How does your media product represent particular social groups?

My magazine doesn’t have a defined social group in terms of “chavs”, “grebs” or other social titles. If I had to select a social group I would choose Alternative Rock fans, although the genre tends to appeal to people more defined social groups. Another groups the magazine might appeal to our the general musician “social group” or “social signifier”. This meant I was only really representing people who brought my magazine, and not a predefined social group. This contrast conventions of NME, as they directly represent youth culture in general. My magazine does have some general representation of defined groups. One example would be assuming my target age group (15-25) would be interested in a festival guide, ect. All representation is unintentional signifier.

The sub-title “Why do things suddenly sound the same?” automatically defines the people buying the magazine as people who dislike/bored/not-interested the current pop music scene. This represents the social group (or “people who buy my magazine”) slightly negatively, due to fact they’re “disliking” something.

Another example of representation is the content box for page 17. It defines the people who buy the magazine as festival goers. As I talked about before, this implies that the young people who might buy my magazine might go to festival, ect. This is neutral representation, as it positive or negative depending on how the media portrays young people at festivals.

The preferred reading of my text would be enjoyable informative music magazine that’s open man to new genres, and isn’t dictated by commercial corps.

The aberrant decoding of magazine would be if it was seen as a pretentious piece of objective dead-media.