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1. HOW DOES YOUR MEDIA
PRODUCT REPRESENT
PARTICULAR SOCIAL GROUPS?
HELEN RICH

2. With the help of my prior audience research and audience profiles I think I have
managed to successfully establish and represent a social group that would link to
magazine genre. To do this the styling of my model on the cover was very
important. My target audience is 13- 20 year olds and a majority of teenagers wear
simple clothing like black jeans and tops which is why I decided to style my model
in clothing that most of my target audience would wear (Black skinny jeans and a
baggy grey hoddie) this makes my magazine look more credible and appeal to my
intended audience. If the front cover and image are not good it is unlikely someone
would pick it up as the cover represents what the rest of the magazine is like. I
knew I wanted to have a young female pop artist on the cover as I think females are
doing well in the music industry and so are younger artists I used the website ‘UK
tribes’ to help me to discover. By doing this it allowed me to find out what appeals
to people in the relevant social group. The main group I focused on was
mainstream, people from this social group tend to stick to what is trending when it
comes to clothing, style and music. This is a large social group so my magazine
needed to appeal to a majority of people. To do this I had to design my magazine
in a way that would appeal to many people. I used the UK tribe’s website and I
looked at information on people who fit into the mainstream group, they say that
‘Mainstream Tribes prefer to stick with what’s safe rather than rock the boat.
There’s little desire to hunt down underground fashion and music’ and that they
are ‘more than happy with readily available ‘high street’ influences’. This
information suggests that people from this social group are interested in the latest

3. Finding the right model was an important task to representing social
groups. To do this I used and dressed my model in a way that that would
appeal to the social group. I looked at existing magazines, particularly Q
magazine, as I feel they have a similar mainstream social group. I used this
magazine for inspiration for the photographs and layout of the cover. I also
looked at the language they used on Q and applied this to my own
magazine. The language I used was informal standard English, by doing
this I hoped to widen the audience as slang or jargon might be confusing
for some readers.
Because of this information I looked at existing magazines to look at poses.
I mainly focused on images of Ed Sheeran for this task. I looked at how they
styled the artist and how they made them look stylish, I noticed that for Ed
Sheeran he was styled in clothing that was simple yet modern. I also
decided that my model should not be over posed as this can look
unnatural, I wanted the audience to be able to relate to the model on the
cover. My research into social groups suggests that people from the
‘mainstream’ social group would be more interested in popular celebrities
which is why I decided to include some celebrity names on the cover.