Question Two

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

My media product represents the particular social group that I am targeting through typical conventions such as colour, costume, props and the content of my magazine. The magazine is targeted at young adults between the ages 16 and 22. Even though the majority of my audience are probably students, the magazine is of the cost £3.90. Even though this is quite a high price, this is because it is circulated monthly and is of a higher quality and packed with even more information.

The model that features in this magazine, Delilah Rose, is of a similar age to the target audience that I have chosen. I believe that it will be easier to appeal to my target audience because of there not being a large age gap between the audience and music artist. She is a down to earth, young teenage girl with a lot of ambitions like a lot of young adults at the moment so it makes it easier for the audience to relate to the artist.

The chosen colour scheme plays a big part in representing the social group that I am targeting as it helps reach the chosen target audience. The colour scheme: blue, white and black uses typical monochromic colours. Even though blue is quite a generic colour, the tone that I have chosen – teal – is quite modern and contemporary, standing out quite nicely against the black and white colours that I am already using.

When doing the photoshoot for my magazine, I decided that I did not want to use too many props as I felt that this would overcrowd the front cover, contents page and double page spread so I picked two props: an acoustic guitar and a simple black hat. The choice of having an acoustic guitar signifies the simplicity of the artist, her music and the magazine itself which also links back to the genre of my media product – music. The black hat highlights that she is someone who is quite fashionable which also links to the choice of costume. I decided that I would go with a dark colour theme for the clothing as I felt that this fitted in well with the music genres indie and alternative. However the difference is I have added in a pop of colour – yellow, which is quite bold and different to what you would typically see an artist of indie and alternative artist wearing.

The content of the magazine plays a massive part in how you represent the social group because this is how the message we are trying to communicate is put across. The style of how the article is written plays a massive part in how you target your audience because it determines the style of the article, such as will it be a question and answer based article or in a formal, written format. Also the vocabulary that you use can be determined by the chosen social grade of the audience as it can be written formally, with an extensive choice of vocabulary or one with quite a basic use of language.

Overall, I believe that I have represented my choice of audience and social group effectively through the different conventions of the magazine and it would sell the magazine successfully.