Exploring narrative and media language in Zoe Sugg's more recent vlogs

Tzvetan Todorov - narrative equilibrium

Narratives work by moving from a state of equilibrium to a state of disequilibrium. At the end of the narrative, the equilibrium is restored. 

In Disney’s Tangled (2011) an equilibrium is established where Rapunzel is imprisoned in a tower. Suddenly, a charming rogue infiltrates the tower, and Rapunzel kidnaps him, signalling the disequilibrium. The partial restoration of the equilibrium occurs at the end, where Rapunzel becomes a princess and sexy thief stops being a thief.

Tangled targets an audience of young children. Zoe Sugg now targets an audience of 30something women and aspirational mothers. Yet the narrative for Tangled is vastly more complicated than the narrative for Zoe Sugg's vlogs...

Exploring narrative and media language in ‘cosy Sunday…another visit from the Grinch’

• The Grinch is a copyrighted character who first appeared in children’s book. However, modern audiences are more likely to recognize the Grinch from modern film adaptations This video, as all of Sugg’s videos demonstrates hypermodality. With a single click we can move from one mode to another. We can for example click a hyperlink to access Sugg’s Amazon storefront, providing audiences the opportunity to ‘become’ Zoe Sugg, or at least to be able to relate to her from a consumerist perspective. This complex interaction is typical of vloggers.
• The camera angles are often from the view of her children, having been actually shot by her children. This constructs a personal mode of address. However, this technique is highly unprofessional , and demonstrates noticeably low production values. This is anchored through the low budget Grinch costume, which helps the viewers to engage with this relatable situation.
• Sugg’s Bonne Maman jam advent calendar is potentially out of reach for many of Sugg’s fans. However, this provides the audience with both entertainment and escapism. The MES of the large advent calendar communicates an escapist fantasy to her working class target audience.
• A number of activities are presented in sequence, to construct the reality that the Sugg’s are stereotypical, when clearly they are not. Activities such as building a fort, baking cookies, eating jam and, most excitingly, reading the radio times are depicted in painstaking detail. A shaky, zoomed in camera tracks the MES of Sugg’s finger as she excitedly describes Christmas day television. The symbolic effect is a nostalgic, Christmas videotape feeling, home movies. However, this sequence clearly does not resemble actual home movies, yet is a hyperreal construction. The confusion we feel simultaneously with the cosy comfort is typical of the postmodern condition.
• While the video clearly subverts traditional narrative forms of equilibrium, there is still some form of disequilibrium when the character of the grinch emerges. However, the Grinch demonstrates no conflict whatsoever, aside from the negative reaction of Zoella's child. The video therefore lacks any real sense of problems, imperfections, disequilibrium or any disruption.
• This is emphasised and reflected through the perfectly manicured lawn, the matching Christmas pyjamas, the beige décor, the complete lack of any personality. By presenting such a bland MES, this on trend and agreeable décor can appeal to her target audience and therefore increase engagement
• The editing is extremely simple, with no sound effects, no fade outs, and aside from the introductory montage generally consists of long takes, with little editing. The advantage of this simple editing increases the verisimilitude of the video and makes it seem more real and relatable to her target audience. It also makes it a lot easier to edit, allowing for more effective releasing of content . Shirky argues that we have moved to an amateur model of media production.
• Sugg represents herself as family oriented and working class. Yet her pyjamas are £70, and she buys groceries M&S, constructing a performative middle class mode of address, that seeks to influence and effect her target audience. The preferred reading of this is that we are not supposed to focus on the middle class commercialism, but appreciate her status as a caring mother. Yet also, this is pointed out in the video description, and clearly is important.
• The narrative of the video is simple and straightforward, beginning in the morning, and ending at night in bed. The fact that a child could understand this simple chronological narrative assumes that her target audience lacks the intelligence to comprehend complex narrative.

Christmas Shopping, Spot of Lunch & Surprise Photos | Vlogmas Day 10 - exploring media language, genre, narrative in this vlog

“That’s quite cool isn’t it, with the tree against the wall”

“I’m just getting some shots of you walking”

“We must have walked around 80% of the Brighton lanes”

“What are you getting?” - “I don’t know” 

• The video starts with fast paced montage of the exciting events that will occur in this vlog. It functions as a proairetic code, symbolising the varied content that will be included.
• There are multiple shots of the handwarmers on the buggy: close ups that situate the audience in a direct mode of address, and positioned directly with Zoe Sugg. This constructs a reality where the most important thigh in the world is Sugg, her family and the products that construct them, a deeply consumerist ideology. This consumerist ideology is reinforced through the content of the Brighton montage. The Sugg’s trawl from shop to shop and attempt to buy food at the expense of exploring the sights of Brighton. We have a brief and tantalising long shot of Brighton Pavilion, which is swiftly ignored being not topical to the video
• The video provides many opportunities for the audience to practice hypermodality. We can click on different videos to move to completely different themes and ideas, but we can also click on the affiliate hyperlinks, linking to Sugg’s fashion choices, and allowing the target audience the pleasure of forming a closer bond with Sugg. Of course this bond is meaningless and completely based on consumerist ideologies
• Sugg does not discuss the hyperlinks within her most recent content, allowing the description to hide the mass of hyperlinks, and diverts the audience from these clear consumerist tendencies
• Additionally, there are hyperlinks to Sugg’s social media platforms, including Instagram, which allow the effective targeting of diverse audiences. 
• The sound quality is appalling, and dialogue is sometimes obscured through the sound of the harsh Brighton wind. This ‘mistake’ left in symbolises naturalness and authenticity. However, this is clearly a recording, a hyperreal reconstruction of a shopping trip, editing in such a way to construct a boring, dull and reliable day. This allows fans the opportunity to form a parasocial relationship with the ‘unedited’ Zoella’. The low production values are relatable, and encourage her audience to do the same, building a sense of community. 
• The audience are positioned and situated directly with the Sugg family. Sugg shared explicitly with the audience that she lives in Brighton, and walks us around with an amateurish handheld tracking shot. 
• The lexis “That’s quite cool isn’t it, with the tree against the wall” is a bland, dull and pointless comment. It constructs Alfie as a bland everyman with no interests that he target female audience can aspire to obtain 
• The audience is older, and has a longer attention span. The video is long from, and lacks bright colours, graphics, sound and other elements. The complete lack of any real disequilibrium or content of interest suggests the target audience desires this unedited, raw footage are conservative, unwilling to change their ideas, and unlikely to engage with alternate ideologies. For the target audience the lack of edge and conflict is the unique selling point.

Gender performativity in 'Live Smear Test, Q&A With The Nurse & Office Group Discussion'

Judith Butler and theories of gender performativity.

Gender performance refers to the rituals and routines that we carry out to construct our gender. Butler argues that sex and gender are separate concepts. Gender is fluid, and we can shape our gender performance through our actions.

Gender performativity refers to how our performance of gender affects the world around us. For Butler, gender performance has no intrinsic meaning: it is the REACTION to these elements that reconstructs reality!

Zoe Sugg’s gender performance

• Suggs wears makeup. This makeup is part of her everyday routine, and demonstrates a hegemonic norm. Her makeup is stereotypically 00’s, although she has gravitated towards a more ‘natural’ style
• Her hobbies and interests are stereotypically feminine, for example, jam, kids, makeup, cookies, and bland homeware.
• Her costume is stereotypically feminine, and emphasises a traditional representation of gendered female identity. However, her costume tends to be modest, demonstrating conservative values
• The MES of her costume and jewellery and homeware emphasises, flowers, stereotypical of femininity
• Her voice is affected and middle class. Her sentences end with inflections, symbolic of femininity
• She is often constructed through her relationship with her children, constructing her as a mother
• Her smile is over the top, overemphasised and constructs a reality where women are cheerful, and should fulfil a role of making other people happy!
• Her use of makeup is done in such a way to construct a certain kind of hegemonically attractive. She is attractive in an attainable and relatable way, and clearly not intimidating
• In her videos, she repeats stereotypically feminine routines. Her adoption of the ‘get ready with me’ archetype describes how she puts on makeup and gets ready, constructing a reality where wearing makeup is a part of her life. This constructs the reality that wearing makeup is an essential routine for women, and women are not ready until they’ve achieved this
• Sugg’s costume is feminine, and accentuates her figure. Her crew neck dress constructs a reality of women where to cover skin is to present modesty. It constructs a reality where she does not intimidate women, and fulfils a patriarchal masculine ideation of female desirability. 
• Sugg’s hair is stylish, long, and glamorous. It constructs a reality where hair exists as a signifier of essential feminine beauty 
• Her facial expression is poised and clearly practiced in order to construct the most affect possible 

Live Smear Test, Q&A With The Nurse & Office Group Discussion

Explore how Zoe Sugg constructs complex representations of femininity . [15]

• Sugg uses an informal mode of address, communicating to the female target audience that they should feel comfortable. Examples of informal lexis include ‘foof’, referring to her vagina, which constructs a reality of being comfortable, relaxed and friendly in this situation
• The discussion of something so personal cultivates a parasocial relationship. By sharing information about an intimate procedure, Sugg constructs a reality where we are positioned as her trusted beast friends.
• Sugg constructs a reality where she is a fan of the TV series Game Of Thrones, making intertextual reference to a quote (“I volunteer”), suggesting a surface familiarity with the series. By constructing herself as a GoT fangirl, a familiar friendly MOA is therefore constructed. She avoids discussing the transgressive themes of the show, instead focussing on it’s popular appeal. 
• Sugg is working with a charity that highlights the problem of cervical cancer. This constructs a representation of a strong, impactful woman, drawing attention to an issue suffered by women. 
• Sugg directly addresses a female audience, and excludes men. This video doesn’t feature Alfie, the consultant is a woman, and both members of her team, behind the camera, are women. This constructs a reality where men do not exist in the realm of gendered problems. 
• Her address is appealing to women by being radically open about issues that affect women. However, she does so by excluding men. In fact, bell hooks makes the argument that men should engage with issues that affect women. Yet Zoella constructs a world where this woman’s issue is one that can only be solved by women.
• Sugg is represented in her car on her own, constructing a narrative that she is travelling by herself. Yet by mentioning her production team, clearly suggesting that she is not by herself. This constructs a hyperreal mode of address. 
• The video starts with a warning to audiences about the content of the video. A form of self-regulation, the background of the warning is in pink and utilises the lexis ‘a teensy bit of blood’, constructing a reality where women are stereotypical and naturally drawn to this colour. 
• Sugg uses Lo-fi music in the introduction, that is clearly copyright free, constructing an unprofessional address. This is anchored through the ‘mistake’ of clattering around her car, constructing Zoella as down to earth and reliable. This in turn constructs a deep parasocial relationship.
• The music and her makeup and highly stereotypical and feminine, constructing a realty that women are soft and non-threatening. Here, Sugg constructs a brand identity that is approachable, and completely non-controversial. 
• Sugg’s makeup is stereotypically feminine and on trend. IT’s notable through how noticeable it is, and over time, Sugg has shifted her representation of femininity. This confirms the myth that in order to fit in to society, women must wear makeup. Additionally, the fact that Sugg is so performatively made up for a smear test confirms a reality where hegemonically women are expected to wear makeup to confirm their readiness. Similar to the 1950 Tide  advert, it reinforces a reality where even mundane activities must be dealt with glamorously.
• Sugg repeatedly refers to her vagina as a ‘foof’, a symbolically childish and naïve terminology that reinforces a reality that in order to be acceptable, women must be as sexless and innocent as possible. She knows she is talking to an adult audience, yet still chooses to use the childish lexis.
• Sugg makes a controversial statement that schools simply do not cover smear test and cancer screening, yet backtracks on this, suggesting a lack of research. Additionally Sugg makes intertextual to Game Of Thrones, yet accidentally refers to The Hunger games. These mistakes construct a reality that women are ill educated and unprepared to discuss difficult concepts.
• Sugg presents herself as a woman going alone to the clinic, yet also makes explicit reference to her production team. 
• This fear of referring to female coded products, e.g. tampons and sanitary towels are referred to as feminine products, constructing women as simply their menstrual capabilities. This is an example of...

Metonymy - where an attribute or characteristic is used to describe something in totality. For example,

1. “Number 10 has responded to the Kremlin” - metonymic of the institution 
2. “I love Hollywood films!” - Metonymic of high production values
3. Referring to women through the context of their womb, reproductive capabilities etc is metonymy

Hypermarket and Hypercommodity

Jean Baudrillard kept returning to the motif of the hypermarket in his writing. A sort of huge, French supermarket, for Baudrillard it presented a microcosm of consumerism, and of capitalism as the predominant logic of postmodern existence. Hyper means to go beyond, and this prefix is used in much of Baudrillard's writing, most notably in the concept of hyperreality. This suggests a world beyond, reality, but also one more real than reality. To make things more confusing, Baudrillard posits that reality never even existed in the first place.

Using a hypermarket or a supermarket as an ontology (a way of thinking about life) can help use to not only understand Zoella, online media, and media in general, but also the ways in which we are subjectified and acculturated by postmodern existence.

From Hypermarket and Hypercommodity 

From thirty kilometres all around, the arrows point you toward these large triage centres that are the hypermarkets, toward this hyperspace of the commodity where in many regards a whole new sociality is elaborated. It remains to be seen how the hypermarket centralizes and redistributes a whole region and population, how it concentrates and rationalizes time, trajectories, practices-creating an immense to-and fro movement totally similar to that of suburban commuters, absorbed and ejected at fixed times by their work place.

At the deepest level, another kind of work is at issue here, the work of acculturation, of confrontation, of examination, of the social code, and of the verdict: people go there to find and to select objects-responses to all the questions they may ask themselves; or, rather, they themselves come in response to the functional and directed question that the objects constitute. The objects are no longer commodities: they are no longer even signs whose meaning and message one could decipher and appropriate for oneself, they are tests, they are the ones that interrogate us, and we are summoned to answer them, and the answer is included in the question. Thus all the messages in the media function in a similar fashion: neither information nor communication, but referendum, perpetual test, circular response, verification of the code.

No relief, no perspective, no vanishing point where the gaze might risk losing itself, but a total screen where, in their uninterrupted display, the billboards and the products themselves act as equivalent and successive signs. There are employees who are occupied solely in remaking the front of the stage, the surface display, where a previous deletion by a consumer might have left some kind of a hole. The self-service also adds to this absence of  depth: the same homogeneous space, without mediation, brings together men and things-a space of direct manipulation. But who manipulates whom? 

(From Simulacra and Simulation, 1994)

What is postmodernism?

As a discourse and as a theory, postmodernism is exceptional hard to pin down, as it essentially argues that there is no meaning, and therefore there is no definition. However, postmodernism can be 'defined' through the themes and qualities of the world that we live in.

Postmodernism is...

• The inability to differentiate between reality and hyperreality
• We live in a depressing world which makes no sense
• Reality does not exist and never did
• Media products rely on intertextuality, or the referent, which may or may not exist
• Simulacra is the perceived ‘real’ - A simulacra is a representation of something which never existed
• Simulation is the perceived ‘false’ - A simulation is a false reality that cannot be differentiated from our reality
• We live in a world with more and more information but less and less meaning
• Information destroys meaning: the more we find out, the less we understand

Notes on Hypermarket and Hypercommodity

• The hypermarket is a site of hyperconsumerism. We can define ourselves through our selection of products, which are advertised through the way they can change your life as opposed to their simple 
• There are no options for interaction outside of commodification and commercialisation. We define ourself through choices of product
• Supermarkets are constructed in such a way to shape our consumerism. We start off with flowers, luxury donuts and magazines, all aspirational objects. We move to fruit and vegetables, essentials, and then conclude with chocolate, nuts, and finally, alcohol and gambling. 
• Supermarkets will regularly change the location of items to keep consumers in as long as possible, creating a sense of confusion and delight.
• A supermarket construct an emotional hyperreality, a reflection of the postmodern condition. We are not the ones who buy products: the products buy us. We are the product.
• The hypermarket is the maximum possible commercialism and consumerism, where the product themselves is us that is buying them. It disrupts the traditional chain of command, where we are unsure as to whether we are buying products, or they are buying us.
• The Supermarket is constructed like a labyrinth of meaning, constantly screaming at us for attention
• Walking into a supermarket, we typically first experience flowers, magazines, and small chocolates, inviting, cutesy and delightful. Then we pivot to fruit and vegetables, essentials. We move through through the supermarket, ending at alcohol.  This programs the users of supermarkets and subjectifies them to the logic of the hypermarket. 

How can we apply the concept of the hypermarket to Zoe Sugg?

• When we land on Sugg’s landing page, we are presented with a series of options that digitally resemble the aisles of a hypermarket. We are encouraged to enter a rabbit hole of hypermodality, which Sugg has encouraged through a range of disparate content. 
• Sugg presents herself as the sole producer of this content, while acknowledging her production stream. This suggests that much like a supermarket that attempts to keep you in it, Sugg’s production team is aware of what produces maximum engagement.
• We are the product. Sugg’s money and success is dictated by the engagement, i.e. clicks, purchases, and screentime of the many audiences. We have been acculturated to accept the logic of capitalism, and can only interact with Sugg through buying stuff. 
• Sugg’s videos demonstrate the same hyperconsumerism as a hypermarket, with the only way of defining ourselves being to buy things.
• Sugg’s landing page is similar in structure to the confusing yet hyperstructured presentation of a supermarket. The mess of thumbnails invite us to define ourselves through straightforward predetermined actions
• It creates a sense of autonomy. We thing that we are engaging with a reality, where in fact we have been acculturated to only view the options that we have been

Let's learn InDesign using ChatGTP for help :)

Prompt: construct a step by step written tutorial for using adobe InDesign. The tutorial should cover how to start a project, how place text and images within a project, and finally how to export this project. 

Here’s a step-by-step written tutorial for using Adobe InDesign. This guide walks you through:

1. Starting a new project

2. Placing text and images

3. Exporting your finished document

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🖥️ Part 1: Starting a New Project

Step 1: Open InDesign

• Launch Adobe InDesign from your computer.

• On the Home screen, click Create New.

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Step 2: Set Up Your Document

A New Document window will appear.

Choose Preset

• Select Print, Web, or Mobile depending on your project.

  • For brochures, flyers, or magazines → choose Print.

  • For digital PDFs → Web or Print both work.

Set Document Details

Adjust the following:

• Width & Height – Choose standard sizes (e.g., Letter 8.5x11 inches).

• Orientation – Portrait or Landscape.

• Pages – Set number of pages (e.g., 1 for flyer, multiple for booklet).

• Facing Pages – Turn ON for books/magazines.

• Margins – Default is usually fine (0.5 inches typical).

• Bleed – Set to 0.125 inches if printing to edge.

Click Create.

You now have a blank document.

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✍️ Part 2: Placing and Editing Text

InDesign uses frames to hold content.

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Step 1: Create a Text Frame

1. Select the Type Tool (T) from the left toolbar.

2. Click and drag on the page to draw a text box.

3. A blinking cursor appears inside the frame.

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Step 2: Add Text

You can:

Option A: Type Directly

Start typing inside the frame.

Option B: Place Existing Text

1. Go to File → Place.

2. Select a Word (.docx) or text file.

3. Click Open.

4. Click on your page to place it inside a frame.

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Step 3: Format Text

With text selected:

• Change Font & Size (top control panel).

• Adjust:

  • Line spacing (Leading)

  • Alignment (Left, Center, Right, Justify)

  • Paragraph spacing

• Open Window → Styles → Paragraph Styles to create consistent formatting.

---

🖼️ Part 3: Placing Images

Images must be placed inside image frames.

---

Step 1: Create an Image Frame

1. Select the Rectangle Frame Tool (F).

2. Click and drag to draw a box.

3. You’ll see an “X” inside the frame (placeholder).

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Step 2: Place an Image

1. Select the frame.

2. Go to File → Place.

3. Choose an image file (JPG, PNG, TIFF, etc.).

4. Click Open.

The image will appear inside the frame.

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Step 3: Resize and Adjust Image

Use:

• Selection Tool (V) → Move the frame.

• Drag corners to resize.

• Right-click → Fitting → Fill Frame Proportionally (recommended).

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🎨 Part 4: Arranging Content

Move Objects

• Use the Selection Tool (V).

• Click and drag elements.

Align Objects

• Select multiple objects.

• Open Window → Object & Layout → Align.

• Choose alignment options (center, left, distribute evenly).

Layers (Optional but Useful)

• Open Window → Layers.

• Lock or organize elements on different layers.

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📤 Part 5: Exporting Your Project

Once your design is finished:

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Step 1: Save Your Work

• Go to File → Save As.

• Save as an .INDD file (editable project file).

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Step 2: Export for Print (PDF)

1. Go to File → Export.

2. Choose Adobe PDF (Print).

3. Click Save.

In Export Settings:

• Choose preset:

  • High Quality Print (general printing)

  • Press Quality (professional printing)

• Under Marks and Bleeds, check:

  • ✔ Use Document Bleed Settings (if using bleed)

Click Export.

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Step 3: Export for Web/Digital Use

1. File → Export

2. Choose .jpg

3. Select:

   • Smaller file size

   • Optimize for viewing

Click Export.

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✅ Final Checklist Before Exporting

✔ Check spelling (Edit → Spelling → Check Spelling)
✔ Ensure images are high resolution (300 dpi for print)
✔ Confirm margins and bleed
✔ Save final editable version

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🎉 You’ve Completed Your First InDesign Project!

You now know how to:

• Start a document

• Add and format text

• Insert and adjust images

• Export a print-ready .jpg

Adbusters: complete analysis

Introduction

This absolute monster of a post covers absolutely everything we covered for Adbusters. Except it doesn't quite. The research tasks, the examples of direct action, the consideration of regulatory factors and the detailed analysis of the website as an ancillary text were all completed din different ways, and will exist in your notes. 

Your notes will always be absolutely essential, and must be used in conjunction with the blog, the case studies themselves, exam board resources and anything else you can get your hands on!

Adbusters - what generic conventions does this magazine utilise and what brand identity does it construct?

• Takes a political, revolutionary and even propagandistic approach, helping to position audiences in a socialist, and revolutionary mode of address
• Potentially targets an anti-capitalist audience seeking an alternative… a difficult target audience!
• Shocking mode of address can help to situate audience 
• Genre - political. Conventions such as representation of corporations, presidents, politics… all represented very negatively!
• Layout - messy, ugly, difficult to market! 
• Aesthetic, masthead, themes, texture, size, format changes every issue, making it hard to build familiarity for the audience
• Anarchist, anti-capitalist, anti-establishment, anti corporation!
• Radical, different… and defying social norms
• Encourages the audience to act out and be different, by… reading adbusters!
• Encourages audiences to be engaged with politics…
• The genre of this magazine is unclear! This means that encouraging an audience to purchase it is difficult!
• However, the magazine is most logically political 
• The brand identity of the magazine is chaotic, unrelaxed, 
• The magazine has no set genre, which is reinforced through the masthead changing every edition! The identity of the magazine changes each time, contrasting the message…

ADBUSTERS ISSUE 125 INITIAL BRIEF DISCUSSION 

• Complete lack of columns, unconventional!
• Focus on imagery rather than text
• Inconsistent style throughout the magazine
• Range of topics
• Layout is aesthetically pleasing, and helps to communicate complex ideas
• Shocking mode of address: drugs, swastikas, and images of dead children killed by drones in Pakistan
• Deliberately decodes political statements to cultivate leftist and anti capitalist ideologies in the audience 
• Transgressive: goes beyond social and moral expectation
• Propaganda?
• Almost empty pages
• Hypocrisy? 
• Discusses environmentalism and saving the planet… yet also is a commercial product 
• The magazine surprisingly seems to lack a particular focus. In fact, it has the potential to completely confuse audiences
• We live in a messed up and scary world. The magazine features explicit images of war, explicit language language, in order to cultivate a sense of shock and fear
• Aesthetic - artsy, experimental, risky, DIFFERENT from mainstream media 
• The magazine features adverts… but they do not portray the products kindly. In fact, ADBUSTERS features NO paid for advertising. All adverts are edits and spoofs. It occupies a legal grey area, only legal on technicalities:
• Fair use policy, playing fast and loose with copyright law, and taking advantage of something already in the public sphere… 
• Many of the adverts skirt close to defamation, of portraying companies in a bad light with the potential of reducing profit
• However, ADBUSTERS is satire. It is satirical, and challenges those in power.
• Adbusters is anticorporation, anti profit, and anti capitalist.
• Anticapitalism is an extremist ideology under UK law. To challenge capitalism is to challenge the government, and the hegemonic norms of society

ADBUSTERS issue 125 - ‘The year of living dangerously part 2’. May/June 2016 front cover analysis and initial discussion

• The subtitle ‘The year of living dangerously part 2’ is highly unconventional for magazines, and positions the audience as activists who will take direct action against action against capitalism and other forces. It also suggests and constructs an audience that will put themselves at risk to challenge capitalist ideas. This niche audience will return to the ideologies of the magazine every issue because there is no other magazine doing quite what they are doing.
• The lexis ‘post-west’ appears to be a subheading but is actually a coverline. This unconventional coverline lacks any further text to anchor it. Adbusters clearly expects the target audience to be confused, yet want to explore it, a preferred reading. The oppositional reading however, would be to reject the dangerous anticapitalist message, or simply to completely not understand the magazine. There is an assumption that the audience are interested in…
• The lexis ‘west’ has connotations of liberal democracy, colonisation, and capitalism. West is presented in contrast to ‘eastern’ countries such as China, Russia, Kenya, India. The image in background, a ‘army person’ serves to anchor this reading by presenting a stereotypical counterpoint to the west. Finally ‘post’ suggests after west, either after western influence has collapsed, or after the existence of the west
• The magazine presents a deliberately confusing and atypical mode of address
• However, the cover is also simple and straightforward. It relies on an easy to understand knowledge of the world!
• The image is grimy, unflattering, unpleasant and even scary. The model is presented without context or anchorage, leaving the audience to speculate on his ethnicity, nationality, ideology, motives and situation. The model resembles a stereotype of a terrorist, and by using these stereotypical assumptions, positions the audience in an uncomfortable mode of address. The term ‘terrorist’ is a value laden term and is completely open to interpretation
• Similar to WW2 propaganda posters. However, the cover is confusing, and it is difficult to articulate exactly how it makes meaning. The symbolic code of the camo suggests war, and the symbolic code of the cover line, ‘post-west’ anchors the main image to suggest conflict… but it’s confusing!
• The magazine lacks conventional coverlines that would normally indicate to the target audience the content of the magazine. This makes the magazine particularly off-putting to consumers, an anti consumerist ideology???
• The lexis ‘post-west’ seems to symbolically refer to the end of civilisation, capitalism, and the capitalist societies of Britain, Europe and America. It also symbolically refers to white countries, white societies, white culture as being superior. This postcolonial ideology has lead to wars and conflicts such as the Israel Palestine conflict, the crises in the middle east, Russia's invasion of Ukraine
• The ideologies featured on the front cover almost downplay the potential collapse of civilisation, presenting all global conflict in just two words. The lexis engages a cult, politically engaged audience, who already have existing anti capitalist ideologies
• The cover star, the model is constructed through the combined gestures codes of a clenched fist, a screaming fist suggests a sense of angry passion, an engagement in conflict. HE’s wearing a camo vest, which may connote he’s involved in war, conflict, the military. We have no idea what conflict this is, however the anchorage of the lexis ‘post west’, in commination with the MES of his uniform suggest his his ideologies are anti-capitalist and .anti-western 
• The front cover plays with stereotypes, and constructs a stereotypical representation of an Islamic extremist terrorist. The magazine presents a provocative representation of a middle eastern man that forces the audience to confront our own stereotypical ideologies and potentially latent racist thoughts. It encourages us to consider where this ideology has come from.
• Terrorism is subjective. There is little difference between a terrorist and a freedom fighter, aside from perspective.
•  ‘The Year Of Living Dangerously’ - paints activism as a lifestyle choice, a declaration that this is the year we should be living dangerously, to challenge the instability that exists in society. By branding an entire year, Adbusters promote a dangerous lifestyle choice, and also seem to contract their own anti-branding/capitalist ideology. 
• The cover looks horrible. It’s style is deliberately rough, and the main image obscures the masthead. Additionally, the image is grainy. It seems to proairetically encode a physical capture of the moment, subverting the accessibility of digital photography. Here the high quality digital photograph has a physical, damaged, rough quality, which connotes singularity, it is one of a kind, unique. The image resembles guerrilla marketing, manmade, against law and order, rough and low quality. IT constructs a positive and cool aesthetic. A sense of authenticity. The grain resembles splattered paint, grit or mud, which constructs an edgy and different mode of address. It resembles a printer error, which goes against mainstream, glossy, beautiful lifestyle adverts. It also gives the magazine a homemade, ‘zine style quality, which provides the magazine a subversive, gritty, handmade feel. 
• Hyperreality: the magazine constructs a contradictory presentation of a badly and cheaply produced magazine, using high end, high production values. It presents a hyperreal expectation and reality of the world, based on our own stereotypes, prejudices and understand
• The magazine is deliberately confusing in order to construct a reality where the world we are living in. Conflicts such as the Israel Palestine conflict lack all logic, and resist all interpretation.

Context

• published six times a year by Adbusters Media Foundation, 1989

to present. - Only create Adbusters, and a few other ancillary tie ins

Frequency - bimonthly

Weekly - more potential revenue, yet shorter copies, less information, less time to work with. Requires a substantial amount of money, resources, and staff!

Bimonthly - Cheaper in terms of resources, yet also cheaper in terms of employing staff! However, harder to engage audiences and gain recognition

• Set edition: May/June 2016 - Brexit, Trump

• Price: £10.99* - High cover price! Covers the cost of production and staffing only! However, the price fluctuates, it goes up and down! Currently between 8.99 and 9.99! Highly confusing for customers, and extremely bad business practice. This , coupled with a completely different aesthetic and even masthead per issue means the magazine could never establish a consistent readership… however, perhaps the inconsistency is the brand identity of the magazine!

• Circulation: 120,000 readership (website Apr 2017) significantly smaller than the circulation of mass media mainstream publication, however Adbusters is far more expensive, targets an undefined and niche audience, and there is no paid for advertising in the magazine, and it is anticapitalist, against the hegemonic norms of society 

Website: https://www.adbusters.org/

Genre: Independent/ campaigning/ culture jamming

Subtitle: ‘Journal of the mental environment’

‘Based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, Adbusters is a not for-profit magazine fighting back against the hostile takeover of our psychological, physical and cultural environments by commercial forces.’

Our mental environment has been hijacked by advertising companies, and advertising can control us and our secret thoughts...

What examples of this ‘hostile takeover’ can we think of?

• Promotional posters in pubs: half off with student discount!
• Poster for the Perse independent school at the train station - target upper middle class/executives 
• Jet 2 Holidays adverts on streaming subscription services based on an online meme 
• Nivea - TikTok - pop up advert
• Tenpin - £10 Thursdays advertised on the TVs 
• Spot adverts ion paramount plus for funeral service 
• Promotional emails from an indie music label 
• Adverts for snapchat premium on snapchat 
• Right move at the station 
• Influencers selling products, whether or not they identify it as an ad 
• Watching TV, range rover ad on Frasier 
• Tattoo parlours paying for promotional posts on Instagram 
• Parody adverts an attributed content 
• Product placement 

Christian Louboutin presents Loubiairways - what lifestyle is being sold in this advertisement?

• The advert encodes a respect in society, demonstrated through the montage of the respect that the wearers receive
• They construct the wearer as being object of a gaze, and reinforces the ideology that to be a spectacle is to be powerful
• A confident, exciting lifestyle
• These shoes are being worn by confident flight attendants, which constructs the reality where anybody can buy them. However, this is a problematic message, given that these luxurious shoes carry such a huge price tag. It goes against conventional fashion marketing…
• The advert encourages the working class audience to spend lots on shoes, potentially through finance!
• The queer coded flight attendant buys two of high heels, constructing a reality where spending £2000 on shoes is a potentiality for a working class audience 
• I constructs a reality through the branded fashion, cultivating a sense of ubiquity. It constructs a reality where everybody is rich. With high heeled shoes cost around £1000 pounds, this luxurious reality is clearly far from many people’s experiences
• The majority of people in this advert are white, suggesting a western centric ideology of a society dominated by white people. However, there are token black , Asian and queer characters, constructing a reality of inclusivity
• A luxurious yet happy lifestyle is attained through wearing Louboutin's. It constructs an exciting, jet setting lifestyle..
• In this world, there is no such thing as poverty, terrorism, war, racism, sexism, ugly people or homophobia. It is a utopia 

Exploring the ‘Louboutin - red soles are always in season’ double page spread

• The double page spread is typical of te content of Adbusters, presenting a number of different complex elements without anchorage, forcing the target audience to either attempt to interpret the images (preferred), or completely not bothering and turning the page (oppositional)
• The spread constructs a number of binary oppositions to shock the target audience. The most shocking is an opposition constructed through collage. The lower half depicts a runway model at a fashion show. She is constructed through the MES of clothing, with the bright colour pink suggesting confidence, and the luxurious silk connoting wealth. Here a reality is constructed where clothes are a form of expression, of self confidence, and a declaration of wealth. Fashion is a STATEMENT, and not everybody can be a model, as it requires social status, financial stability, and a very specific hegemonic beauty standard. The stereotypical combination of high fashion and the confident catwalk strut here constructs a reality that is in direct opposition to the top image. A stark black and white cinematography constructs an uneasy and miserable mode of address. The models here are refugees, immigrants, families, prisoners in detention. The combination of mes constructs intertextual relay, which may mean the audience is reminded of concentration camps like Auschwitz.  However, we have no indication who these people are…
• The bottom photo depicts clothes as luxury, the top sees clothes for survival. This reflects Gilroy’s notion that people of colour are frequently othered in media, and that we are so used to seeing images of degradation and detainment on the news, that we are left unshocked. Numb to the violence…
• Meaning is constructed through binary oppositions. By combining these two disparate images, we are forced to confront the violent reality of the top image, while wanting to fall into the seductive reality of the bottom image. It forces the audience to not  resort to escapism when viewing media products, a complex and challenging address. 
• Different audiences will interpreter, negotiate (Hall) and pick and mix different realities (Gauntlet) from this page
• The image constructed the straightforward meaning that we should feel guilty, and high end fashion is to blame for many of the world’s issues
• The Slogan ‘Red Soles Are Always in Season’ is presented under an image of chapped, broken feet wearing water bottles as shoes. Here the slogan functions as a double entendre, here referring to bleeding feet. 
• The DPS uses detournement or culture jamming in order to recontextualise the advert. However, the effect is blunt and manipulative. It forces the audience to feel guilt. However, it is unlikely the audience will purchase luxury goods, constructing a confused message. 
• The water bottles being worn are rubbish from a privileged society that consume without consequence. 
• This highly unconventional and confrontational double page spread positions the target audience in a confusing mode of address, with the lack of anchorage and explanation encouraging multiple interpretations.
• The MES of the broken shoes in the image on the left connotes  harsh realities of the world in which we live in, and demonstrates the producer’s encoding of the preferred reading that we should feel guilty. The shoes are in actuality water bottles, and this coupled with the low production values, with the image being poorly framed and perhaps taken with an old phone camera, constructs a reality where poverty in 3rd world countries distant from the so-called western world
• The image is constructed through a number of devices that function as hermeneutic codes. We have no idea as to the identity of the model, the symbolic code of the anchorage of the anchorage of the advertising slogan presents an opposition of luxury and privilege, and the MES of decrepit shoes, the fact the model is black, and the dusty, red sanded floor all function as powerful stereotypes for the target audience. Not only does this construct a sympathetic mode of address…
• The image is heavily cropped, functioning as a distancing device, deliberately detaching the audience from the image. Symbolically, this positions the target audience in an uncomfortable mode of address that suggests the ways in which ‘western’ countries distance themselves from third world countries
• On the opposite side, we see a beautiful, high quality image of a runway model. This functions as a symbolic code, equating runway models with beauty, confidence, privilege and wealth. This image is interrupted with a diametric opposition, a high quality black and white image clearly taken by a professional war photographer. This image is of some kind of conflict, through the gesture code of the battered, hegemonically unattractive people crying and screaming. Audiences will note the MES of barbed wire, cultivated through referential codes. It is reminiscent of apocalyptic movies , charity advertisements, and historical images of the holocaust, with the referentiality of the stripped pyjamas and the black and white cinematography. 
• These three images are completely unrelated from one another. However, each communicates a meaning which anchors the primary message, that while in the west we wear luxury designer clothes, in other countries a completely different lifestyle is lived. 
• Louboutin: iconic, expensive shoes, marked with a red sole. These shoes are impractical by design. Wearing them wears the red sole away, decreasing their value. Here the slogan ‘red soles are always in season’ can be hijacked, and now means blood, scabs, pain and misery. 

The role of stereotypes

• What are stereotypes? - Breaking down certain groups into a few characteristic traits
• What functions do they serve? - They serve the function of making clear and easily identifiable storylines. They can function as tools of oppression, which can be used by those in privilege. They help to put people in groups, helping us to understand the world. And it can help make things clear to audiences, and help producers to make media productions. 
• What advantages and disadvantages do they provide? - However, they present a limited assumption of the world. Stereotypes are never true… they always approximate the world

Representation - What factors make this term WAY more complex than ‘showing something again?

• Representation is a demonstration of the ideology of the producer
• Representation is reality
• Representation is manipulation. Guilt tripping, fear mongering, ideology warping, changing our perceptions of people
• It constructs hierarchies of power. For example the postcolonial racial hierarchy in the UK is established through othering black people through stereotypical roles
• It sets hegemonic norms, and it challenges hegemonic norms!
• It solidifies stereotypes, which can cause divisions

Explore how gender is constructed in different magazines. Refer to… [30]

What representation theorists can help us to interrogate this question?

Laura Mulvey - the male gaze. Media products are constructed to adhere to the perceived male heterosexual audience. This leads to representations of women typically being sexualised and objectified. Where the audience are women, the female body functions as an aspirational role model to fulfil the male gaze.

Liesbet Van Zoonen - women are presented as a sexualised spectacle, and that men and women are constructed through media language in certain ways  and these messages change over time 

Judith Butler - gender is constructed by everything and it’s a performance. Gender performativity is how our performance of gender shapes the world around us. For example, in the Crème puff advert, putting on foundation has a real, measurable effect on men. Additionally, these performances of gender performatively affect the audience. For example, the Breeze Soap advert performatively constructs a sense of insecurity and anxiety

bell hooks - We must eradicate the patriarchy! The control of men must end! This is clearly contradicted by the ideology of Woman magazine. Additionally hooks argued feminism is for everybody, intersectional feminism, which again woman clearly does not adhere to

Stuart Hall - Representation. Representations are constructed through codes, and demonstrate the ideologies of the producer. They often use stereotypes, and representations always reconstruct reality 

Interrogating gender: what theories and theorists will help us with interrogating and theorising how gender is constructed in Adbusters?

• Interrogation is a form of active question. Eg, “as an audience, we are encouraged to interrogate the dominant ideological perspective from a number of angles”
• Liesbet Van Zoonen - feminist theory for media studies! Women’s bodies are presented as a spectacle. Gender is constructed through conventions in media products, but these things can change over time.
• bell hooks - feminism is a struggle to challenge the patriarchy! This revolutionary ideology seems right up Adbusters street. She argued that it’s a political statement, and feminism is for everybody! Intersectional feminism 
• Judith Butler - we perform our identity and our gender identity through a series of acts. This is called performance. However, our performance of gender affects the world around us. This is called gender performativity. 
• Stuart Hall - representations reconstruct reality. Representations are constructed through media language and always reflect the ideology of the producer. This usually takes the form of stereotypes. 
• Paul Gilroy - postcolonial othering. After the collapse of empire, and the end of the colonies, we still still deeply entrenched racist ideologies in British society. Groups that are othered include queer people, disabled people, poc, women, the working class… 
• David Gauntlett - pick and mix. Audiences pick and mix gender representations to construct their own identity! The bathtub representation could be emancipatory, challenging, prejudiced.. Without anchorage, it is up to us to work this out ourselves!

Water double page spread 

• In Osasco, Brazil, there are a number of health problems due to lack of water. This is described in a block of copy, presented as a poorly typeset, ugly, chunky and askew piece of writing. This symbolically encodes the situation that the poor in Brazil must go through, living in chaos and misery. 
• We need water to live. Without it we would die in three days. We need to wash, for social reasons, and for health reasons. We need water for agriculture. We need it to cook and clean. It’s important haemodialysis. And we need it for sanitation. 
• This copy is placed in a binary opposition to a real, unaltered advert for a £500 tap from Zuchetti. It is constructed in such a way to connote glamour, luxury, excess, desire
• In a 1991 Zuchetti TV ad aired in Italy, an abundance of water is represented as a fun and exciting time. Here water represents cleanliness, chemistry, and a sexually exciting life. In the HIM tap advert, the tap is provided with an anthropomorphic personification of masculinity. It constructs a world where this tap has sexual qualities
• By simply printing the Zucchetti Him advert, adbusters construct a comparison between plenty, and nothing. Additionally, by adding no further elements, Adbusters construct a reality where the manufacturer of the tap is completely out of touch with reality. The joke is the tap itself 
• The advert only becomes truly ridiculous when the audience researches the brand. By becoming familiar with the pricing of luxury brands, this double page spread cultivates the preferred reading that we should be outraged by the price and concept of this luxury product. This helps to establish the audience as fans, by actively interacting with the magazine, the magazine interpellates the audience to accept an anticapitalist message. 
• In mainstream media, for example the 1992 Zuchetti tap advert, women are presented as objects of visual decoration. A hegemonically attractive woman dashes around, being sprayed with intense water, before finally dropping her towel, causing the performative effect of water gushing out of the plumber’s ears, clearly symbolic of orgasm. This reinforces a traditional, hegemonic ideology that the women simply function to be looked at by a heterosexual male audience.
• Earlier, in 1964, the Breeze soap advert in Woman reinforced a similar ideology that to be clean is to be beautiful, as well as sexually available. 
• However, the image in the top left is highly polysemic, and open to many interpretations. 
• The image depicts a nude person, possibly a woman, sitting hunched in a plain and straightforward bathroom. The bathroom connotes a working class lifestyle, yet even this is unclear. This woman represents the audience, with a relatable mode of address. The woman sits in the bath with very little water. 
• The aesthetic of the photograph is candid and voyeuristic, yet the woman is not sexualised in any way. The model is posed in a banal and naturalistic pose. She is positioned in a way that does emphasise her figure
• The advert, with it’s observational quality and the MES of the hands resembles a water charity. The image positions the target audience in a position of guilt. Even taking the bare essentials still has an impact on the planet. 
• The end result is the audience is left in a state of confusion and aporia, with no conclusion. Adbusters wants it’s audiences to think.
• On the left page is a panel of copy that is unevenly and messily applied to the page. It is not in a traditional column shape, which is highly unconventional of magazines, and reflects that this is an unconventional magazine, with an unconventional brand identity. Its positioning is off, slightly diagonal, and sitting slightly off centre, which symbolises disorder. There is no context for this article, which allows the magazine to skip any preamble, and instead skips immediately to the issue at hand: the lack of water in a village in Brazil. Residents have to wake up at unimaginable hours and spend three hours sourcing water.

Water is essential because…

It’s particularly important in tropical climates, to feed crops and animals

Water is essential to life, and without it we will die in agony in three days 

Water is essential for hygiene

It’s essential for all lifeforms

• Yet the double page spread constructs a dichotomy between absolute lack and human suffering and an advert for a tap. The tap is branded Zuchetti, which has connotations of luxury, power, of sanitation, luxury, wealth and fashion.
• Taps are a device for regulating and pouring water. They allow access to water that is paid for by the consumer. Yet the Zuchetti advert, placed in the magazine without permission, constructs a lifestyle of consumerism, of luxury, wealth, excess… The advert constructs a reality where the western world takes water for granted. As opposed to a necessity, water becomes a sexualised, exciting lifestyle. In a 1992 Zuchetti tap advert, a woman’s bathroom springs a leak that can only be solved through acquiring Zuchetti taps. Upon seeing a naked woman, water blasts out of the plumber's ears, symbolising sexual attraction. The advert in Adbusters uses the anchorage of the brand name HIM to  add a masculine quality to the tap, literally sexualising the tap and the water. This example of commodity fetishism is presented as a large issue. The DPS compares those who are impoverished and the wealthy elite who squander their money. Adbusters tacitly suggests that a capitalist and negligent society is responsible for the poverty in the developing world. 
• However, like much of the magazine, the message is confused and difficult to parse. The implication could be that we in a privileged position must donate money. However, the magazine lacks an avenue for this to be accomplished. 
• In the top left of the DPS, we are confronted with a third, disparate element. We see a feminine figure in a bathtub. She is constructed through a high angle shot, which draws attention to the MES of a stereotypically working class bathroom. Her hands are wrinkled through the water, here reflecting an abundance of water. However, the image is not luxurious. The model is hunched, suggesting that there is not enough water in the bathtub. Additionally, her face is obscured, which functions as a symbolic code, constructing a reality where this woman’s experience reflects the experience of the many. Rather than unimaginable luxury, or absolute poverty, this image constructs an unattractive construction of reality. Her life has no issues, yet it lacks glamour, luxury. It suggests that attractiveness can be purchased in a patriarchal, western, consumerist society. 
• This woman represents the average person. She has something, but not much. The anchorage of the advert and the copy positions the audience in a confusing and contradictory mode of address, where we do not understand how to address the issues with our planet. 
• This image depicts a naked woman in the bath. However, this image of nudity is in no way sexualised. The shot type obscures her face and provocative parts of her body. It is a binary opposition to the representation evident in classic soap, shampoo and beauty adverts, such as the Breeze soap advert in Woman magazine. Rather than functioning as a spectacle for the male gaze, this representation of a naked woman instead teaches us as an audience a lesson about waste and sustainability.

Sociocultural and socio-political contexts

Woman context – Post-war England in 1964

Ideological perspective – Conservative, sexist, hegemonic patriarchal norms

Key socio-political figures - Alfred Hitchcock, Grace Kelly, Jackie Kennedy

Theory - bell hooks, Van Zoonen, David Gauntlet (pick and mix)

Adbusters context – Canadian, but international in scope, and discusses post-globalisation politics

Ideological perspective – Anticapitalistic, anti-establishment, anti adverts!

Key socio-political figures - Donald Trump, Obama, Benjamin Netanyahu 

Theory -  bell hooks, Stuart Hall, postmodernism, industries and power, postcolonialism (racial hierarchies still exist in postcolonial society!) 

Audience - how can Adbusters appeal to a niche audience?

• How have the magazines you have studied constructed their audiences?
• Position their audiences? 
• Are interpreted by their audiences?
• Engage their audiences?
• Meet the needs of their audiences?

What audience theorists can help us understand how audiences engage with Adbusters

George Gerbner - Cultivation theory - the producer will cultivate their ideology over a period of time, through repetition of ideological values. Therefore adbusters can cultivate audience ideology through the sustained messages of the magazine and the website

Stuart Hall - Reception theory - There are 8 billion possible interpretations for every media product. Our reception can be shaped by our views, our knowledge of the producer, our knowledge, our education, our religion, our age, our sexuality… 

Hall simplified this by breaking down to three ways that we interpret the dominant, intended ideologies of the producer. 

• Preferred - we agree with the ideology of the producer
• Oppositional - don’t agree with the ideology
• Negotiated - agree with some aspects, but reject others
• (aberrant - audience doesn’t understand) 

The dominant, intended ideology of adbusters is one of anticapitalism, of direct action and boycott and activism, the idea of radicalism, and of a brutal, ugly, edgy mode of address.

(postmodernism - adverts are drawn in to a fictional world, with diverse narratives in conversation with actual adverts, blending reality with fantasy. A complex and highly involved postmodern mode of address, with cultivates the perspective that we live in a confusing world…)

Clay shirky - the death of the audience - the ways in which audiences interact with media products is far more complex, and Adbusters actively encourages audience research and participation… By taking control of ‘the media’ the audience are invited to negotiate a new version of reality 

David Gauntlet - pick and mix/identity - audiences can select, pick and mix what they want to engage with, to form our own identity, forming our own embodiment of the ideologies of the magazine 

Henry Jenkins - fandom - organised, active participation! Textual poaching, appropriating the text in different ways, for example, circulation, sharing, and direct action 

Reception theory 

A process involving the producer encoding their ideology, and the audience decoding this ideology. 

However, each audience member will receive this message in a different way. 

Factors which may influence reception include age, culture, class, religion, sexuality, politics, gender identity, upbringing.

Hall divided these receptions into three categories:

Preferred reading, where we agree with the message

Oppositional reading, where we disagree with the message

Negotiated reading - agree with some parts, disagree with others

Most media products will encourage audiences to align with the preferred reading, and therefore to accept the dominant ideological message that is being cultivated. This is certainly true of Woman magazine, and especially true of newspapers, which will frequently use manipulative tactics to position and subjectify their audiences.

However, some media products do not have clear interpretations, and will deliberately leave interpretation to the audience. This may include complex, postmodern TV shows such as Twin Peaks and Les Revenants, and of course Adbusters.

Save The Planet: Kill Yourself and audience negotiation

• The article takes the form of an excerpt of a book of the same name by author/artist/poet David Joez Villa Verde. The book cannot be found online, and there is no mention of this book on the artist’s website. This suggests that the article potentially does not have widespread appeal.
• The intended response of this article is to shock and to cause controversy. This is most apparent in the lexis of the title, which may be read as an incitement to commit suicide. It creates an aggressive and commanding mode of address, which may influence people to take their own lives. Audiences with depression and anxiety will be particularly affected by this blunt message 
• The title clearly is an attempt to engage the audience using shock tactics, and reinforces that we are about to read an emotionally charged article.
• However, from a legal perspective this incitement to suicide is one of very few potentially illegal elements (see below for more) 
• However, the article is potentially justified through it’s political context. It deliberately shocks the audience in order to make a valid point about the fragility of the ecosystem
• Magazine regulation is also far more lax than other forms of media. Magazines are regulated by IPSO, a form of  voluntary regulation. Adbusters is niche, targeting a niche audience of those who are likely already engaged, and IPSO will only investigate due to complaints. The readers of Adbusters are already invested in the ideology of the magazine through prolonged cultivation 
• We can also argue that the article functions as political satire 
• However, the tone of the article is extreme. It argues, perhaps satirically, that the world would be better off without us. This takes a fiercely misanthropic perspective of humanity
• The article positions the audience in a suffocating and panic inducing mode of address. The lexis “make your choice, it’s time to pay, it’s time to go. If you have any heart, you will experience gut pangs, anxiety…”
• However, the article functions as a self-reinforcing echo chamber. By being situated in an anticapitalist, anti establishment (and expensive!) magazine, the only people who will read this will share the same environmentalist viewpoint. It can be argued that this article is completely useless, only provokes anxiety, and gives no resources or suggestions for how to change the world 

Appeal 

Audiences may be sympathetic to the message

Audiences may feel the gratification of feeling smart, and that their own ideology is justified

Anxious audiences may actively seek out depressing content to ease their anxiety

It can function as a means of escapism, and can put our troubles 

Doomers, the depressed, and doomscrollers will take pleasure in wallowing in this depressing view of the world. It constructs a version of reality where there is no point in trying

Visual style - harsh black and white, bland, messy, ugly… all appealing to a niche audience!

The assumption that we, the audience, can understand the satirical and complex mode of address makes the audience feel intelligent! An important gratification

Education - the magazine encourages a preferred reading of researching and finding out about these situations. E.g. 350ppm 

A niche magazine, against the mainstream! This can be an appeal because audiences will take gratification from being different from the norm!

Activism and charity - the implicit suggestion that we should be helping out in a variety of ways

A cult audience - allows the audience the opportunity of a sense of unity with other anticapitalists

Escapism…

Self-righteousness - allows the audience the gratification of being on the right side of history

Relatability! - audiences who disagree with their government, discrimination, and environmental collapse will relate to the ant conformist ideology

Unique selling point - magazines are completely different from issue to issue: a unique physical experience! Consumerism????

Active participation

• After three pages of misery, anxiety and perpetuating an ideology of doom, there are presented a few opportunities to change the world. (active participation, Henry Jenkins). 
• Advice includes “create alternative models of consumption in your community” is vague, and lacks any practical elements. It is vague, and only emphasises the nihilistic quality 
• We have only ever lived a period of late stage capitalism and ‘collapse’, which means we have no reference for a future outside of capitalism and capitalist constraint
• It concludes with asking us to acknowledge our fear….

Examples of actual illegal content under various UK laws

• Promoting extremist ideology, for example terrorist ideology
• Depictions of self harm and suicide that glamourise the act 
• Sharing personal information about private citizens
• Naming children under 18
• Incitement to racial hatred
• Actual abuse and exploitation of children 
• Murder… 

While adbusters clearly does not engage in the vast majority of these regulatory faux pas, it does, however advocate suicide... in an ironic and satirical way. The use of satire as a discursive mode is a common justification among much edgy media. And while this article takes a miserabilist approach, there are many examples, most notably on the website, that provide a positive, life-affirming approach to activism. 

Bonus videogames! - researching a further example

For this session, you will collect research on another videogame that is NOT part of the Assassin's Creed franchise, or developed or published by Ubisoft.

Not only will this give you the opportunity to offer a counterpoint to the aims and functions of the AC franchise in the exam, it will also allow you to explore industry and audience with something that you like.

In order to make this session REALLY useful, I recommend you select an 'indie' or independent game. A list of potential case studies can be found below. However, if there's a big budget game you want to write about, then you do you!

These activities can be completed in any order. Go straight for what you find most interesting!

Industry

• Marketing - find a trailer for this game. How does this trailer appeal to potential audiences?
• Ownership - which organisation produces this game? which organisation publishes this game? And who owns these companies? What country/s is this organisation based in?
• Production - How was this game produced? What was the budget? What key personnel worked on this game? How is this typical of its production contexts
• Regulation - What PEGI (or BBFC) rating does this game have? What aspects of this game are controversial, or may cause harm or offense?
• Distribution - How can this game be bought? Physical, digital? Any special editions?

Audience

• Diverse audience interactions - what are some different ways that audiences can play this game? What modes, accessibility options, language options etc are available?
• Target audience- Who is the specific target audience for this product? and how are they targeted through the structure of the game and the marketing?
• Niche and mass audiences - Does this product appeal to both niche and mass audiences? Give explicit examples of how!
• Experience - How is the narrative of this game compelling? How does this game use genre conventions to appeal to audiences?
• Fan base - does this game have a big fan base? What does this game do to appeal to a core fanbase? What examples of fan art, fan fiction and fan videos exist for this game?
• Gameplay - Find a gameplay video of this game. How is this game appealing to it's audience? What are some different audience negotiations of this game?

Examples of indie or non-AAA games (but please pick your own example!)

• 1000xResist
• Animal Well
• Arco
• Crow Country
• Doki Doki Literature Club
• Five Nights at Freddies
• Paranormasight
• Paratopic
• Romeo Is A Dead Man
• Stiens;Gate
• Undertale

The Times set edition (partygate) front page

Newsworthiness: what reality is constructed by The Times and how does media language help it to construct a hierarchy of importance?

• Newsworthiness refers to how WORTHY a story is of being featured in the news. Only the producers of media have this ability, and the producers of mainstream mass media therefore have significant power. In this sense, the Times constructs a reality which interpolates its audience, shaping their views, ideologies and even their reality. 
• The most newsworthy story is that of Johnson attending parties during lockdown. There is more copy or column inches dedicated to this story indicating its importance. The main image accompanies this article constructing a hierarchy where this story is clearly at the top. This political story will appeal to the target audience for the times: older, right wing, and middle class. 
• However, the headline is one of ten, constructing a reality where this important event was not the only event to happen. Additionally, immediately to the right of this series story is another serious, hard news story about covid travel restrictions. Additionally, immediately above this story are two soft news stories, which reinforce and construct a reality where Johnson's transgression is rather less important. 
• However, the story is still broadly critical of Johnson, who was remarkably unpopular at this time. 
• The main story is that Boris Johnson broken lockdown rules and is being investigated. This constructs the reality that this event is the most important in the country. However, the Time’s interpretation of these events is that this is not the enormous issue some other newspapers believe it is. This story is constructed as being most important due to the enormous headline and the main image of Johnson. This aligns with the interests of the Times readership, as this political story is addressed in a descriptive and informative way. 
• However, a similar weighting is provided to soft news stories. The stories on fitness and being bitten by puppies here construct a reality which is hyperreal, a fake world of distracting soft news to help distract the audience from the most important things

Narrative - how does this front page serve as a conclusion to an ongoing story?

Narrative: “Boris Johnson announces complete UK lockdown amid coronavirus crisis” (March 2020).  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlJIwTd9fqI What mechanisms does this announcement use to ensure it’s veracity? Why is it so important to do so? How does the headline story in the Times reinforce and complete narratives established years earlier? Why is this important?

Newspapers are a factual medium. Yet they construct exciting narrative as all media products do to engage their target audience in order to maximise profit.

• The initial Johnson announcement positioned Johnson in a mid-shot directly addressing the audience and positioning the audience close to him, and in such a way that we agree he’s being truthful. He uses direct address throughout, you, we, to construct an inclusive rhetoric, establishing a narrative where we as the British public must play by the rules. If not, people die. Johnson used the language of war, directly discussing death and enlistment in order to establish a sense of fear to ensure audiences will follow the rules. 
• The MES of this broadcast was carefully selected to construct a reality of leadership, importance, and seriousness. The MES of the big expensive wooden table constructs Johnson as a firm and stable leader. Immediately to his left is a union flag which connotes patriotism and the ideology of a strong stable empire. Johnson is wearing a suit, a hegemonic expectation of politicians and prime ministers. Johnson comes across as a stern father who has declared war. He will protect the country if we comply. His approval ratings increased after this event. 
• Two years later, The Times openly criticises Johnson for reneging on these promises. While Johnson was previously constructed as resembling Churchill. However, the times construct him as a villain, albeit one who is old, unwell and tired. By constructing a narrative to real life events, the times construct a biased reality which will doubtless sway audiences real life opinions. Additionally, this narrative is exciting and dramatic, assuming the readers of the times care less about facts than entertainment.  
• The Times essentially features the conclusion of this narrative, where Johnson has now shifted from protagonist to antagonist. In the initial announcements, Johnson resembled Winston Churchill through referential codes, which helped the British public the seriousness of the situation. However. The Times concludes and constructs a narrative where Johnson now resembles a tired old villain, who has incompetently not followed through on his promise. This unhappy ending constructs an ideology that our country and social system is falling apart, forcing the target audience to challenge their own political views and to now be critical of Johnson. It also ensures that the readership t=place their trust in the newspaper, and buy it every day. 

How does the front page of The Times use media language to construct distinct representations of gender that position the middle class target audience?

Hall and Van Zoonen: media language constructs representations, and representations construct reality. What realities are constructed about gender, class, politicians, race, Britain and the Covid19 pandemic?

A question to end on: Ideology as a site of manipulation. How does this newspaper work to make the rich richer, the poor poorer, and to ensure that the people in charge stay in charge?

How does the Adbusters website engage with, interpolate and position an activist target audience?

Bricolage - a range of different styles, aesthetics, and themes encodes the ideology that everyone has the means to revolt!

Inclusion - The 'third force' middle finger dot encourages audiences to feel a sense of identity and inclusion that goes beyond merely reading the magazine/website

Digital convergence - the 'spank donny' mini-game provides a distracting, transgressive mode of address, but does it actually encourage social change???

Hypocrisy - a hypocritical and confused message is presented at many times. The website implores the audience to 'rewild your child' and discourage phone use for children, while at the same time 'proving' that digital tech can provide radical messages! Just what is Adbusters arguing???

Rabbit holes - the article encourages the audience to explore a range of themes, stories, ideas and ideologies, often only tangentially related. It is debatable as to how much we learn through this hyper convergent address! Are we just clicking around, or are we saving the world somehow?

Target audience - the encouragement for audiences to spend $500 on a lifetime subscription and to ensure the future funding of the magazine is clearly a big ask! This, in addition to the constant fixation on luxury brand awareness seems to suggest a middle class target audience, which is at odds with the challenging, working class activist representation the magazine suggests?

Iconography and ideology - frequent references to Nazi symbolism, iconography and propaganda. Trump with a Hitler moustache, photoshopped Nazi propaganda and swastikas being applied to consumer products... A transgressive, bold address, but clearly not sensitive or sophisticated! Jewish audiences in particular may take exception to fascist symbolism being used so flagrantly!

Punk iconography - use of black and white iconography, collage aesthetic that is reminiscent of 80s punk bands such as DISCHARGE and AMEBIX. Additionally, this helps the magazine to target it's politically motivated, middle aged audience, by aligning with punk ideology!

Hypermodality - How digital technology combines different modes or media forms. Links take us to games, an online shop, external websites lots of options!

Preaching to the converted - the website, like the magazine, serves to cultivate and reinforce the ideologies already held by the audience. While the website may present a challenging mode of address, it is unlikely that the audience will actually be shocked and challenged by this, but it can help activist audiences to construct their own identity!

A shocking, yet confusing political outlook - the use of AI to generate bleeding, creepy politicians faces and write confusing erotic fanfiction is effective in the sense that it is upsetting and problematic, yet it is very difficult to understand exactly what ideology it is constructing!

Postmodernism - an emphasis on style over substance... or is the style the substance? Does the website encourage us to violently rethink the world??

Work for first and second year students Wednesday 28th January 2026

First year - The radio industry

• In order to complete these tasks , you will need a BBC Sounds account, so please set one up if you do not have one already. You can set one up by googling 'BBC Sounds' and taking things from there. 
• Go to the BBC Sounds web portal
• Many people, especially younger people will access BBC sounds using either the web portal (basically an old fashioned term for website: a 'portal' to other pages, or the BBC Sounds App, which can (and should) be downloaded for free for your phone. This approach is called convergent media, and it brings together different industries to target new audiences. In this case, it means the combination of internet and radio. [MICHAEL VOICE: WRITE THAT DOWN!]
• These questions may seem a little weird, because you'll be briefly analyzing a website or an app. However, a significant amount of time and money has been devoted to making these as user friendly and enjoyable to use.

Please answer the following questions with screenshots from the site or above, as well as your own bullet point notes

Task 1 - How does BBC Sounds appeal and meet the needs of it's audiences? Make reference to:

• Thumbnails (the preview images that suggest programme content)
• Lexis
• Images
• Font
• Colour
• Hyperlinks (the words or images you click on to access content)
• Engagement (these are techniques that keep you engaged with the website, and stop you from leaving it. Engagement is a very important concept for online media!)
• Accessibility (is this website suitable and easy to use for people of different ages and abilities?)
• Plurality (the ability to appeal and meet the needs of multiple audiences)

Task 2 - How does BBC Sounds meet your needs?

This next task is important, and it's fun. In order to explain how BBC Sounds adopts a pluralistic approach to media production, you are going to find an example of how it meets YOUR needs. You will then refer to this briefly in the exam.

Find a podcast, show, music mix, anything on BBC Sounds that is 'made for you'. Not something you 'sort of' like, something that meets your needs and interests in a specific way. You will need to listen to lots of different things.

Then, make notes on how it appeals to you, and meets your needs.

Using me (Michael) as an example, my perfect show is The New Music Show on BBC Radio 3. It's absolutely crazy! It plays some of the most challenging and experimental music I've heard. It's brilliant, and I can't believe it's played on national radio. Why? Because it meets the need of a very niche audience (experimental music fans). But from a financial perspective, it also encourages me to keep paying the TV licence, as I feel represented.

Task 3 - How does BBC sounds meet someone else's needs?

Final task! Find a podcast you ABSOLUTELY WOULD NEVER LISTEN TO. Listen to it. Sorry. How does this podcast meet the needs of a completely different audience that ISN'T YOU?

IMPORTANT: Next session I will be asking you about your favorite podcast/show on BBC sounds, so make sure, as a bare minimum, you have found something that explicitly appeals to you!

Second year - magazines (adbusters)

For this task, you will be exploring the Adbusters website, and making detailed notes for the following questions. In order to do this efficiently, you should make as many screenshots as possible!

This will involve digging around the website to find explicit examples. There may be 'challenging content', for example strong language.

1 - How does this website establish a target audience? How can this website engage and position an activist audience?

2 - How can audiences use this website to construct their own identity (Gauntlet)?  What examples can you find where audiences can construct a challenging, diverse and DIFFERENT lifestyle?

3 - How does this website provide diverse experiences? What are some things you can see, do, hear on this site which absolutely would not be possible with the physical magazine?

4 - Preferred readings - Find an example of an article that speaks to an anticapitalist, activist audience. How is this reading anchored?

5 - Oppositional readings - With the same example from 4, list some ways that this audience may engage oppositional to this

6 - Controversy, transgression, abjection - find what you consider to be the most controversial aspect of this website. Why would the producers include such a thing??

7- Style and aesthetic - find a particularly 'out there' section of the website, screenshot, and make brief notes on the aesthetic using the textual analysis toolkit

8 - power and profit???? - all media exists to make money. Perhaps Adbusters is no different??? FInd some examples of how this website can achieve additional revenue for the Adbusters Media Foundation1 Hint: what can you buy?

Analysis of the set edition ('partygate' front page) of The Daily Mirror

Revising the analytical thinkers

Roland Barthes

• Everything has a deeper meaning. The world is built from codes, anything which has meaning
• Proairetic code - action code. Something that suggests that something is going to happen. 
• Hermeneutic code - mystery, suspense, enigma. Asks a question. E.g. a ghost, dark setting, a dark ally…
• Symbolic code - the deeper meaning
• Referential code - intertextuality: where something refers to something else
• Myths: stories help to shape the world
• Myths - a story that isn’t necessarily true, yet helps us to make sense of the world.
• Codes contain deeper meanings. Anything can be a code, including shot types, MES, colour, haircuts, soundtrack…

Claude Levi-Strauss

• Binary oppositions - when our understanding of something is defined through what it is not. Examples include day &night, good & evil, sad & happy, right & wrong, student & teacher. We understand the world through binary oppositions.
•  Binary oppositions. Two contrasting concepts, including day and night, teacher and student, mother and child… binary oppositions help us to see differences in the world, to identify what is what and to actually make sense of the world. 

Exploring how media language constructs complex ideological perspectives in the Mirror front page

• Hermeneutic code - the lexis of the headline refers to parties, police probes and so on. Yet it is not shown, constructing a sense of mystery for the target audience. It encourages and anchors the reading that the Daily Mirror will provide these answers, which constructs this newspaper as being made by reliable journalists. 
• The font for the lexis ZERO is significantly larger than the other numbers. It constructs a reality where it is a proven fact that Boris Johnson lacks shame. 
• To infer that Johnson has no shame is to infer symbolically that he is a bad person, and even less than human. This extremely biased mode of address will appeal to the working class and left wing target audience of the daily mirror. 
• Rather than convincing an audience, the Daily Mirror cultivates an ideology that Johnson is a bad and negative person. By attracting a specific and presold audience, it allows the newspaper to maximise profit. 
• The main image of Boris Johnson functions as a proairetic code, with the MES of his facial expression suggesting that he will make a bad decision. The image is both unflatter, and constructs Johnson as conniving, scheming and hateful. Within the narrative that the mirror has constructed, Boris Johnson is a villain. This simple and straightforward narrative will appeal not only to the left wing audience, but also a working class audience. The Mirror has therefore made a discriminative, othering and stereotypical assumption about it’s working class audience. 
• A narrative is constructed where Johnson is hypocritical. He broke the laws that he set, a clear example of a binary opposition.
• The colour yellow is vibrant, stands out, and symbolically encodes danger and hazards. This bright shade of yellow is symbolically associated with extreme danger, constructing a reality where Johnson is dangerous. 
• Johnson is wearing a suit, which is connotative of his status and importance. However, this contrasts with the narrative constructed surrounding Johnson's immaturity and incapability to rule. This binary opposition helps us to understand that Johnson is a terrible person. 
• In spite of his issues, Johnson is still constructed as the most important person  in the country. This reading is anchored through his role as PM, being featured as front page news, and his suit, which is connotative of power. This reinforces and constructs a myth where our country is ruled by powerful yet irresponsible people. This encourages the preferred reading of being critical of the conservative party. 
• The only other front page story is a colourful puff piece of the Queen being sad about her father’s death. This soft news story reinforces the myth of the importance of the royal family, and will appeal to working class audiences who love the royal family. 
• Boris Johnson forms a binary opposition with Kier Starmer. While Johnson is constructed as being more important/dangerous, Starmer here take the role of the left-wing protagonist, solving this problem. The caption beneath Starmer reads CRUSING, anchoring a reality where Starmer is powerful, profession, and physically strong.  
• The main image presents Boris Johnson in an unflattering light. He is not posing, suggesting the image was taken candidly. Johnson’s facial expression appears to be smug, constructing a reality where Boris Johnson, in a position of power is able to flaunt the law. This image therefore works as a symbolic code, symbolising his contempt for the nation.
• A reality is constructed where Johnson is incompetent. However, the mid shot includes the MES of his suit, constructing a reality that although he is incompetent and unliked, he is still in a position of authority. Johnson was a controversial Prime Minister for routinely breaking protocol during the pandemic, constructing a narrative where Johnson is above the law while normal working class people are suffering. The readership of the Mirror are working class and left wing, which positions the target audience as one of the people who have suffered. Therefore Johnson is constructed as a supervillain. This example of a referential code helps the working class audience to understand a complex political situation
• The headline ZERO SHAME suggests Johnson not only lacks morality but also lacks accountability, through the abuse of his power. 
• The word ZERO is in yellow which has connotations of fear and terror. This anchors the meaning that the audience must be afraid, as the man running the country is an incompetent and amoral monster. Additionally, the colour yellow is used in warning signs, functioning as a powerful proairetic code for the audience. Things will now get very bad
• By constructing an alarmist and threatening mode of address, the Mirror constructs a reality where the world that we live in is cruel and unfair world. By making the audience pessimistic, it ensures the audience will buy the newspaper day after day. 
• Johnson is universally negatively represented in this paper, which aligns with the left wing ideologies of the institution 
• The lexis of the headline features a countdown from 12 to zero that resembles a timer on a bomb. This referential code to videogames and action movies constructs an exciting mode of address about a scandalous yet also straightforward story. 
• The use of numbers gives a sense of factual seriousness which potentially overwhelms readers. 
• The ellipsis symbolically suggests that the scandal is still ongoing and that there will be more to the story later
• The small, inset secondary image of Kier Starmer constructs a binary opposition between the lazy, confused, smug Johnson, and the superior, focused, and professional Kier Starmer. This reinforces the ideology that Starmer is in charge, and that the labour party is morally superior.
• The secondary story is a puff piece about the 75th anniversary of the King’s death and the Queen’s inauguration. This story is significant because it features the royal family, which reinforces the ideology that not only are the royal family at the top of the social hierarchy, but that this is a good thing. 

Symbolic connotations of The Mirror masthead

• The masthead is always presented at the top of the newspaper, and above the fold, allowing it to appeal to and to address the target audience
• The font is sans serif, which has connotations of class. It is simple and stereotypically appeals to a working class audience 
• The lexis ‘the heart of Britain’ suggests that this is the number one newspaper in the country. The word heart has connotations of popularity, and avoiding controversy. Additionally, a polysemic array of meanings are constructed, including tone of love, caring and respect. Finally., the heart of Britain suggests that this newspaper is the centre of British life 
• The colour red is connotative of many things: pride, the colours of the British flag, with the red and white symbolic of either English flag, blood and a sense of togetherness, passion.
• The Heart of Britain is in a gold font, which has connotations of royalty, which is popular with the working class target audience 
• A warm colour palette, but also bold and confident 
• The red topped logo connotes a simple and straightforward tabloid audience. It is cliched, simple and straightforward
• 95p is affordable for the working class target audience. The cover price has doubled in the last three years due to mismanagement and also rising costs of production and dwindling readership
• The anchorage of the mastheads helps the audience to understand that the colour red is not symbolic of death or ladybirds
• Instead, the colour red symbolises a beating heart, the shared blood of it’s readers, urgency, passion, love, and a vibrant and attention drawing mode of address
• Mode of address – the way a media product greets or talks to it’s audience. The Mirror masthead is friendly and optimistic!
• The colour white stands out effectively against the red, forming a binary opposition
• The masthead resembles a stop sign, asking the audience to stop and read the important information inside. It appeals to a driving audience, yet it is not subtle
• The ‘heart of Britain’ functions as patriotic propaganda. It encourages and positions the target audience to agree that they are important, and Britain is important. The anchorage of the word ‘heart’ reinforces the symbolism of blood established by the colour red
• The masthead must efficiently show the target and devoted audience exactly what paper this is. 
• The masthead cannot change. The only information that can change is the date and sometimes the slogan 
• The font is sans serif. It is normalised, and appeals to a mass audience and a working class target audience!
• 95p is a reasonable cover price which targets a working class audience
• The word ‘Daily’ is at a 45 degree angle, which is less formal, typical of a tabloid newspaper
• The red top instantly identifies this as a tabloid newspaper, minimising risk and maximising profit