2. So what is a
social group?
It is a group of people who
share some social relation
such as their
interests, age, class and
gender.
3. What is my social
group?
My social group that my magazine is representing is
mostly students who love to listen to music and want to
read about the latest stars. They are both male and
female and love to go and watch the latest bands in gigs
and want to find out about the latest news about the
indie genre. As the music is rather relaxing I would say
when they are listening to the music then they are calm
and trying to do work. Where as if it was a hip hop
genre then they would be listening to the music if they
were going out. I have used a variety of techniques to
try and appeal to my social group.
4. Lifestyle
The lifestyle of my target audience is represented in
my magazine. Firstly the sell lines say about a festival
scam this shows that my target audience are
dedicated to their music and enjoy seeing live
concerts and also shows that they are very sociable
people. Another way that my magazine shows their
lifestyle is the free download which shows that they
are into technologies as the download will take place
on a laptop/computer. Another way is my photos
show the age of my target audience also the location
might be where my target audience feel at ease. As I
said before they will most likely be in school or
university so I can not portray anything in a bad way.
5. Socio-economic
factors
Conventional indie magazines normally aim to sell to
people who are middle and upper-middle classed. I
do think that my magazine is aimed at this class but
could also me aimed at the lower class as people who
are at school do not have that much money but could
get this magazine as a monthly treat. The price of this
magazine is £2.20 which is a lot lower than the
magazines on the market at the minute as they are
priced from £3-£4, therefore I know that people would
be able to buy this magazine. Another way is that it
says about festivals and tours and not a lot of people
can afford to pay to go to these, this could state that
they are in the category c1- c2 in the socio-economic
group.
6. Gender
My media product is uni-sex so will appeal to both
male and female readers of the indie genre. The image
does attract both female and males as girls can relate
to her and boys may be attracted to her. The image
does not follow the male gaze theory as she is not in a
sexual pose however males could find her attractive
from recent things that she has done. The colours are
both stereotypical for male and females as I have got
purple and blue. Like NME the colour scheme is
gender neutral so it will not affect the readers
attraction to the magazine. They have black, white
and red so this makes their social group to be both
male and female. The only problem with my front
cover is that I do not have many male artists on my
front cover so people could say that it is female
biased.
7. Age
My magazine is aimed at male and females from the age of
15-25. There are some negative stereotypes of this age
however I believe that my magazine does not present this.
In my draft I did have one of my sell lines at Noel’s
addiction to music which could connote her to be into
something that is addictive such as drugs so I changed this.
My model for my main images is in the lower range of my
age group which is a good thing as people can look up to
her as well as being a good musician for the older people to
listen to her music. For example the new young star Lorde
is really good and I like her but so does my mum so this
does not make any difference. The way that she is dressed
is appropriate for my age group as she is not dressed in a
provocative way so people will buy it for the artist rather
than the pictures. The age group is also portrayed by the
artists that are in the magazine such as Ellie Goulding and
The vaccines as these appeal to that particular age group.
8. Ethnicity
The people who will be reading my magazine will most
likely be white Caucasian people due to the amount of
people living in the uk, also in my magazine most of the
bands and artist are white Caucasian. My magazine is
obviously open to any ethnicity, but as it will be
published mainly in the uk then I believe that this
ethnicity is most likely to read it, it then could develop to
a wider audience so I could get different ethnicities. I will
put other ethnicities into my magazine but there is not a
lot of indie artists which are not white caucasian.
9. Encoding and Decoding
I have encoded my music magazine by the use of the model
who is rather young. This would make my target audience
decode the fact that even if she is young she has had the
chance to become a star, this could give the motivation for my
target audience who are into their music to reach for their
goals. I have also encoded a message about festival scams on
my front cover hopefully as my reader will be going to these
festivals they can decode this message about being careful
when buying tickets to see shows. My social groups will
hopefully decode all of the messages that I have put in place
about different scams, new artists and also Ed Richman on
my contents page giving them some advice .
10. Conclusion
Overall, I would say that I have represented my social
group well. I have displayed them positively as I think
that Indie music is positive. When designing my
magazine I did have the thoughts in mind about my
social group as I wanted to make it as appropriate as
possible. I have kept to the conventions of the music
magazines that have the same social group as
me, therefore I think that my magazine will be successful
in appealing to this target audience.
