Evaluation Question 2 Draft

2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?


During my research and planning before starting to produce my media product, I looked at different audiences, created audience profiles and made artist profiles. I found that this was an important feature of my magazine as I had to make sure that the features of my magazine attracted my target audience which were younger girls who were interested in chart and pop music and the social group around this genre. Having my genre as this I know what social group I need to talk towards and it also has given me a clear idea of what type of audience will be buying my music magazine. I carried out some research into a social group using UK Tribes and also a personal survey given to those I would stereotype as my audience for my magazine. UK Tribes is a website that has lots of different categories about youth groups and what they would fit into. There is a lot of variation also on the website so I looked under the name ‘Mainstream’ which had further information about things like ‘fangirls’. This label was suitable to my magazine as it was also an example of a target audience that I had described. Fangirl’s are a type of audience that fit into the social group of who my magazine is marketed towards. This label also goes alongside nicely with my genre of pop/chart. After reviewing this research that I found on the website I found that fangirls and this tribe and social group ‘are an entry level, heavily female-biased Tribe who are passionately devoted to pop icons and twitter’ and this means firstly relates to my target audience but also my idea of relating my media product to a website also. This website could then have relations with twitter. The research into fangirls and pop culture also suggests that the fangirl tribe ‘has grown exponentially in strength, size and influence thanks to social media – especially Twitter. Thanks to the internet and ‘always on’ celebrity culture, young Fan Girls can now follow their idols’ every move from their bedroom – in the company of thousands of other Fan Girls online.’ This encourages me further to use well-known artists but to also create new bands and artists to further extend the fangirl social group to a wider audience.

From the research I did I also feel that my magazine needed to feature some kind of male ‘attraction’ as stereotypical fangirls go for bands and male groups? This also meant including new musicians that have variation and don’t stick to one particular genre. Furthermore my magazine would also need to include some kind of link to another area of media, so perhaps a website of which my audience can read further articles and research more into these new artists etc. However mainstream and chart/pop involve some quite popular musical artists therefore I would have to keep some of these involved to gain a social groups attention. On top of this to keep on the same level as my target audience and make sure that my media product represents the needs of the social group so I made the decision to dress my models/artists in similar clothing as my audience members. This would be so that there was some similarity and relation between the artists and the audience. I chose my artist ‘HUMAN’ who is a new girl duo/band who dress in black and grey clothes but look very glamorous. This style could easily be copied and duplicated for the audience and target social groups. This all represents the social group which I have researched and found information about. My artists are around the age of 18-19 and my target audience of around 14-20 year olds so I feel this is a good age to platform my artists. I am comparing my upcoming artist ‘HUMAN’ to two members of the band ‘Little Mix’. These are a well-known, pop music, girl band that have quite a large fan based of fangirls and chart followers. I have represented my artist ‘HUMAN’ in the mainstream social group as Little Mix would also fit into this area of UK Tribes and this social group. This is by the way I have styled the girls. This represents my audience (social group) as its not indie or alternation and this means that it isn’t following this particular crowd of people. The clothes that the girls are wearing in the images would be similar to the clothes you could get hold of in high street shops and this represents some of the clothing shops that some of my target audience would go to and by similar clothes from. Styling my artist like the girls from Little Mix will certainly help gain customers and a further audience to my product as it will engage with the interests they already have. I have also represented my social group within my article and with other images of my artist within my media product as some of the images of ‘HUMAN’ are quite natural and fun and this would be how the ‘fangirl’ audience would like it. On top of this I have also spoke briefly about their tour and their musical career and this means that it is relatively similar to what would be written in magazine with an article about Little Mix in it.