How to Answer Evaluation Question 2

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Media products take the world and RE-PRESENT it to us.  In doing so they make choices about HOW to represent different sorts of people.  Think about how you have represented, say, male youth, or early teenage girls, or heavy metal fans, or indie music fans, or your target audience generally (say who they are demographically and psychographically).

 What qualities have you implied that this group of people possess?  You have represented them through your photos, your choice of language, your use of colours, your writing, and even the things you have LEFT OUT and assumed they are NOT interested in.  For example, let’s say your magazine is aimed at early teenage girls. What sorts of personalities and interests does your magazine suggest teenage girls have?  Have you reinforced stereotypes (eg interested in clothes, makeup, boys, etc)?  Have you challenged stereotypes?  (Eg aggressive poses in photographic  shots, or use cover lines about ‘unusual’ topics such as politics or fast cars?)

 
Illustrate your answer with clips from your products to show what you are talking about, and if you like compare them to clips/images from ‘real’ media texts. Take one photograph and compare it to a photo of a similar person taken from a real media text.  How are they similar, and how different?   When discussing photos of the group you have represented you should  consider posture, gesture, angle, shot type, lighting, costume, expression, hair, etc.  Outline the social group you are representing using demographics (age, gender, class, where they live), psychographics (mainsreamers, aspirers, reformers, individuals), sub-cultures and tribes (goths, steam punks, hipsters, ravers, geeks, townies, metalheads, etc.

PRESENTATION SUGGESTION: Do this as an illustrated blog post or as a Word document, uploaded to ISSUU as a PDF then embedded in your blog.