This magazine represents teenagers and young adults aged 15-23 who enjoy indie and alternative music. It portrays the typical fans of this genre as males with long hair and facial hair who wear checked tops and denim jackets, drawing on stereotypes of indie musicians as influences. The artists featured are represented as moody with serious expressions, seen as fashionable and mature role models by fans. Pictures of an artist playing instruments show the positive and lively side of musicians, challenging stereotypes of this demographic as anti-social.

1. QUESTION 4- HOW DOES
YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT
REPRESENT PARTICULAR
SOCIAL GROUPS?
By Laura Simmons

2. TARGET AUDIENCE
• The target audience for my magazine is teenagers
and young adults around the age range of 15-23
who enjoy indie and alternative music with a unique
sound.
• I decided this because my questionnaire results show
that most people who are in the age range I
specified prefer alternative indie music, and it is
something I enjoy too which makes it more
pleasurable to create meaning I will most likely make
it look more desirable to the target audience if I can
understand their point of view well.

3. GENRE ASSOCIATIONS
• When I chose the genre ‘indie’ to explore for my
music magazine, my instant personal
interpretation of this was the idea of
festivals, because indie artists are normally
associated with playing amazing live events from
small intimate gigs to international festivals.
• And with the idea of festivals, I automatically
associated this with summer. As this is more of a
nostalgic approach to the idea, I recreated the
reality of the genre by using natural images where
my model is in an exterior setting in a muddy field
similar to a festival environment to connote the
idea of summer and festivals.

4. WHAT SOCIAL GROUPS DOES MY
MAGAZINE REPRESENT?
• My magazine represents a variety of different social
groups, such as young females as the girl on the front
cover’s main image may influence their fashion style,
especially any people who’re enjoy indie/ alternative
music.
• Males who enjoy /indie/alternative music are
represented through the genre because most of the
artists that are mentioned on my magazine cover have
the stereotypical fan base of ‘indies’ and ‘rockers’ with
longhair, who wear checked tops or big denim jackets
or males who have facial hair or hair styles in general
similar to the bands, as the bands are their influences.

5. REPRESENTATIONS…
• On the front cover and contents, my
artists are represented as quite moody,
and have serious looking poses and facial
expressions. The serious facial expressions
could represent their style of music and
how serious/important their music is to
them.
• They’re represented as quite fashionable
and mature. In a fan’s point of view, this
would be seen as positive because it is
the style they’re interested in and these
people could be their role models or who
they look up to.

6. GENRE REPRESENTATIONS…
• On the contents page there is a picture of my main cover artist ‘in
action’, playing instruments. This would interest social groups that
like playing instruments themselves or fans who are a growing
band and general fans who want to know what instruments the
different band member’s play.
• She looks happy, relaxed and lively, giving a very positive
representation. They look quite different to the more serious, posed
pictures. The poses show that stereotypes can be miss-read as
when they are posing for pictures and wearing certain styles of
fashion, they seem quite intimidating and negatively portrayed as
aggressive whereas, how they actually are naturally is quite
happy, alive and not meaning to be intimidating at all.
• This challenges stereotypes of teens/young adults as they are
usually portrayed in the media as being anti-social.