Young Hip Progressive

Young, Hip, Progressive Black Women: Audience Construction on Black
Women’s Magazine Websites
Proposal
Taylor-Rae Collins-Headley
Legacy Media in Transition
University of Pennsylvania
Spring 2016

ABSTRACT
This pilot study examines audience construction on four digital magazine websites
popular among black women: Ebony Magazine, Clutch Magazine, MadameNoire, and Essence
Magazine. Ebony and Essence are legacy media publications that have existed for at least 40
years. Clutch Magazine and MadameNoire are fully digital publications that emerged in the last
10 years. Using the concepts of audience construction, signaling, and imagined communities, I
look at who these publications claim their audience is and how readers come to know themselves
as a part of that audience. A content analysis of five characteristics of the websites’ homepages:
page construction, advertisement placement and content, homepage photos and placement,
headlines, and page color scheme illustrated that while these websites are meant to appeal to
black women, subtle differences in signaling indicate and create a difference in audience
between publications.

Introduction
If you were to search the phrase “print is a dying medium” on Google, the result would
appear to be a heated discussion on the fate of the industry based on just the headlines alone.
Going by the first five links, you would see Pew proclaim that “Print media is dying”. Just below
it, BusinessWeek offers an even more dramatic outlook by exclaiming that “The Print Media Are
Doomed”. The Slow Journalism Magazine and Huffington Post seem a little less certain of
burying the print industry and ask the questions “Print is dead. Or is it?” and “Is Print Really
Dead?”. Finally, Forbes Magazine, possibly biased as a longstanding member of the print
industry, appears to confidently declare that the industry is going to be just fine with its headline
“Print is Dead? Not so Fast.”
The exponentially increasing use of social media and the internet in the instantaneous
production, distribution, and dissemination of news, culture, and current events certainly presents
a problem for the print industry, but to ring the death knell over the entire medium is a bit
premature. The World Wide Web has only existed for about 27 years and its current form and
usage is even younger. Print has been an industry in the United States for at least 275 years
predating all other legacy media. It seems unfeasible that the oldest mass communication
medium would simply become obsolete and fade away in the face of new technology. The
current transition of many legacy print media institutions, magazines and newspapers, to
websites and online content production is evidence of a rebirth of the print industry in the digital
era.
But this transition incurs new questions that the industry must answer to ensure its own
survival. For example, how will legacy print media websites ensure the exclusiveness of their
content to their readers in a “place” where information is so easily accessed for free? How does

marketing and advertising, the primary source of funding for many media publishing companies,
now adapt from printed ad space to digital without losing revenue? And finally, how can legacy
media companies construct and maintain their target audiences from one medium to another. It is
this final question, audience construction, which is the focus of my study.
Statement of Problem
This study explores how the audience is constructed on four popular magazines’ websites
for Black women: Clutch Mag Online, MadameNoire, Essence, and Ebony. Each of these
magazines are targeted specifically to Black women, and in the cases of Clutch Mag and
MadameNoire, specifically to Black millennial women. Essence and Ebony are legacy media
companies that are currently still in print in the Black publishing world and have existed for
more than 40 years with at least 1 million total circulation. Clutch Mag and MadameNoire are
fully digital magazines that emerged within the last 10 years. I am examining audience
construction through the lens of signaling by looking at five attributes of each website: page
construction, advertisement placement and content, homepage photos and placement, headlines,
and page color scheme in order to answer the following questions:
RQ1: How does the signaling on Clutch Mag, Madame Noire, Essence, and Ebony’s
websites construct their target audience (Black women)?
RQ2a: In what way does each site’s signaling differ from the others?
RQ2b: In what way does the signaling on the legacy media sites (Essence and Ebony)
differ from the new media sites (Clutch Mag and Madame Noire)
RQ3: How do these differences cultivate different demographics of Black women in
their audience?

Literature Review
Industrial Construction of Audience Perspectives
“The audience is an entity of serialized, in principle unrelated individuals who form a
group solely because each member has a characteristic, in our case spectatorship that is like
that of each other member” –Ien Ang Desperately Seeking the Audience (1991)
Shimpach (2005) stated that the audience is the actual product of culture industries,
culture industries being mass media institutions, and that it is produced through the distribution
and marketing of cultural products (magazines, newspapers, films, etc.). The audience is then
sold by mass media firms to advertisers who are interested in obtaining them in return for
revenue. This audience is not an undefined mass, but a specific predetermined demographic
cultivated in the interest of both the culture industry and their advertisers. The audience is
imagined to exist prior to the distribution of a cultural product during its creation by cultural
producers.
Sumpter expanded on the concept of an a priori imagined audience in his research on
news editors’ choices in story selection for several daily newspapers. Editor’s relied on
conversations with non-news sources such as spouses, encounters with strangers, and call ins
from readers to construct their wider audience and determine which stories were most likely to
attract readers (Sumpter, 2000). They assumed that the interests of the people they conversed
with during these encounters would accurately reflect the interests of their target demographic.
His study also revealed that editors often used typifications that related to predicting audience
reaction to classify which stories were reported or not and which stories received prominent
placement in the newspaper. In this case, the imagined audience is the driving force in the

newsroom and decisions at all levels from story choice to copy editing and printing rely on
writers and editors accurate construction of an audience that is too large to know individually.
In “Industry Conceptions of Audience in the Digital Space”, Turow and Draper state that
media practitioners create their audiences reflecting the tenets of social constructionism. Social
constructionism is a theory of knowledge in sociology and communication theory that examines
the development of jointly constructed understandings of the world that form the basis for shared
assumptions about reality (Gergen, 1985). This theory eschews the concept of an objective
reality and says instead that reality is constructed from interpersonal interactions in society. Like
social constructionism, audience construction does not rely on an objective measurable audience.
Instead, the audience is a creation of the mass media firm in order to interest their target
demographic.
On the advertising side, Turow posited that advertisers “construct contemporary US
audiences as frenetic, self-concerned, attention challenged, and willing to allow advertisers to
track them in response to being rewarded or treated as special” (Turow, 2005). With the use of
cookies, small text files stored on a user’s computer that enable a website to recognize a visitor
and track their preferences, websites and advertisers use technology to determine who their
audience is and what product or article they would most likely want to see. Here, he also
mentions the importance of audience construction on cultural production. The way the media
creates its audience affects what text viewers are shown in the first place. All levels of a firm,
from the management, to the marketing departments, and content creators, are aware of the
importance of attracting the audience that advertisers require, making audience construction an
integral part of the cultural production process.

Turow’s Breaking Up America: Advertisers and the New Media World, gives a specific
definition of signaling, in which it “involves the creation of media materials in ways that indicate
to certain types of people that they ought to be part of the audience and to other populations that
they do not belong” (Turow, 1997). Though the term signaling is a relatively recent moniker for
this phenomenon, the concept stretches further back to the early 70’s with Vatz’s work on
rhetoric. Vatz stated that, “Rhetors choose what is relevant in a situation, creating a presence and
then making meaning. The rhetor holds the power and responsibility for creation, not reflection
of reality” (Vatz, 1973). Contemporary creators, web designers, writers, contributors, and
editors, would all be rhetors in the Vatzian sense, using online magazines to create and reflect the
reality needed to attract their target demographic. In the case of this study, the target
demographic is African-American millennial women. Advertisers rely on this process of
audience creation and cultivation to market to their own preferred consumers and in exchange
pay the publication to continue delivering the audience. The audience is seen as a commodity
that has been produced by the market (Gandy, 2000).
One example of this is seen in the hit television show Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Shepherd (2004) examined the construction of female identity and audience in Buffy by looking
at what she called “constitutive rhetoric”, or rhetoric that calls an audience into being. She argues
that Buffy, by being characterized as both a “girl next door” and a supernatural vampire hunter,
intended to attract and cultivate an audience of strong, and self-sufficient, yet still feminine and
vulnerable women. Discursive clues placed in the characters actions and dialogue within the
show as well as the commercials shown during breaks and associated network programs signaled
what was expected from the audience.

Constructing and Marketing to Minority Audiences
“The youthfulness of Black consumers, bolstered by an influx of affluent & educated
immigrants, is amplifying buying power and expanding influence across a wide spectrum of
goods and services in the U.S. mainstream.” –Nielsen African-American Consumers Report
2015
The 2015 Nielsen report on African American Consumers, entitled “Increasingly
Affluent, Educated and Diverse” focused on African-Americans with an annual household
income of $75,000 or more. Among this group, high schools graduation rates and college
enrollment now exceed 70%, income growth rates at income levels over $60,000 have outpaced
that of non-Hispanic whites, and households earning over $200,000 increased by 138% (Nielsen,
2015). Rising numbers in STEM careers are projected to fuel income increases in the black
community. The size and influence of this group in the media, politics, economics and social
activism has increased exponentially over the last few years. As the Nielsen report summarizes:
These larger incomes are attributed to a number of factors including youthfulness,
immigration, advanced educational attainment and increased digital acumen. As these
factors change African-Americans’ decisions as brand loyalists and ambassadors,
savvy marketers are taking notice. Marketing to millennials and younger generations
must include messages to reach African-American youth.
As evidenced by the Nielsen report, African-American consumers are quickly becoming
one of the most important consumer demographics in the United States. The onus then falls on
culture industries and advertisers to discern a way to create and market to those groups in order
to gain revenue. Gandy (2000) focused on the segmentation of media audiences on the basis of
“ascriptive or claimed membership in groups defined by race or ethnicity” (Gandy, 2000).
Audience segmentation is defined as casting off or ignoring the variety and individual qualities

that set us apart in order to emphasize the similarities that shape and define us as members of
groups. The formal audience is encoded in the texts created by authors as well as constructed
theoretically (Gandy, 2000). This can be interpreted as a more aggressive method of Turow’s
signaling. Creators craft text that does not only indicate to readers who belongs in the audience
and who does not, but encourages readers who share one similar aspect, race and/or ethnicity, to
cast off the differences that may make them feel as if they do not belong in the audience.
The ways that media and market researchers measure audiences pervasively shape the
ways that people in the media and advertising view those audiences and conversely, the way that
communicators view audiences shape the ways that they are measured.(Peterson, 1994). The
identification of an audience segment includes estimates of both the actual and potential
audience. This is reminiscent of the daily editors in Sumpter’s study imagining their possible
audience. Formulating the idea of an a priori audience enables culture industry firms to predict
the needs of their readers or viewers and tailor their cultural product to that segment. Newspapers
and magazines have more segmentation than television and radio because their modes of
production and distribution are less costly, aiding in specialization for small diverse segments of
the population (Gandy, 2000). A 1968 Hirsch study found that Johnson Publications, the
company that publishes Ebony Magazine, chose stories that accented the happier aspects of
Black life in the United States rather than oppression and racism in an effort to attract the black
middle class (Hirsch, 1968).
Trade publications in the marketing and advertising world are taking notice of the
African-American market’s untapped potential and introducing strategies to both cultivate and
cater to the black community. In “Special Report on Multicultural Marketing”, Fabris offers a list
of strategies used by brands to increase their effectiveness in appealing to the African-American

community. Getting to know the “target” which she explained as taking the time to understand
who the demographic is and what they need is seen as fundamental. Here she mentions taking
lifestyle, values, culturally relevant holidays, and observances into consideration. Later in the
article she gives an example of these including Martin Luther King Day, Black History Month,
and Kwanzaa. Another strategy, one that may be a bit more problematic, is to be “authentic in
messaging to build credibility by “making it look like someone from within the African-
American mindset and experience created it” (Fabris, 2008). She doesn’t delve deeper into
exactly how one goes about creating “authenticity” as an outsider, but it may involve using
African-American colloquialisms and affectations. Like Gandy, Fabris mentions audience
segmentation. Focusing on the African-American niche specifically is a better strategy than
focusing only on the general market, but within the community there are also distinctions such as
gender, age, income level, and education level, that can improve targeting and increase revenue.
Finally, she offers this advice about “Tailoring Your Creative”:
In one of KLS Media Group’s direct mail packages for a heating company, for
example, he showed an upscale African American male reading Black
Enterprise magazine. “The fact that he was reading a Black Enterprise magazine related to
the audience, so we try to do things that hit home to the consumers,” says Stanley.
In a campaign for Lawry’s Seasoned Salt, KLS Media Group used images of soul food,
while another campaign for Kentucky Fried Chicken showed images of a family gathered
at a reunion—both demonstrating an understanding for the market’s values and lifestyle.
“The vibrancy of colors seems to be important to the African American market in
particular,” says Rossi. “We’re thinking in terms of color and creative, and … there is a
certain amount of consideration for vibrant, eye-catching colors that pop, as opposed to
cool shades of color that have less of a visual impact.”

Audience segmentation, cultivation, and signaling is an integral part of the cultural
production industry. For firms to receive the revenue they need to continue publishing they need
to create an audience that they can “sell” to advertisers. But advertisers also have a stake in the
construction of cultural audiences. Simply being present on the page or along the edges of the
website would not be enough to make their investment worthwhile. They also have to invest
themselves in knowing the wants, needs, and demands of the African-American consumer in
order to ensure that those consumers will actually purchase their product.
In the context of this study, both the industrial construction of audience and constructing
minority audiences were used to exhibit the possible reasoning behind the editorial, pictorial, and
advertising choices the four websites being studied employed in their attempt to construct and
differentiate their own audiences. Essence, MadameNoire, Clutch Mag, and Ebony, as cultural
producers, are beholden to both their audience and their advertisers in an interconnected way.
They must deliver creative content to the audience and deliver the audience to their advertisers.
Examining the construction of these websites then, should theoretically answer the research
questions above, who are these magazines for and how do they know it’s for them?
Conceptual Framework
Imagined Communities
The conceptual framework for this research is based on Benedict Anderson’s theory of
Imagined communities. Originally written in 1983, Anderson used the concept of imagined
communities to explain the rise of nationalism. He posited that nations are socially constructed in
that they are “imagined political communities – and imagined as both inherently limited and
soverign” (Anderson, 2006). These nations are imagined because members of the community
could not possibly know each and every other member but still consider themselves a cohesive

group due to similar interests or characteristics. He emphasizes an awakening, or more
accurately a creation, of a national consciousness in which people come to know themselves as
part of a group and attributes this in part to the emergence of print capitalism. Anderson defined
print capitalism as the standardization of language, calenders, and time in books and newspapers
sold to the public.
In this way, this notion of imagined community in nation building is verisimilar to the
notion of audience construction in cultural industries. In this study, the readers of Ebony,
Essence, Clutch, and MadameNoire can be seen as members of an imagined community created
through the constructive efforts of cultural producers. Readers do not and could not know the all
of the people creating the content or the other people consuming the same content they are but
imagine themselves as part of a community with a similar racial and gender make up.
Method
This study utilized an interpretive methodology in order to perform a brief content
analysis of Clutch Mag Online, MadameNoire, Essence, and Ebony’s websites. This was done in
order to extrapolate the theories of audience construction and imagined communities to discern
how these websites construct their audience and subsequently signal to their readership who that
audience should consist of. For the purpose of understanding the importance of audience and
readership among these online publications, it would benefit the reader to understand who they
are and what their intended purpose is.
Starting from earliest to most recent founding date, according to each publication’s about
section, Ebony Magazine was founded first in 1950 under the Johnson Publishing Company.
Ebony is one of the largest monthly magazines focused on the African-American market in the
contemporary US. With a reach of nearly 11 million readers, Ebony claims to be the “#1 source

for an authoritative perspective in the Black community” (Ebony, 2016). Ebony.com, under the
direction of Vice-President Kyra Kyles, is a community centered site for entertainment, news,
advice, fashion, and discussion on the Black American community.
Essence Magazine, a subsidiary of Time Inc. and another titan in the black publication
industry, boasts a reach of 8.5 million on their website and a monthly circulation of 1.05 million.
Essence describes itself as, “the premiere lifestyle, fashion and beauty magazine for African-
American women” and its motto is Where Black Women Come First (Essence, 2016). In the 46
years since the magazine’s inception in 1970, Essence has expanded its brand to include the
Essence Music Festival, the largest gathering of African-American musical talent in the USm the
Essence Women Who Are Shaping The World Leadership Summit, and the Essence book club.
Clutch Magazine is a fully digital publication that launched in 2007. In its about section,
clutch says it has been “at the forefront for today’s young, hip, progressive Black woman”
(Clutch Magazine, 2016). Once a weekly pblication, Clutch now delivers daily customizable
content for readers. It is also one of only two magazines in this study that encourages audience
involvement directly in cultural production by having a reader contribution process. Readers may
submit content for publication on the website by emailing “pitch Clutch”. As of this study,
readership and reach information was unavailable.
Finally, MadameNoire is the “youngest” publication in this study having been founded in
2010. It claims to be the leading lifestyle website for Black women with more than 7.2 million
unique visitors per month (MadameNoire, 2016). Launched by Moguldom Media Group,
MadameNoire is also a daily fully digital publication that serves as an inspiration for “smart,
stylish, Black women”. The sites mission is to empower millennial Black women with relevant
content focusing on Black women’s lifestyle issues.

The pilot data analyzed in the course of this study consisted of the homepages and about
sections of each of the four websites previously mentioned. I took between five and eight
screenshots of the websites homepages, dependent on the length of the page, and saved them as
JPEG files using the date and page order as chronological markers. The screenshots were taken
at 9 am every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday for one week from April 24, 2016 to
May 1, 2016. I then went back to the websites and kept a log of five aspects of the homepage for
data collection analysis: page construction, advertisement placement and content, homepage
photos and placement, headlines, and color scheme.
Page construction consisted of annotating the locations of integral website attributes such
as the logo and section banners, ads, story alignment, top story alignment, content location on the
page, and page movement while scrolling up or down the page. Advertisement placement noted
the content of ads on the homepage, their location in relation to editorial content, and their
orientation and alignment, whether horizontal or vertical and left aligned or right aligned.
Homepage photos and placement noted the content of photos featured on the homepage as well
as their location in relation to editorial content. Headlines is self-explanatory, and color scheme
refers to the most prominent colors used on the page including background, logo, highlights, and
page design.
The analysis of the data was done using a deductive content analytic approach described
by Hsieh and Shannon’s directed content analysis (2005). Directed content analysis is used when
existing theories or prior research about a phenomenon exists and the data can benefit from this
description (Hsieh and Shannon, 2005). In this case the theories are audience construction and
imagined communities. The directed approach involves the application and operational defining
of predetermined codes to analyze data. Unlike conventional content analysis, in which codes

emerge from the data after collection, directed content analysis allowed me to begin coding
immediately as the data collection occurred.
In this case the predetermined codes were racial, gender, and age identifiers. Racial
identifiers were defined as codes involving race, specifically the words “Black”, “African-
American”, or “of color”, photos featuring black models or subjects, headlines discussing black
topics, ads marketed to the black community, and the color black used in the color scheme of the
page beyond use in text. Gender identifiers were defined as codes involving gender, specifically
the words “woman”, “girl”, or “female”, photos featuring models or subjects who appeared to be
women, headlines discussing women’s topics, ads marketed to women, and colors traditionally
identified as feminine, such as pink or pastels, in the color scheme of the page. Age identifiers
were defined as codes involving age or generation, specifically the words “millennial”, “young”,
“grown”, or “adult”, photos featuring models or subjects of all ages, headlines discussing the
millennial generation, and “intensity” of color in the color scheme of the page such as light, dark,
hot, or soft.
Data & Analysis
The most efficient way to present the data gathered during the pilot test of this study
would be screenshots of one complete day’s data collection and the summary of the five
characteristics of each website noted in the data log. The screenshots are located in Appendix A
at the end of the document. Note: headlines, photo content, and ad content changed from day to
day. Page construction, ad placement, photo placement, and color schemes remained constant
during data collection.

EBONY
Log Summary
Page construction
 The Ebony homepage is the least populated of the four websites. The content is
compressed away from the margins, but the margins are empty. Unlike the other
three websites, the home page logo is centered rather than left aligned and is set
between two sets of section tabs. The top section tab features the subscription
button, Power 100 list, HBCU Queens list, and shop as well as portals to their
social media sites. The bottom section tab features the editorial content sections.
Ebony’s content sections are news & views, entertainment, love & sex, style,
lifestyle, and career & finance. Right aligned next to the logo is a site portal to Jet
magazine, Ebony’s fully online sister publication. The top story takes up a very
large amount of space on the screen and is left aligned. Other top stories are
placed in a vertical banner column that is right aligned alongside the top story.
Very few articles are on the homepage but there is always one from each editorial
section. Several horizontal banner ads are used to break up the editorial content on
the page. The story highlighted in the top story section changes if hovered over by
the mouse in the top stories banner column leading to three possible views for
homepage viewers on any given day.
Advertisement placement and content
 Horizontal banner ads for Ebony are placed halfway down the home page to break
up editorial content. A vertical banner ad is right aligned beside the editorial
content advertising the Ebony digital issue. A square ad advertises an Ebony

subscription. A right aligned banner ad advertises Ebony’s digital content. At the
bottom of the page, a horizontal banner advertises Hilton Hotels. This is the only
non-Ebony advertisement on the home page. On other days of data collection,
there are only Ebony ads on the home page.
Homepage photos and placement
 Photos on the Ebony homepage are primarily associated with the story topics and
prominently feature Black men and women. Photos tend to be mid shots, photos
capturing the subject from the waist up, but a number of photos also feature
medium close ups, capturing the subjects face and neck, as well as wide shots,
used to capture the subjects entire body. Wide shots were primarily used in photos
regarding entertainment in which the subject’s active movement was implied.
Headlines
 “How to Love a Man Who Didn’t Love Your Mama”, “Black Cartoonist Draws
Lessons from Losses”, “Rev. Samuel ‘Billy’ Kyles, Civil Rights Leader and MLK
Aide, Dies”, “Orlando Police Chief To Cops: ‘Stop Excessive Force’”, “First
Black U.S. Rolls Royce Dealer Talks Success From The Bottom Up”.
Color scheme
 The ebony color scheme consists primarily of black and red with yellow and light
blue used to emphasize section categories on editorial content.

Essence
Log Summary
Page construction
 The Essence page is the second most populated of the four websites. Similar to
Ebony, content is compressed away from the margins and they are empty. The
Essence logo and homepage portal is left aligned and larger than both the
MadameNoire and Clutch logos but is not as large as the Ebony logo. Above the
logo is a horizontal banner ad. To the right of the logo is the subscription portal
for Essence as well as their social media sites. Underneath is the editorial content
tabs: celebrity, fashion, beauty, hair, love, life, videos, photos, festival, and
another subscription link. Underneath is another banner leading to “packages”, an
editorial content section of curated stories regarding a single subject. During data
collection, the featured packages were “What is Black Girl Magic” and “Best in
Black Beauty Awards”. “Remembering Prince” was added after the artist’s death
on April 21, 2016. Three top stories are displayed under the package banner.
Content is organized into three columns below the top stories with a square ad
occupying the top right column. Unlike all other sites, Essence features a live
twitter feed featuring Black Women on twitter discussing topics via the
@Essence_Debates account. Also unlike the other three websites, the essence
page header featuring a horizontal banner ad, the Essence logo, and the editorial
section tabs “follow” the reader as he or she scrolls down the page.

 A horizontal banner ad is placed at the very top of the page above the Essence
logo. This is an American Express card advertisement but features what appears
to be a black family traveling together. The square banner at the top of the right
column features an advertisement for the upcoming Essence festival. A square ad
for Buick appears again in the right editorial column. Finally, a horizontal banner
ad closes out the homepage for the Essence Music Festival.
 Like Ebony, photos on the Essence homepage are primarily associated with story
topics, but this site differs in that the vast majority of pictures feature Black
women, even if men are included in the subject. Photos here tend to be medium
close ups and mid shots with very few wide shots. In photos with no specified
subject the stock photos used feature black women.
Headlines
 “Ayesha Curry Reveals How She Really Feels About Those Shady Memes”,
“Naomi Campbell, Kelly Rowland, Lenny Kravitz and More!”, “13 Simple
Changes That Will Bring You Closer To Your Dreams”
Color scheme
 The Essence homepage color scheme consists primarily of black and dark pink.

Clutch
Log Summary
Page construction
 Like the Ebony homepage, the Clutch page seems to be compressed in the middle
leaving ample room at the margins. The top banner contains the magazines logo
and home portal in line with the editorial content tabs: Fashion, Beauty, Hair,
Living, Entertainment, News & Opinion, and their social media sites. Underneath
are the day’s top stories, all in entertainment today and all regarding Beyoncé’s
newest album, Lemonade. A horizontal banner ad serves as the break between the
day’s top stories and the rest of the editorial content featured on the home page.
Further down the page, editorial stories are aligned to the left within the margin
and advertisements are aligned to the right.
 A horizontal banner ad for McDonald’s provides a break between the top stories
and the rest of the days stories. All other advertisements on the page are vertical
banner ads and are right aligned next to the editorial content. The ads for this day
are another McDonald’s ad, Puma women’s shoes, Taliah Waajid Natural Hair
Products and a third McDonald’s ad. The Taliah Waajid and McDonald’s ads are
mobile and follow the user as they scroll down the page. The Puma ad on this
page appears to be a tracker, as it appeared several more times during my data
collection because I had visited the site prior to beginning.

 As with the other websites, the photos on Clutch are typically associated with an
accompanying article. Similar to Essence, photos on this page primarily feature
black women unless the topic of the story consists of a non-black woman or man
as in the cases of Prince and rap entertainer Iggy Azalea. Unlike all other sites, the
photos on this page are circles rather than square or rectangular. This may be a
factor in the predominant use of medium close ups rather than mid shots or wide
shots.
Headlines
 “While We’re Talking About Beyoncé, How Woke Were You Before 2015”,
“Rachel Roy Wants the BeyHive to Know She’s Not ‘Becky With the Good
Hair’”, “Evelyn from the Internets’ Review of Beyoncé’s Lemonade Is
Hilariously Spot On”
Color scheme
 The color scheme for Clutch Magazine’s website seems to be black, white, and
hot pink.
MadameNoire
Log Summary
Page construction
 The MadameNoire homepage is by far the most crowded with content. Like
Essence, MadameNoire’s logo is also in the top left and not aligned with the
editorial tabs. Of the four websites, MadameNoire has the most editorial sections.
The sections are as follows: MN Business, Entertainment, Love, Hair, Beauty,

Fashion, Health, Living, News, Video, and MommyNoire. One unique feature
they have is “Ask A Black Man”, a video series in which a panel of black men
answer questions black women have for men. This was a very interesting feature
when you consider that this is a website that primarily focuses on black women.
The day’s three top stories cycle on a slide show just beneath the banner and
aligned to the left. Like Ebony, this allows the reader to see a different story on
the homepage every time they visit but by cycling continuously takes the choice
of which top story to display out of the user’s control. Below the top stories, the
rest of the day’s stories are right aligned in four columns with vertical banner
advertisements occupying a 5th
category within the margins. Unlike all of the
other sites, MadameNoire occasionally fills its margins with a large vertical
banner advertisement. On other days, the margins are blank but filled with the
mauve background coloring signature to the site.
 Underneath the tabs is a horizontal banner ad for the Toyota Rav 4 Hybrid, the
Banners filling both margins are also for the Rav 4. A small square advertisement
right aligned next to the day’s top stories also advertises the Rav 4 Hybrid, the
third Toyota ad on the page. The remaining vertical banner ads consist of Ashley
Stewart ads promoting clothing and shoes. These are tracker ads as well because I
had visited the site prior to starting data collection. Similar to Clutch Mag, the ads
follow the reader as he or she scrolls down the page.

 The content of the photos on MadameNoire are primarily associated with the
editorial stories on the home page. Photos are primarily of black women unless
the stories topic dictates otherwise. Ads also primarily feature black men and
women, including the Toyota Rav 4 ad, which featured a black man with an afro
hairstyle.
Headlines
 “The failed Alchemy of Birdman’s Quest for “Respeck””, “Travel Trials, My
Boyfriends Is Upset My Period Arrived During Our Vacation”, and “Who Do
You Feed First, Your Husband Or Your Kids?”
Color scheme
 MadameNoire’s color scheme consists of black, deep brown, mauve, and a color I
identified as amanranth, a member of the pink color group.
Discussion
Previous research on the industrial construction of audiences and constructing minority
audiences contends that cultural producers deliberately create content and make editorial
decisions based on the audience they desire. African-American millennials, an increasingly
affluent and educated group, are an important market that both cultural producers and advertising
firms need to appeal to in order to stimulate revenue. The data examined in this study validates
these premises by illustrating the ways in which the predominantly black and female audiences
of Ebony, Essence, Clutch, and MadameNoire’s websites are constructed.
Using the five characteristics examined in this study, page construction, advertisement
placement and content, page photos and placement, headlines, and color scheme, I discovered

that all four websites construct their black female audience using a method similar to Fabris’s
strategies for brand marketing to African-Americans. All of the websites’ homepages feature
bright pops of color and photos featuring black subjects or models with all editorial content.
Advertisements on these pages, if they contained people, appealed to black readers by featuring
black subjects participating in family activities, an important value in the black community, such
as traveling, as was the case on the Essence homepage, or wearing vibrantly colored clothing, as
was the case on MadameNoire. Editorial headlines, especially those in the top or featured stories
for the day, used African-American Vernacular English, as well as cultural colloquialisms and
pop culture references in order to signal their alignment with African-American linguistic
traditions. MadameNoire and Clutch, marketed to millennials, did this the most often while
Essence and Ebony tended to have more headlines using standard American English. In the
about sections of each website, the words black, African-American, and community appear
within the first two sentences indicating that the publications are specifically for the African-
American market. As for color scheme, it is noteworthy that the color black features prominently
on all of the websites outside of use in text, which could elicit an implicit association with
blackness as viewers navigate the page.
Though each site made clear its construction of an African-American audience, the sites
also contained unique signaling indicators that served to indicate its preferred audience. Ebony
Magazine is the only website not to explicitly mention women in its about section, instead opting
for a generalized black “community” or black “life”. It also featured far more men in its photos
than any other magazine in the study. Clutch and MadameNoire use age identifiers when
discussing their intended audience, emphasizing the phrases “young, hip, and progressive” and
“empowering millennial women of color” respectively and tended to feature photos of younger

women alongside its editorials. Essence had no specific age signifiers but had more gender
signifiers, specifically the uses of the words “women” and “girls”, than all of the other sites.
Another prominent difference was the use of color. Clutch, MadameNoire, and Essence, as
women centered magazines, relied heavily on the use of pink, a traditionally feminine color.
Clutch magazine used a hot pink that could be interpreted as hip and exciting, an indication of
youth. Essence used a more subtle but deeper pink that was neither too dark nor too bright,
which would appeal to a wider audience. MadameNoire used a brighter slightly orange pink as
well as mauve, in the purple family that seemed more along the lines of Essence’s more
traditional pink than Clutch’s youthful hot pink. Ebony Magazine did not use pink and opted for
tradtiontional primary colors, red, yellow, and blue, in addition to its heavy use of black.
When examining the difference in signaling between the legacy media sites, Essence and
Ebony, and the new media sites, Clutch and MadameNoire, the most poignant difference was in
editorial content. Essence and Ebony, both with over 40 years in existence, tended to focus on
news and more serious, community wide issues in their top headlines for the day with pop
culture, entertainment, and music further down the homepage. Clutch and MadameNoire tended
to be the opposite featuring pop culture and entertainment in their top stories and articles
discussing more serious topics were further down. Advertisement choice also seemed to be an
indicator of difference in that both Essence and Ebony primarily featured advertisements for
their own respective publications while Clutch and MadameNoire featured advertisements for
larger corporations. Photos on the legacy media sites, which had no specified age demographic,
featured a wider apparent age range than Clutch and MadameNoire, which tended to feature
primarily younger millennial women unless the subject of the story required otherwise.

Conclusion
Audience construction is an integral part of the creation, dissemination, and success of
cultural products. Signaling, as a method of audience construction, served in the course of this
research to exhibit the ways in which four different publications, Ebony, Essence, Clutch, and
MadameNoire construct, produce content for, and enable advertisers to market to black women.
Slight differences in characteristics like page construction, photo and subject choice, headline
syntax, ad content and placement, and even color scheme can leave an impression on readers as
to who the editorial content within is and is not for. Clutch and MadameNoire signal to younger
millennial black women interested in style and pop culture. Essence signals to women of all
ages, but seemingly more mature women, interested in gender and racially relevant issues. Ebony
signals to the wider black community, including both men and women, who are interested in
issues and discussion relevant to black life in America.
This proposal sought to briefly examine audience construction through the lens of
signaling on four popular websites among black women. By performing a content analysis of
five characteristics of each sites homepage as well as the publications “about” section, I found
indicators of racial, gender, and age identifiers that suggest what type of reader the site aims to
cultivate. These results echo the findings of prior research in audience construction and the
construction of minority audiences which illustrated the ways in which media firms create their
audience and capitalize on the need for cultural products aimed towards African-Americans,
women in particular.
Continued research on this topic would include a longer range of data collection to
explore how each site changes from month to month and possibly from year to year. An
expansion of the number of sites, including the addition of more legacy and new media

publications that have gone digital, such as sister to sister magazine, a legacy black publication
that went fully digital in 2014 and ForHarriet.com, a blog community for black women, would
also enrich the data set and increase the validity of the results.

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APPENDIX A
.
Ebony Screenshots from 4.27.16

Essence Screenshots from 5.1.16

Clutch Screenshots from 4.27.2016

MadameNoire Screenshots from 4.27.2016

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