Q2) How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Before i began my product i did research on what type of celebrity's would feature in my magazine and what representations are of men and women in this particular genre. I did this by looking at the singers music videos, which can be seen in my research at the beginning of my blog. In conclusion to my research it represented the singers glorifying violence and gun crime. Showing wealth through gold, bling and cars. When we think of bling and lots of money in this particular genre we see men as 'gangstas'. Representation of women are seen as sex objects, slim figures, a lot of makeup to appeal to the male audience. Yet female celebrity's such as Nicki Minaj which a lot of my research was focused around was seen as bad girl, a female version of male artists yet still showed as a sex symbol. So for my magazine i tried to recreate this persona with my leading female artist. So in this case my model represents a sex appeal with her clothing choice being revealing which shows a deconstruction of the clothing below:

I also did this for a few other of my photo shoots:

The reason i chose the first style over the second one was because it matched the particular social group i was trying to recreate with consideration to the genre of my magazine. It was more relevant to the genre and would sell more to the males audience.

The features on the contents page like the nicki minaj story represents the female artist as being a diva which is what a lot of them are represented for from all the wealth. It also shows she can be a violent character which is also what we expect, as a lot of RnB singers glorify violence almost promoting it. Therefore the readers who we except to read and enjoy this magazine are the younger generation as it is not something we would expect an older women or men choosing to be interested in.This links with my demographics which i also used to research my audience and this is the conclusion i came up with at the end:

'For my magazine I have chosen my magazine to be aimed at an age group of 16-20 year olds where it will apply to both sex. With this group of people being quite a young age group it means a lot of them will be at university, education or just starting out in the workforce therefore the audience will be in band D/E. The reason for choosing an audience of this age is because a lot of the celebrity's that are part of the RnB genre are in their 20’s so the audience will be able to relate and are more interested in celebrity's that are the same ages of them. To the male sex, women in the magazine are also seen as sexy from this genre so therefore I  will have to put young and good looking artists in order to sell the magazine. An example of a typical female celebrity found in magazines of RnB genre would be Nicki minaj.  However for females they will look at the female artists as role models. I took a mini survey to see how much this age group would pay for the magazine. From looking at results from my surveyors  it said that they would pay quite a lot for the magazine but it would have to come out monthly in order for them to be able to afford it. I also made sure to check other prices for magazines of this kind and they were all priced around £3.99, so I thought I should stick with a conventional price however feature on average 60 pages.  In my magazine I will feature tickets to live festivals in the UK that a lot of young people like to attend. Some examples will be cream fields, tomorrow land and V festival. I will do this because it will interest young readers and this audience to buy my magazine. Also with them scoring band D/E in the grading system it may be a once in  a life time opportunity with them not being able to afford tickets to these festivals with them being so expensive and with them not having a very big income from having to pay University fee’s etc.' (previous work already on blog.) 

My magazine is aimed at the D/E band. From knowing this i had to make sure my product also represented these people. This is because a lot of RnB singers such as drake, 50 cent etc. where once living the same life as people from this group so they can relate. Usually people of the D/E band are seen as working class or lower skilled working class who fund off the welfare state. In society these people are stereotyped negatively, also RnB singers a stereotyped negatively. In a lot of their songs it speaks about fighting, sex, girls etc.  therefore the age group would be aimed at younger people and we wouldn't expect old people to be interested in these type of articles. They also spoke about how they lived in poverty. Here is a breakdown of the celebrity's featured on my magazine and some of the lyrics they wrote about their lifestyles which is incorporated into their songs. (see below) My magazine by females being upfront and males as being strong outlaws to society.  Yet my magazine also needs to represent role models that the audience can look up too. This is shown in the example of an article on my contents page called 'Tygas Charity'.