How does your

media product

represent

particular social

groups?

Front pageFirst of all, my front cover represents youth as it displays a young artist on the front and focusing the whole page on him. He is wearing conventional clothes for youths, showing he has style and the clothes are expensive. This represents both genders in the form that boys would look at him as an inspiration and a role model, whereas females would have a crush on the artist simply for being famous, typically.

Lockdown is supposed to be a masculine magazine; however, I have involved a purple masthead that would normally be classed as feminine. As the magazine is masculine, involving grime artists, and the logo is feminine, this occupies both sexual orientation. This still occupies dark conventions of a grime magazine because the purple I have used is reasonably dark, therefore, identifying and challenging conventions.

It could also be identified as working class. This is because it involves a main cover line of ‘Squashie, my life’ and this allows the reader to assume the artist has been through hard experiences. This may also be assumed through the buzz word involving “free word” on it. This could lead readers to believe it is only for people that couldn’t afford to buy the poster normally.

ContentsMy contents page, on the other hand, represents a slightly older generation as it looks very formal. Also the colour scheme is blatantly outlined as one from a newspaper, using red white and black.

The contents page identifies both males and females as it includes images of both. The males on this page look very stylish; therefore other males would want to look like that. The females on the page are good looking and stylish, so other girls would look up to them.

Different to the front page, the contents page involves an artist/model from a different ethnicity. Identifying different ethnicities is important in magazines and other forms of media nowadays as it would not get bought by certain social groups if they feel they are not represented.

No class is really identified on the contents page, which doesn’t single out any demographic from purchasing the product.

The sexual orientation is also not established. Not identifying this doesn’t involve confusion and allows the contents page to do its job which is to direct readers to a specified page.

Double pageThe double paged spread clearly outlines the involvement of youth by the image over the two pages (which are of the main artist).

This is also an urban photo, identifying working class; therefore it could be seen as inspirational. Furthermore, it is heavily male dominated, even with the text combined where it only makes reference to females a couple of times.

Ethnicity is not a factor on the double paged spread as it is about a particular artist therefore only representing such of a white British male.

The text shown represents such of youth and of a formal older generation. This is because the masthead of the page is in a graffiti font, along with the header in the blue text box. Also relating to youths is the twitter name used at the bottom, which is a popular social networking site among my demographic. The rest of the text in the article relates to an older generation, as it is more formal. First of all, the first letter is huge, identifying conventions of a newspaper. Also, using the magazine website next to the page number could be seen as formal too.

Using most of the image in black and white also identifies newspaper and old print media conventions, representing an older generation.

My social group

These are the type of audience I would look for when selling my product. They all look working class and into new technology. Furthermore, they are teenagers.

This is an exception of my target audience that would still buy my product. Although not looking working class or young, I had to consider there would be exceptions.