Attitude online MEGAPOST

This post is a hodgepodge mix of different concepts and ideas! Dig in and remember that the component 2 exam is synoptic, which means discussing audience in a representation question for example is very desirable! 

Also, please remember the Attitude is an evolving, constantly changing text, with new articles every week. It is absolutely essential that you support your response with examples from the website!

Attitude online - introduction

Audience targeting

Audience construction - is where a producer MANUFACTURES an audience through a process of acculturation, essentially telling the audience who they are. 

Cultivation - is where the audience is exposed to the producer’s ideology repeatedly, eventually changing the audience’s ideology

• Many articles feature representations of gay men. For example, an article about the actors from the show Heated Rivalry focuses on their outfits to the Oscars, constructing a reality where queer coded characters are notable 
• An article about the 2032 world pride event is notable for the target audience as it features a huge gay event that the target audience is interested in . The pride flag anchors this reading, and constructs a target audience who are interested in expressing themselves, and Pride
• Many articles feature coverage of homophobia. For example, a reform MP calling for pride flags to be removed allows the audience to be involved in gay activism, and cultivates an audience who see themselves as vulnerable and politically involved
• There is a big emphasis on often sexually explicit content and sexuality. This helps to target a gay audience aware of kinks, queer sexuality and sexual subcultures. Heavily sexualised images often fetishizing young men construct a reality where to be gay is to be hypersexual
• The website focuses on coverage of trashy TV, gay icons, and camp culture. This constructs an audience who are interested in stereotypically girly, camp content 
• Serious political articles will be addressed from a gay perspective. For example, an article on EU law-making focuses on the right to self-identify gender, and an article on the politician Zak Polanski FOCUSES ON HIS SEXUALITY AND VIEWS ON TRANS IDENTITY. this IS SIMPLY BECAUSE THE target audience are almost certainly gay!
• The website is trendy, up to date, and focuses on the current zeitgeist, with an obsession over celebrities, and suggests the target audience skews younger 
• The website plays into many gay stereotypes! There is a specific section for theatre tickets! There are articles on kink culture, BDSM, leather and other fetishes. There is lots of discussion about Soho in London, a queer friendly community. There is a dedicated style section, cultivating a stereotype that gay men are obsessed with fashion. By embracing stereotypes, it’[s easier for producers to target audiences, and for audiences to identify with the identities in this online magazine. 
• The online magazine presents an escapist utopia for the queer audience, where everybody is gay and every story is about gay people!

Identity in Fetish Daddy: Inside the luxury fetish house’s new London shop – after it designed this latex apron for Jake Shears in Pillion

• The article is somewhat hidden in the sexuality subheading within the lifestyle heading. By separating the more explicit content from the less explicit content, it allows Stream media the opportunity to target different preferences
• The inclusion of a fetishistic lifestyle and its situation within a more hidden part of the website creates a representation of gay men as others, as outsiders. By othering gay men, Attitude constructs a sense of community that distinctly exists away from the mainstream heteronormative orthodox, again constructing a sense of community.
• The use of lexis such as ‘fetish daddy’ explicitly speaks to gay men who are into kink. Terms such as bear, twink, daddy, etc communicate explicitly to a queer audience. It also acts as a deterrent for straight people, creating a safe space for the target queer readership.
• The article follows a capitalist and consumerist logic, advertising the opening of a new fetish store in London. It potentially encourages the target queer audience to visit the shop and to explore their interests and sexual desires. 
• Other gay men may not be into fetish gear, and the article allows this audience the opportunity to explore what they are not into, further defining a complex representation of queer sexuality
• The article may also be educational for a queer audience without the contacts and support network that others may have. The designer of this material, Ollie Spradley, is constructed through a mid shot, and directly addresses the audience in an angry, confident glare. His crossed arms suggest authority and power, and learn a potential way of performing being gay. 
• The article constructs a hypermasculine fantasy to the target audience, and presents a queer identity that is distinct from the camp, effeminate type often seen in mainstream media.
• The article provides sexual gratification, exclusively for a gay audience, again constructing a sense of pride and inclusion
• The article focuses on a physical store that will provide a sense of community for the target audience. This reinforces a reality that to be queer is an identity that can be related to a physical space
• However, this article is an exception to the general representation of highly sexualised, buff, young hairless men in Attitude Online. It can be argued that, with a few exceptions, Attitude presents a straightforward representation of hegemonically attractive men.

But why? By leaning in to stereotypes, the website can quickly build an audience through the use of a commonly held cultural symbol. It also makes a huge assumption about the target audience and their sexual preference. In this way, Attitude online constructs a stereotypical queer audience who have similar interests to one another. The huge advantage of this is that Attitude can effectively target this mainstream queer audience. 

Stuart Hall in a nutshell

• Hall’s argument that stereotyping, as a form of representation, reduces people to a few simple characteristics or traits Hall’s argument that stereotyping tends to occur where there are inequalities of power, as subordinate or excluded groups are constructed as different or ‘other’.
• Hall’s work focuses on the use of stereotypes by the media - arguing that stereotypes work by reducing characters to simplistic physical characteristics and behaviour traits. Hall argues that stereotypes reflect the amount of power that social groups have within society, and that negative stereotypes reflect, in Hall’s view, social inequalities or the wider views of society. In other words, the construction of specific groups as ‘outsiders’ or ‘others’ by media products mirror their social exclusion from wider society.

Roland Barthes argued that media products are constructed through a complex set of codes that connote meaning. Evaluate this semiotic theory. Make reference to Attitude Online to support your answer [15]

Knee jerk reaction - Semiotics = really useful average audiences, gay audiences, and producers. However, other theories eg Butler better???

Plan

• Representation 
• Naturalisation 
• Symbolic codes
• Hermeneutic codes enigma code
• Proairetic codes
• Fetishisation
• Positions 
• Situates 
• Mode of address
• Stereotype
• MES
• Anchorage 
• Escapism 
• Myths - challenges heteronormativity… homonormativity
• Hegemony
• Visual codes 
• Connotes
• Cultural codes
• Gender perf
• Butler
• Steve neale genre
• Binary opps
• Narrative
• Web 2.0 
• Symbolic code 
• Genre
• Hermeneutic code
• Proairetic code
• Denotation and connotation
• Polanski
• Fetishistic 
• MES
• Encoding
• Queer coding 
• Stereotypes
• Shot types
• Zeitgeist
• Intertextuality 
• Fonts
• Codes are how we make sense of the world
• Clothing and outfits 

1. One way in which Attitude constructs a complex set of meanings is through the straightforward and highly conventional layout of the website…
2. Another way in which Attitude presents complex connotations is through the precise and highly leading selection of images, which in turn construct a highly appealing and often complex representation of queer identity
3. The complex set of codes presented in Attitude even extend to the fashion and lifestyle section, where the use of lexis is highly involving…
4. Finally, we see a highly leading and connotational procession of elements being presented in the supplementary material of the online magazine, most notably the advertising, which provide audiences with a range of digitally convergent interactive features that spread beyond the remit of the online magazine

Attitude and the ghettoization of gay identity 

Ghettoization within the A-level media studies curriculum

Ghettoization refers to the ‘housing’ of one group within a specific physical or metaphorical location. This can be forceful (e.g. the Warsaw Ghetto) or can occur naturally (e.g. Jewish communities in Golders Green and Muswell Hill). We can also apply this term to media… and even the media studies course!

• Attitude - gay people
• Have you heard George’s Podcast, Black Panther, Formation - Black Identity
• Woman, Tide advert, Zoella  - sexist representations of women 
• I Daniel Blake, 17 Going Under - working class people in north of England
• Super.Human (IDB) - people with disabilities
• Black Mirror, Assassin’s Creed, Les Revenants… broad representations of white people… hegemonic representations of societal norms
• Adbusters, Les Revenants, Black Mirror, - these texts feature majority white representation, and a complex range of identities. These texts present complex, intersectional identities. 

Paul Gilroy argued that as a result of colonialisation, even after the fact, we still have societal systemic prejudice against minorities (eg ethnicity, sexuality, gender identity…)

bell hooks argued that we should problematise everything, and look for issues, even within systems that we trust!

Examples of ghettoization and demarcation in gay culture 

• Pride parades, festivals etc - a space explicitly for the celebration of gay identity.; Straight people are allowed to join, on the basis that they are allies
• Gay music, queer music - eg Death Goals, Xiu Xiu, hyperpop, digital hardcore
• Gay clubs, gay bars, gay pubs - these gay spaces are based on vibes, and the attitudes of the potential audiences. These spaces are deliberately discriminatory in order to provide a safe space for queer people 
• Gay dating apps - Grindr etc. Provides gay audiences with a private service that deliberately excludes straight people through it’s explicitly gay content
• Gay websites forums, Instagram accounts - hypermodality and digital convergence allows for extreme segmentation
• Gay TV and film and podcasts  - Heartbreak High, Heated Rivalry, But I’m A Cheerleader!, Brokeback Mountain, The Doom Generation
• Gay districts, e.g. Canal Street, Soho, the whole of Brighton - by promoting gay districts as a tourist attraction, gay audiences who have more disposable 
• Pride month - a festival specifically for queer people! Clearly every day is gay if you’re gay. However, this festival allows for recognition and publicization of queer identity, even if it has been commercialised 
• Coming out (of the closet) - telling people you are gay, inferring that previously the individual had to hide away
• Gay clubs, gar bars, gay pubs - these spaces are exclusionary! They deliberately attempt to put off non queer from entering, so queer people can meet similar, but mainly to allow gay people to feel safe 
• Websites, including social media accounts. The internet allows for extreme ghettoization, through algorithmic, hypermodal and convergent structures 
• Gay films, music, gay art, gay TV, all marked by themes of gay identity
• Gay districts, e.g. Canal Street in Manchester, Soho in London, the whole of Brighton… These districts allow gay people to form communities
• The Pink Pound - the idea that gay audiences have more disposable income, and are more likely to spend money on experiences, eg the theatre, clubbing, holidays…

In what ways does Attitude Online deliberately exclude heterosexual audiences in order to construct a definite queer community?

• The perspective of each news story is not subjective but objective, and assumes a gay perspective. We are positioned as a gay person. For example “Jamaica’s prime minister states strict gender policies will not change: ‘A man is a man and a woman is a woman’” positions the audience as queer, and as being enraged and frustrated by the perspective of the Jamaican government
• The sexuality tab, now hidden in various menus used to be more open, and was labelled simply ‘Boys’, is explicitly focused on queer sexuality. It focuses on very specific niches and fetishes which may make some audiences uncomfortable
• Lots of specific names and people important to gay culture. E.g. “Adult film star Seth Peterson dies aged 28, fiancé announces”, not only appeals specifically to a gay audience familiar with pornography, but also excludes a heterosexual
• Politicians and other famous people will be featured because of their sexuality. For example, Zack Polanski, while discussing issues of capitalism and green policies, is featured because he is gay. This excludes straight audiences who have heard this information before , but positions gay audiences in a valuable mode of address
• Men's bodies, including straight men’s bodies are sexualised for the assumed gay audience. Liesbet Van Zoonen explores Laura Mulvey’s notion of the male gaze, where women are placed as spectacle for a heterosexual male audience. However, in Attitude, women are rarely sexualised, but men are hypersexualised, a gay male gaze! Contextually, sexualised images of women are normalised, due to patriarchal hegemonic values. In the article “6 kinky, not entirely SFW photos from the BOYS! BOYS! BOYS! Archive”, men are presented as a provocative spectacle to challenge certain audiences. 
• Coverage of pop stars such as George Michael specifically target a gay audience and celebrate diversity within the music industry. Openly  gay musicians allow gay fans not only an entry into his music, but also allow them to express their own identity…
• Zack Polanski is a mainstream politician and head of the green party. He is also gay, a fact that is incidental to most people. However, to the gay, male target audience of Attitude, this does matter! While his interview does not explicitly discuss his sexuality, his inclusion will give gay men a sense of identity that extends beyond the usual sexualised representations. He’s presented as smart, sophisticated, and relatable, constructing a reality where gay men can occupy diverse positions. 
• Throughout the website Attitude will ghettoise and construct people as gay, allowing a focus on gay themes and issues. “NASCAR driver Daniel Dye suspended over ‘gay voice’ jibe at David Malukas” picks a specific queer issue, the demonisation of a stereotypical, effeminate and camp way that some gay men talk. While this may seem minor for a heterosexual audience, this attack on queer identity demonises and dehumanises gay people, which is completely relatable to the gay audience, who may have been victims of hatred.
• When heterosexual men are mentioned they are either demonised (as above), or hypersexualised… for example “Heated Rivalry’s Hudson Williams makes red carpet debut with girlfriend at Vanity Fair Oscars party” constructs the heterosexual actor Hudson Williams as an object for gay male desire. The images selected openly sexualise Williams, which may put straight male audiences in an uncomfortable position. Hegemonically, women are sexualised for a heterosexual male audience (the males gaze). However, attitude positions the gay male audience in a gay gaze, completely breaking hegemonic norms.

Target audiences - Appealing to an audience that are already primed and already exist. For example the Daily Mirror targets working class left wingers through covering topics like working class identity and positioning the audience as working class. 

Constructing audiences - how the producer makes an audience that doesn’t yet exist. For example, the Super.Human advert constructs an audience of sports fans who are now interested in the real issues and struggles of the paraathletes

Cultivation theory is how the ideologies of the media are grown over time through repeated exposure. Eg AC franchise cultivates an ideology that violence is acceptable and cool

By cultivating ideological perspectives over time, audiences can be effectively constructed, for example through themes of social cohesion. For example, the British public perception of homosexuality has changed dramatically over the century, through positive representations of queer people in the media.

How does attitude cultivate, position, target and construct its gay British male audience?

• The layout of the website is simple, straightforward, and clearly using a template. This targets the gay male target audience through constructing a reality where the focus is on the news and articles as opposed to the aesthetics of the website. 
• The article covering the BFI Flare film festival begins with the headline and standfirst: Attitude Loves: From the BFI Flare film festival to gorgeous male nudes, here’s six things we’re into right now - Movies, men, and fresh coffee... Is there anything else one needs?” - this cultivates a stereotype of gay men as being extremely sexually motivates, and obsessed with appearance.
• Another highly stereotypical aspect is the categorisation of gay men in to different archetypes of gay men. For example, we see highly sexualised representations of bears (a big hairy gay man), being involved in fetishes (e.g. leather), twinks (young looking gay men) construct a reality of hypersexuality and a world where gay men are extremely interested in sex. 
• Clicking on the nav bar brings up a range of subsections that play into gay stereotypes. Fashion, theatre, pride and queer friendly holidays are all represented, constructing a stereotypical reality of being a gay man. By presenting such specific stereotypes, it allows Attitude Online the ability to explicitly target its mainstream stereotypically gay audience. Queer culture may be about reclaiming stereotypes and empowerment through othering.

Queer coding - using certain visual narrative codes to imply a character, setting, or theme is queer without explicitly saying it

What examples of queer coding are in the trailer for But I’m A Cheerleader? 

• The acting style is camp, trashy, silly, over the top. Referencing commonly held gay stereotypes, it embraces a trope 
• Women’s bodies are sexualised through a female gaze, positioning the target audience as a gay woman
• The MES of the extremely tight shorts sexualises men in a stereotypically gay way
• The colour scheme is overwhelmingly colourful, symbolising camp identity, and also gay pride 
• There is a big focus on sex, and heterosexual sex is represented as being disgusting
• The inclusion of RuPaul as a gay icon
• The use of explicit phallic imagery lurking in the background
• Challenges Christian ideology 
• Explicit queer lexis, and references to being gay
• Straight relationships are constructed as weird, disgusting and creepy
• The colours are vibrant, colourful, stereotypically gay!
• The acting style is trashy and playful 
• The casting of queer icons
• Highly sexualised costumes, e.g. short cheerleader skirts and tight, tiny jeans… 

Applying Gilroy to Attitude

Cultural imperialism - Where one culture is seen as being more powerful and dominant than other cultures. Hegemonically, heterosexual identity is considered dominant, standard, normal 

Hegemony - The rules and restrictions that we follow in society through conformity and consent. For example, a hegemonic relationship may manifest as a man, woman, and two children, the nuclear family…

Heteronormativity - The hegemonic assumption that everybody is straight. For example, everybody in every film ever is straight… unless it is pointed out that they are gay!

Othering - Grouping everyone that isn’t ‘us’ in a single category. The process of making ‘everyone else’ different’

Queer coding - the process of symbolically making something or someone gay. Like all codes this is constructed through media language. Queer coding is a method of targeting gay audiences by using commonly held assumptions about queer culture

Attitude Online constructs a reality where gay people are other, as different, as QUEER. This word suggests being odd, different, strange, unnatural… Yet the term queer can be a part of gay identity and pride. By presenting gay men as different, it challenges norms of heterosexual hegemony, and constructs a reality gay men are not the norm and this is OK! The use of the term allows for queer to be reclaimed and reappropriated, giving gay men power.

Magazine industry revision MEGAPOST

 

Media language

b) Explore how the set edition of Adbusters conveys viewpoints and ideologies. [15]

Knee jerk  - Adbusters challenges hegemonic view[pints and ideologies, presenting a deliberately challenging mode of address for an activist, active target audience

Woman and Adbusters are DIAMETRICALLY OPPOSED. Woman is CONVENTIONAL. Adbusters is UNCONVENTIONAL.

Woman is conventional	Adbusters is unconventional
Stereotypical format of articles and images, with an incredibly structured and rigid format	Completely unstructured, chaotic, utilises different conventions every bimonth
Appeals to a wide, mass, mainstream	Appeals to a niche audience, more based on educational values and ideologies as opposed to social class
All generic conventions are consistent every week	Completely different cover, style aesthetic and even masthead changes for every edition
Conventional, all material specifically created for the magazine	Culture jamming, sabotage and detournment: taking copyrighted material and reattributing in a legal grey area
Conservative, traditionalist ideology. Refinforces heteronormative and patriarchal ideologies	Promotes conflicting ideologies. Left wing, marxist (???), deliberately disruptive and progressive. Advocates destroying modern society
Soft and inviting mode of address	Aggressive and direct address
Capitalist	Anticapitalist
Absolutely made for profit and the long term financial success of the publisher, IPC	Rejects the notion of power and profit, non for profit for the publisher Adbusters media foundation
Straightforward, easy to come up with the preferred reading	Polysemic and open to interpretation
Completely refuses to acknowledge certain societal contexts, eg the sexual revolution	The main point is to engage with societal issues
Women are represented as being subordinate to men in a patriarchal hierarchy, with clearly defined roles and routine sexualization	Women are constructed in a diverse and complex way, where they are never sexualised, unless for satirical purposes

DAC - definition, argument context 

Ideology refers to the dominant viewpoints of the media producer. Every producer has an ideology, which is encoded into media products through media language. Through this process of encoding, the producer attempts to manipulate and to engage the target audience, ultimately to minimise financial risk and to maximise profit. With Adbusters however, the producers seek to subvert this hegemonic expectation of media products, choosing instead to promote an anticapitalist and anticonsumerist ideology. In this essay, I shall argue that Adbusters consistently challenges hegemonic expectations to convey radical and complex ideologies. Adbusters is a bimonthly radical political magazine, established in 1989 in Canada, yet with a worldwide target audience of activists.

How does adbusters encode these radical ideologies? Through complex and atypical use of media language. For example,

• The unconventional aesthetic and layout, for example on the homeless woman DPS, situates a androgynous model in diuretic opposition to a similarly androgynous women, lacking the power and exclusive of the model. This stark binary opposition constructs a reality where people are defined by their wealth, and critiques high end fashion through a typically cynical address

• The magazine is predicated on oppositions, for example the Zuchetti/water DPS helps the activist target audience to understand to disparity of wealth in the world. In particular, this is anchored through through the MES of the shiny tap, presented as an object of fetishistic desire, using a preexisting advert to construct a reality of anticonsumerism.

• The design is radically different for each issue, most notably changing the masthead. This reflects an unconventional challenge to the dominant capitalist ideology of minimising risk and maximising profit. By not building a conventional brand identity, Adbusters deliberately places itself at risk to violently reject capitalist norms

• The runway double page spread constructs a BO between the grimy, pixelated CU of chapped broken feet, and the logo for Louboutins branded shoes. This situates the target, consumptive audience for high end fashion, and also presents a satirical and aggressive swipe at the fashion industry, while deliberately presenting a stereotypical white saviour narrative to the target audience. The CU of broken black feet in a stereotypical yet undefined ‘African’ representation deliberately positions the audience in a confusing mode of address.

• Adbusters lacks anchorage 

Paragraph starters

One way in which a radical ideological perspective is encoded is through…

A challenging, anticapitalist ideology is constructed through the startling use of…

Adbusters tends to present a pessimistic, and even nihilistic ideology, that can be best viewed through the radical use of…

However, a more conventional ideological perspective is also situated. Adbusters also positions itself as a lifestyle bible, albeit an alternative and radical one. These themes of lifestyle and collective identity can be found…

Representation

a) Discuss the influence of historical context on representations in the set edition of Woman magazine. [15] 

Discuss - talk about multiple points, and take a point of view 

Historical contexts are essential in influencing representations, and in Woman magazine, we see almost nothing but sexist representations that reflect the hegemonic values of the 1960s.

Plan

Van Zoonen male gaze

1964

7p

Sexist

Mainstream

Conservative

Post war context

Published by IPC, the dominant market leader, publishing Woman’s Realm and Woman’s Own

Hitchcock - snowcapped volcanoes, sexist and derogatory

Othering

Objectification - Breeze Soap advert

Compare with Playboy 

My kind of star has a special magic - sexualisation

“Get the man in your life to do it” - reinforces assumptions about women’s aptitude and their sexuality 

Heteronormativity

Homosexuality illegal in 1964

Are You an A-level Beauty - assumption of beauty standards: only 16-18 yos are beautiful!

Unemployment rate low and inflation low, facilitating non-working women 

Perceived housewife audience

Unwaged labour

Glamorous MS of woman at sink constructs straightward, sexist ideology 

Conflation of sexualisation and consumerism

Challenging representations include long shot of female dominance and superiority 

Introduction - DAC

Representation refers to the representation of reality in order to construct the producer’s ideology, and therefore to manipulate a perceived target audience. In this essay, I shall argue that historical contexts influence representations to a high degree for a variety. To explore this idea, i shall refer to the set edition of Woman, published Aug 1964. Woman was ansd still is a conservative mainstream women’s lifestyle magazine, targeting a working class middle aged audience of housewives. 

Paragraph starters

One way in which historical contexts have influenced representation in WM is

Objectification and sexualisation

Focus on hegemonic beauty norms

MES of makeup

Lack of MES of a bath emphasises body

Awkwardly posed

Seductive and fetishistic 

An aspirational model for heterosexual women

Reinforces a patriarchal, hegemonic view of women 

Housewife representation

Reinforces certain ideologies, ensuring the target audience are likely to align with these values 

Ensures that the magazine continues to target a demolished and anxious audience, therefore minmising risk ETC

Another way in which these contexts have influenced representations can be clearly seen…

However, a final and contradictory representation can be found… 

Adbusters and Woman magazine are diametrically opposed. Whatever argument you come up with should always be related to the very specific ideologies constructed by each of time 

Woman magazine is…	Abdusters is…
Sexist and straightforward	Inclusive and complex
Capitalist and consumerist	Anticapitalist and anticonsumerist
Clear and easy to understand	Contradictory and self-defeating
Conventional and consistent	Always different
Clear target demographic (middle aged working class British white women)	More unclear target demographic (activist audience)
Cheap (low production values)	High end (high quality paper)
Establishment	Antiestablishment
Conservative	Socialist/communist
Reflects post war ideology	Reflects modern anticapitalist ideologies
Depends on advertising	No paid for adverts
Completely non-offensive  (to a contemporary audience…)	Shocking images

Audience

To what extent do social and cultural contexts influence audience interpretations of magazines? Refer to the set editions of Woman and Adbusters to support your answer. [30] 

Knee jerk reaction

S&C contexts influence audience interpretation to a massive extent, however the interpretation of the two set texts have changed drastically over time

Plan 

MES

Sexist

1964

First published in 1930s

Second wave feminism 

Outdated

Mainstream 

Gauntlet pick and mix

Stuart Hall reception theory

Decoding

Gender is fluid, gender norms have changed over time (VZ)

Zietgeist - reflects the time

Patriarchial 

Conservative

Activist

Antiestablishment 

Atypical rep of gender

COmplex reps of gender 

BOth western bias

Genre

Woman’s lifestyle

Culture jamming

Political activism 

Satirical 

Advertising 

Preferred reading - clear and conservative ideology

Negotiated reading - unclear range of readings

Polysemic

Save the planet kill yourself_ many different negotiatons

Contraversial readings

A present for your kitchen direct address lexis familiar scenario 

COnsumerist ideology 

Anticapitalism 

Campaigns: deflating SUV tyres 

Buy Nothing day

Fuck it Friday

Artistic

Brand identity shifts

Fandom - both magazines can be corresponded with

Adbusters has an open submission policy

Campaigns

Gerbener and cultivation

Woman cultivates a patriarchal hegemonic ideology that women should stay at home, cook clean 

Adbusters cultivates an open ended, complex and and self-critical, thoughtful 

Minimise risk and maximise profit

Or 

To reject the norm, make a point, be confusing 

Anchorage 

Modes of address

Positioning 

Introduction - DAC

Social and cultural contexts (S&CC) refer to the social and cultural conditions that shape the production of media products. The time and place that an audience consumes a media product will greatly be influenced by S&CC. IOn this essay I shall argue that these contexts have affected the interpretation of both Woman and Adbusters magazines to a significant extent. However, it should be noted that both of these magazines have been produced in completely different S&CC, and therefore will contrast to a significant extent. To explore this idea, I shall refer to an August 1964 edition of the weekend women’s lifestyle magazine Woman. First established in the 1930s, by the 60s it was an established part of British public life and reflects post war attitudes towards women’s place in society. I shall contrast this with the July August 2016 edition of Adbusters, a Canadian anticapitalist and political activist magazine that rejects traditional funding models for mainstream models for magazines by refusing to run paid for adverts. 

Paragraph starters

Way way scc influences audience interpretations of Woman is the alarmingly sexist representations that position contemporary audiences in a conservative and patriarchal mode of address

However, Adbusters through its completely different SCC provokes very different readings, allowing the audience to come up with their own interpretations, which is often provoked through shocking and transgressive imagery.  

Industry

‘Magazines are a global industry.’ To what extent do Woman magazine and Adbusters support this claim? [30]

Knee jerk -  to massively differing extents. Woman magazine targets a national audience at a time of societal change. However, Adbusters targets a more global yet western audience in an era of increasing globalisation!

Plan

Livingstone and Lunt - regulation is ineffective

Curran and Seaton - power and profit

David Hesmondhalgh - minimising risk and maximising profit 

Horizontal - buying out companies in the same sector, eg Oldhams/Ipc buying out Woman’s Realm 

Vertical - Where a company buys out companies from different sectors, eg Disney buying Marvel 

Multimedia integration - where a company integrates using digital technology, eg the Adbusters website 

Adbusters global 

Adbusters anticapitalist, anti establishment, anti regulation!

Published by IPC, horizontally integrated conglomerate

Adbusters first published in 1989 by non-profit Canadian org The Adbusters Media Foundation

Culture jamming of global companies, eg Zuchetti, Coca Cola, Louboutins, Nike

Adbusters non profit

Woman - commercial

Woman - funded through cover price and paid advertising 

Adbusters - lacks paid advertising, meaning close to 100% revenue through cover price 

Woman cover price  - 7d: cheap

Adbusters current cover price varies but most recent UK issue £8.99, reflecting the changing context of buying magazines 

Adbusters: additional revenue through merchandising eg T-shirts, shoes, posters, banners, flags, special edition books, etc

Adbusters: sells a lifestyle of anticapitalism and far left ideology: conflicts with the merchandising

A lifestyle of performative activism 

Woman magazine sells a simple straightforward patriarchal and hegemonic lifestyle 

Woman magazine first published in the 30s

The 1964 edition demonstrates a post war ideology 

World War 2 shaped British values through pushing it towards capitalism and against fascism 

A shift therefore towards progressiveism… which the producers of women ignore to appease their conservative audience 

Hitchcock article promotes patriarchal and monogamistic values, while serving as a front to institutionalist abuse of women 

“Get the man in your life to do stuff”

IPC horizontally integrated: specialised gravure printing process 

Different editions of Adbusters published in different countries

Adbusters: no consistent brand identity. Different styles, mastheads and concepts every issue

Woman magazine constructs a consistent brand identity appealing to a british mainstream audience

Adbusters: multiethnic representations, woman exclusively white 

Introduction - DAC

Many media products are global industries, appealing to different audiences around the world. In this essay I shall argue that while some magazines target an exclusively domestic audience, other magazines increasingly target a global audience, in order to minimise risk and to maximise profit. In order to explore this idea, I shall refer to Woman magazine, the set edition being the August 1964 edition of the long established British working class women’s lifestyle magazine. This enormously popular and surprisingly sexist magazine will be constructed with adbusters, a modern political, progressive and strikingly artist magazine that targets a global audience of anticapitalist activists. Clearly these two magazines are produced in completely different contexts.

Sentence starters

One way in which Adbusters can be seen to be a global industry is through it’s progressive anticapitalist stance, that increasingly targets a global audience. For example…

However, the magazine contrasts this approach through targeting a specifically British national audience. One example of this can found through the patriotic lexis