Final Evaluation Question Two

How does your media product represent particular social groups? 

My media product is aimed at a mass audience of predominantly females, aged approximately between 15 and 35; whilst in the research and planning stage of the coursework, I spent a lot of time researching and refining my idea of who my audience would be. To do this I used resources available on the Internet, such as Channel 4 and Crowd DNA’s collaborative ‘UK Tribes’ research project, which looks at the groups and sub-categories within modern day society to help distinguish audiences. The video below explains how their work and research is carried out and the importance of understanding your audience; it also shows the separate groups that they have distinguished. As my magazine is pop genre, I was aware that the audience would be a widespread, mass audience; using UK Tribes, I placed my audience into the mass category of ‘Trendies’ in order to better understand my audience, their personal interests outside of pop music and the sub-categories my audience could contain. ‘Trendies’ is a large and quite mainstream social group that I feel captures and matches the large and widespread genre of music that my media product is placed within; the main interests within a basic summary of this group would be music and fashion, for this reason I aimed to make sure that on-trend and mainstream fashion was as evident within my product as the music. I also wanted it to be clear that this was the group represented by my cover artist.

Channel 4 and Crowd DNA's 'UK Tribes' Project:

When creating my cover artist, I thought carefully about the sort of artist’s I wanted to base my artist around; for this reason I chose artist’s commonly featured in pop genre magazines, such as Billboard and Q, who have strong ties with fashion as well as music, e.g. Katy Perry, Beyonce and Jessie J. 

Artist Profile:

 ‘My cover artist is Sapphire; a 20 year old, talented pop singer with an individual style and unique voice. Her main influences are Jessie J and Lady Gaga; who inspire her style and fashion sense. She also takes inspiration from her idols; Beyoncé, Adele and Nicki Minaj; strong willed and independent female artists who have many talents and dance and write music as well as singing. She got into pop music at a young age and has always been a fan of strong female artists such as Rihanna, Britney Spears, Beyoncé and Pink. She grew up in the midlands, in a nice house with her parents, two sisters and their dog, Bruno. She went to a local school and left high school having achieved 10 GCSE's, 2 As Levels and 3 A-levels. She went to De Montfort University to study fine art; but left in her 3rd year after being scouted at a local talent competition, which lead to Sapphire getting signed by a top music production company in London. She now lives in central London.’

Artist Comparison:

My artist has a lot of similarities to the artist’s I based her around; for example, her clothing is very similar and equally stylish and on-trend, she wears bright colours like these exiting artists, which also conforms to the idea of the pop genre using bright colours. The use of on-trend clothing also helps to appeal to the ‘Trendies’ social group through their interest in being ‘up-to-date’ with the latest trends within both music and fashion elements of ‘popular culture’. My artist also has a strong individual look, despite her wearing mainstream clothing, which helps to create the illusion of a 'brand' and 'franchise' surrounding the audience. Styling the artist in a singular colour for the cover and contents shot also helps to create a bold image for the artist, this connotes the artist as a strong and distinct artist in the music industry, who is consequently capable of competing against these existing and successful artists.