question 2-evaluation

Dougie Magraw

Question 2-How does your media product represent particular social groups?

The audience and social group is one of my most important factors when I crea5ted my magazine. I wanted to have a specific target audience but still make the magazine accessible to other social groups such as older generations. My actual target audience is male and female readers aged from 13-30, their music preference would be indie/alternative but still be interested in other genres.

On my front cover I included an image of a popular lead singer of the band, ‘The Enigmatics’, in comparison to other artists in popularity I would compare him to Caleb Followill from Kings Of Leon. I have posed him looking quite smooth and cool to represent him as an idol for his fans. I dressed him in a checkered shirt with tight jeans as this is quite a common dress code for the target audience I was aiming for. I felt that the audience didn’t need to rely on the artists clothes as a selling point because ‘Mickey D’ is a selling point on his own, especially for the female part of my target audience. This brings me to the mise-en-scene of my front cover, the clothes that he is wearing does represent the social group I am aiming for as it puts the audience on common grounds with the star. I’ve also put him posing with a red guitar and for a potential reader of GMF magazine that hasn’t heard of Mickey D just seeing him posing with a guitar will intrigue them to the magazine if they are interested in that genre of music. The statement that the image says about the social group for GMF magazine is that they are fashionable, cool and very much into music.

With my magazine I have also tried to gain a wider audience than just my target audience. This is apparent with my double page spread; I have written an article on a drowned out mid 80’s mod/indie star who is on the verge of rehab. This is a negative representation in comparison to the one of Mickey D, I have made this representation to entice an older generation of readers that would be interested in this article. This could represent the social group as messed up but that wasn’t my intention as I felt it was a good selling point for the magazine.    

The dominant ideas for the social group I have chosen is that they all take drugs and get drunk everyday but are obsessed with music. I feel with the article for ‘Indie Cyndie’ supports these ideas but this can’t be avoided. On the other hand, my cover story doesn’t really challenge or support the dominant ideas about the social group I’ve chosen, but does challenge it a little bit as it isn’t representing the now solo artist as a complete wreck head.

To conclude, my media product of GMF magazine represents the social group of indie music crowd as a slightly toned down version of the dominant ideologies people have of them but still supporting these ideologies; music obsessed, concert obsessed but only a bit getting drunk obsessed.