Question 4 - How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Representation is the way of communicating to a decoder using signs and symbols. These signs include images, text, video and many others. Representation is important in all forms of mainstream media, including magazines, films, radio and prime time television. No representation is completely true, with all signs and symbols going through a mediation process before they are fully suitable for the encoder’s use in their media product. Every sign is a choice and is a result of a sometimes long selection process. After learning about the mediation process I understood that it was important that I selected signs that would ensure the best possible outcome of a product that was suitable for my target audience. Taking my target audience’s social class into consideration, I selected images that I felt were suitable for representing what they could understand.

My magazine represents people from the ABC1 range in terms of social stratification, just like my target audience. Although it is a magazine that would include all sorts of music by people from different backgrounds, it is a magazine that also includes articles which often include emotional subjects experienced by certain people being interviewed, as shown in my interview with Sacha.

Social stratification is widespread across the UK, with magazine companies creating and publishing media products the represent every social group around. Magazines represent people from the ‘’chav’’ end of the scale to people of a much higher class. An encoder can make it clear to the decoder which social class is represented in their magazine by the signs chosen on the front cover. This is why it was important that I selected the appropriate signs to use in my magazine – so my target audience knew the social group that the people in the magazine belonged to.

All representations go through a mediation process, as the original sign is taken and altered until it becomes the representation the encoder wishes to use. This can take a long time to get right, and is based on the assumptions made about the target audience. These assumptions will affect everything from the modes of address to colour scheme of a design. For example, I chose to keep my colour scheme simple, using only three colours. This was so that the mistake of using too many bright colours wasn’t made, which could have resulted in the magazine looking cheap and tacky. Similarly, the photos I used of Sacha focused on natural beauty, rather than altering her image and risking changing the overall representation.

As the encoder of the magazine I felt it was important to make sure I put my own personal opinion forward through the use of the signs I chose to use. My message to the decoder was that although the music industry often represents people who are at the lower end of the social class scale, they are respectful people who simply want their music to be heard and don’t cause trouble. I feel I got this message across with the images I chose to use of Sacha – her beauty and unique presentation signify to the decoder that fame doesn’t always mean the dodgy ‘’rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle’’ that many singers become accustomed to. This message fits perfectly for the social group that this magazine is aimed at. I read similar magazines, so I feel the way I have chosen to produce my media product is suitable for my target audience. My magazine signifies a positive representation of young middle-class women, which is the exact group that it is aimed at, increasing the chance of gaining a preferred reading from the decoder.

The brief was to produce a front cover, double page spread and contents page for a music magazine. Although this was a good selection of items, it was challenging to fit everything I wanted to into these three pages. It meant I had to make sure I selected the most eye-catching images and signs to use to gain the decoder’s interest, as they would not be viewing much of the inside of the magazine. From the numerous photos I had taken, it was difficult to reduce them to a small group I could use. Out of the 15 photos I had taken in preparation, only 7 were used. It was difficult to choose which photos were the most suitable, but it allowed me to experience the often challenging selection process that encoders have to carry out all the time when producing magazines and other media products.

The software I used to create all sections of my magazine was the programme CorelDRAW Graphics Suite. This programme includes all the tools I needed to edit and alter all the signs I chose to use in my media product. Photos could be edited in a variety of ways, there was no limit to whereabouts I could move them and there was a wide range of font styles to choose from. This was definitely the best programme to use for my magazine. There were to limitations to what I could do and I could preview my design in all sorts of ways. I could also zoom in very far to ensure all details were as accurate as I could get them.

During the design process I used intertextuality to help me decide which of my designs was the most suitable for my target audience. I researched a variety of music magazines to see what kind of signs they used and to view their chosen style of layout. Collating all the information I found allowed me to come up with my own unique design and layout for my front cover, contents page and double page spread.

My overall representation is largely denotative. Most of the images of Sacha are simply there to give the decoder a representation of what she looks like. However, other images of her offer connotations for the decoder to read. For example, one image may show her beauty at a first glance, but at a second glance the decoder will be able to see the deeper meaning – her confusion/loneliness.

My magazine goes against the pluralist idea that no representation can ever impact the way a decoder thinks. I believe the signs I have chosen to use in my media product show that the way in which we use the mediation process to create something a decoder understands can have a big impact on the way my target audience will decode the signs and understand the representation. Although there are thousands of representations of the same social group out there, I think my representation has a unique message to offer.