. This challenges the stereotype of females being ‘girly, innocent and helpless’ Males are also presented in a cool/modern way throughout my magazine. Both males and females are represented as positive, powerful and proud people. I don’t think gender throughout my magazine plays a large role in defining males and females as it is more to do with the cult following of the magazines music genre. Representing indie music fans in a positive light. This helps to support my target audience as the people within the magazine are what the target audience people are about/aspire to be like.

AgeThe age within my magazine is generally 17-late 20’s/early30’s. This reflects the audience of my magazine as they are looking to aspire/model themselves upon the artists within my magazine.

This age within my magazine is represented as rebellious, cool and modern. This fits in with some of the stereotypes of teenagers. It also ties in with my target audience and supports these ‘cool and rebellious’ stereotypes that are with teenagers.

This challenges some stereotypes of teenagers/young adults in different media types as they can often be represented in a bad light. My music magazine is trying to portray them in a good and positive way.

ClassClass within my magazine is varied through out the characters featured. This is because all the artists/bands within my magazine are all from different backgrounds. However one class (working class) is slightly more predominant than the rest. I think this is because working class is the more predominant class in our society as a whole today. This, in turn, reflects my audience as they are predominantly working class.

Bands from different social class:

Arctic monkeysMumford and sonsJamie T

The Kooks

Ethnicity In the issue of my magazine that I have produced the main artist is British and white. However my magazine doesn’t specifically target or portray one ethnicity throughout. My music magazine will be multi cultural and the main reasoning for each of the cover artists will be because of their musical achievement at the time or the popularity of a certain band/artist.

I think his reflects my audience because they too should be from a wide range of ethnic backgrounds. I haven’t represented any ethnic groups particularly in my magazine so there are neither positive or negative stereotypes for ethnicity.

Social groupsAs my music magazine focus’ on mainly ‘indie’ music the social groups featured within the magazine are mainly ‘indie’ type people/groups. My music magazine represents this group in a positive way. It embraces the stereotype.