The document discusses how a media product represents teenage and young adult social groups. It decides to portray them in a positive light, using a casual front cover image of a teenage girl passionately playing guitar. The image is meant to represent musicians and music stars in a way that is natural and focuses on talent rather than appearance. The magazine aims to showcase new musical talent and inspire its target audience of teenagers that they too can succeed in the music industry.

1. How does my media product represent particular social groups?<br />After creating an audience profile, I needed to decide how my media product would represent the social group it focuses on. As my product is mostly aimed at teenagers and young adults, I decided to use a front cover image that represents that social demographic in a positive way, which seems to be a common convention of magazines today. In the media, teenage social groups tend to be misrepresented as involved in crime, troublesome and anti-social behaviour, however, to go against these bad ideologies, I decided to represent the teenage demographic in a positive light, showing off the new musical talent they have and giving them a chance in the spotlight. <br />I tried to avoid the ‘photoshoot’ look for the front cover image. Instead, I decided to make the picture more natural and less posed. As the model is a teenager herself, it instantly implies that the magazine respects and is aimed at that age group in particular, putting them in a positive light. She isn’t directly looking at the camera, instead she is focusing on her guitar playing and this also shows her passion for her music. This is an unusual use of posing, however I think it works for my front cover as it sets it apart in the media market. Her costume also represents her social demographic in a positive light, as she is dressed fairly casually, but also fashionably to fit in with the modern music genre of my product. The mis en scene of the image puts all the focus on her and her prop of a guitar, which is a common way of representing music stars on magazine front covers. The background is also minimalistic, placing entire focus onto her. This appeals to the target audience, as they can relate to the people featured in the magazine and also feel that their talent could be recognised too if they got in touch with ‘Launch’ magazine. <br />The other images included in my contents page also represent the teenage/young adult social group in a positive way, showing how they can form successful bands and become successful at a young age. When people read my magazine, they will feel that the teenage music scene is going to form the future of pop genre music and also they can see how inspiration is taken from major music stars such as Bon Jovi and Kings of Leon. Music is always evolving and I wanted to show that, through my use of teenage models and representations of the teenage demographic as talented and successful. Being a part of my own target audience, I feel that this magazine is well suited to it’s target audience, as it avoids mainstream hype and gossip about artists, and instead focuses on raw talent and live music, but with a modern pop culture genre theme. It challenges dominant ideas that inexperienced and non-famous musicians can’t get recognised by the music/media industry. However, with the representations featured in my magazine, they can and this implies that it will directly appeal to teenagers, as it is new and different from existing magazines they may read, NME for example.<br />1600200200660Young, fresh-faced<br />Focused on music – passionate and talented Image uses a black and white gradient, plain background and simple visual lens flare effect – represents musicians differently to existing new /popular music genre magazinesAcoustic music scene is highly popular at the momentThe new talent for the future<br />