Audience and industry - digitally convergent media, economic factors and the magazine industry

Explore how Adbusters uses digitally convergent media to appeal to and to address niche and non-mainstream audiences [15]

The majority of our proposed answer to this 15-marker comes from the Adbusters website itself. A great way to revise is simply going on the website, and then picking out specific examples to answer specific questions. 

• Digital convergence refers to the coming together of previously separate media industries thanks to digital technologies. While sales of print magazines have long declined, particularly among certain, younger demographics, innovative campaigns using synergetic and digitally convergent technology have led to magazines remaining relevant in a digitally convergent world. Adbusters makes heavy and innovative use of digitally convergent media in order to both appeal to and to address their niche, anti-capitalist and radical target audience. This anti-capitalist magazine uses the logic and aesthetic of detournement to position its audience in a radical mode of address. 
• The lack of anchorage in the magazine actively encourages active audiences to use digitally convergent technology to research the deeper themes and contexts of the magazines. This not only addresses the audience as someone already deeply involved in global activism, but also positions the audience in a deeply respectful mode of address, and does not insult the intelligence of the target audience.
• The home page of the website instantly links to the Tiktok account of Adbusters, using the snappy title ‘meme warfare’ . This highly politicised language actively engages and includes the activist target audience. Moreover, the selection of Tiktok as the primary social media account also potentially engages younger audiences. This is anchored through the selection of images of young and hegemonically attractive radical activists in the process of being arrested. By promoting this act of dissent, it cultivates the ideological perspectives that adbusters wishes to promote to its constructed younger target audience. Younger people tend to skew more heavily to progressive, left wing ideologies, and are also potentially more easily manipulated. Using the language of social media, in particular repeated images and ideologies, Adbusters presents a simple, straightforward and attractive representation of global activism where the target audience can feel they are making a difference
• The aesthetic of the website is messy, rugged, and takes a mixed media approach combining scribbles, photographs and scans. The website specifically resembles the magazine, especially the landing page, which cultivates an explicit and easily identifiable brand identity. This ugly and rugged address particularly appeals to younger and socially active audiences who wish to challenge the dominant hegemonic ideologies of capitalism
• The website also includes commonly repeated symbols, squiggles and calls for political activism and campaigns. These include the famous ‘buy nothing day’, ‘digital detox week’, a campaign encouraging audiences to let down the tyres of SUVs, and most famously occupy wall street. These high profile campaigns attract a younger, politically motivated audience who wish to push for change, and also position the target audience as political activists who are changing the world 
• Reception theory - the dominant ideological perspective is encoded through the codes and conventions of the magazine and the website, constructing a coherent brand identity. However, a commonly held oppositional reading of how adbusters targets its audiences is that it uses the language of capitalism in order to cultivate a certain ideological perspective. Audiences are encouraged to ‘cancel’ the Adbusters brand on incendiary articles about the Israel Palestine conflict. However, even this link links to the online shop, only providing the audience with the straightforward response of subscribing to the magazine. This is a perfect example of utilising digitally convergent technology to distribute the physical, old media edition of the magazine to a predominantly middle class audience who normally would not engage in such a product 

How have economic factors shaped the production of Woman magazine? [15]

The second half of the lesson took the form of research and a discussion, so there are only a few notes. If you want the whole story, you must attend the revision lessons :) 

Two further in depth articles about Woman and the magazine industry can be found here, and here

Simple straightforward sexist ideology

Hyperrealistic adverts

Power and profit 

Mass audience

Sexualisation

Aspirational mode of address

Patriarchal values

Cultivation of patriarchal ideologies

Hegemonic expectations 

Mass produced, mass distributed 

Many black and white pages minimise production costs

Sexist language “because you’re a woman’

Direct mode of address

The cultural industries IPC horizontally integrated to specialise in magazine production

Major manufacturer of magazines

Discriminatory values, reflecting dominant ideologies of the time