1. How does your media product
represent particular social groups?
By Caleb Roberts
2. Clothing
I represented my social group through the costume that I prepared for my model.
Country music has a very specific stereotypical look which I tried to keep to. There
are mainly shirts (checkered, denim or of a western style) with jeans, large belts and
boots. I used a range of shirts as seen on my blog but unfortunately could not
acquire a shirt with all the detail that I had wanted. Nor could I get some traditional
‘cowboy boots’ which have, for a long time, been associated with country music. I
think on the whole my costume represents my audiences social group well as it stuck
to the conventions while keeping it simple enough to allow for customisation.
3. Fonts
I also used fonts to represent my social group. Country has strong roots in the
traditional ‘Cowboy’ way of life and during those times there were often bars called
saloons. I chose one of my fonts based off this, ‘the dead saloon’ I used on both my
front cover and my contents page. It is quite a bulky text which i had originally
intended to use for my title as seen in my drafts but decided it better suited for
feature stories. I think this represented my social group well as many say that
family and tradition are two very important aspects of life to them.
4. Plug
The plug is another way to encourage the audience to buy your product and read it,
the plug is where it advertises a competition or a free gift that comes with the
product once you buy it. Because they can win something valuable just for buying a
magazine people find these a great incentive. As my genre is country and arguably
Atlanta, Georgia is the centre of country in the world i decided to offer a trip to
there as my plug. If it were me I would buy any magazine for a chance at a holiday
and I think that the fact that it is a place so embedded with country this will win
over the country listeners who don't buy my products.
5. Style
My genre is country and the homeland of country is the USA, especially the
southern USA which is a very patriotic place. That is why I decided that I would
have my colour scheme as red white and blue (with some black as well) and have
stars for example as my plug to really represent my social group
6. Price
As my social group are more of the lower C2 or D social class or younger I can
appreciate that they will have less money to spend on wants rather than needs. My
magazine is weekly and at a price of only £2.49 which I think is affordable and my
social group will be willing to spend especially since there are very few products that
are dedicated just to country like mine is.
