Magazine 1 - Lesson 1

Difference between Component 1 & 2 

• Component 1 has unseen media in it whereas Component 2 doesn't
• In Component 1 only a few things we've revised will come up whereas in Component 2 everything we've revised will come up.

4 'pillars' of media studies

• Media Language
• Representation
• Audience
• Media Industries

Component 2 - Introduction to the Exam

• Your POV and OPINION need to come through.
• There is HISTORICAL CONTEXT/PERSPECTIVE
• Not looking for a DEFINITIVE answer, you need to 'MAKE UP' the QUESTION yourself.
• You DO NOT need to do a BALANCED ARGUMENT.
• 10 minutes PLANNING
• 40 minutes WRITING

Barthes Semiotic Codes

• Symbolic
• Hermeneutic
• Proairetic

Claude Levi-Strauss

• Binary Oppositions

Magazine Generic Conventions

• Overview of Magazine Conventions
• Glossy Cover - Connotations of being at a better quality.
• Expectation that you are going to keep the magazine.
• More adverts than a newspaper.
• Bigger expectation on full page photographs.
• More about the look and design compared to a newspaper.
• May come with a free gift or free samples.
• Editorials.
• Magazines often opt to more gossipy modes of address.
• They can take an exclusionary mode of address.
• Allows you to be a market leader by being the only magazine with that certain genre.
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Name of Magazine: 

• WHAT HI-FI

Layout and Design: 

• Glossy Cover - Connotations of being at a better quality.

Font Size, Type, Colour and Connotations:

• Working class audience as the font is in Sans-serif, so it is more informal.

Language and Lexis:

• The language is aimed at more working class by using words like, 'affordable' and 'bargain' to give them hope that they will find the best deals and better deals than they would if they done the research themselves.

Women's Magazine - Week Ending, August 29th 1964

CONTEXT

Published weekly by IPC, 1937 to present.

Set Edition: 23-29th August 1964

Price: 7 old pennies, (approx 80p in 2018 money)

Women's magazines became very popular in the post-war period and, in the 1960's sales of women's magazine reached 12 million copies per week, Woman's sales alone were around 3 million copies per week in 1960.

• She looks around 34, inferring that it is aimed at a middle aged female audience.

• Very feminine colours so it will appeal to a more feminine audience.

• Very stereotypical view upon woman's leisure, as it is expecting that women like to cook, from the lexis of 'Kitchen'.

• The woman has an elegant bob, so it makes her look quite high end and she acts as an idol to young women, so they may think inside the magazine there are tips on how to look like this elegant, classy woman.

• The pink/purple background suggests the wall of a kitchen and by using the heading 'seven star improvements for your kitchen' this gives an audience response of her being a stay at home wife and in the kitchen.

• The model is quite plain and uninteresting so it lets the audience identify themselves with the woman.

• The lighting is quite bright on her face so an audience response to this is that women are quite bright.

• Another audience response makes the magazine more personal and friendly through the handwritten font.

• Affordable and approachable for 80p (inflation) for a weekly magazine.

• Stereotypes of women wearing makeup, as if they want to be an 'a level beauty' they have to look inside the magazine to see how to be this beautician, this is a hermeneutic code as you dont know the answer to the 'are you an a-level beauty?'.

• One response is that you need to believe you have certain rules, as there is a direct mode of address in this magazine.

• Heterosexual men will see this magazine and know that it is not targeted to them so they would not buy it.

• Heterosexual men will maybe see the magazine and find the woman on the front cover and find her sexually appealing and this may make the women want to aspire to be like this woman as men find her attractive and they want to be like her.

• The magazine could be saying that you are inadequate and not good enough by this life that these people in the magazine are asking if you have, as a 5 star kitchen isn't enough and you may not be an A-Level beauty and you could feel not good enough.

• Younger girls may read this magazine and want to be like this woman on the front cover so they're putting ideologies into younger girls heads which are easily manipulated. 

• Pride of being British, she is the British woman and we are proud to have her as the 'british woman with special magic'.

• Not every woman who picks this up will buy this, some women will find this boring as the women is plain and boring with stories about kitchens so middle and upper class women may not find this magazine appealing at all and prefer something with celebrities and gossip.

• The model's teeth are airbrushed, which adds to the 'perfect' woman idea, which is aspirational by the audience, and they wish they were like that but not in a completely out of this world way but in a more achievable way compared to the celebrities seen on vogue.

• She is wearing traditional women's clothes, reinforcing hegemonic views on how woman should dress, and the flowers on her dress could symbolise her as delicate.

• One response could be a feeling of empowerment as there is a magazine that is dedicated solely to the gender of Woman, woman is the most normal term and the most non delicate approach and seems more modern and more classy compared to girl which is more delicate.

• Audience response will feel more personal and more connected and affectionate response as she is staring straight at us, its a friendship look and is a more connecting look so we feel as if we have built a friendship with her and we owe it to her to read this article.

Ideology and Representation

Ideology and Representation

• Newsworthiness
• The process of selecting which stories to include in the paper.

• 'If it bleeds it leads'
• If its about gory/death then it will probably make the front page over something else.

• Broadsheets
• The larger style of newspapers. The content within will be a more formal writing, targeting a middle class audience.

• Tabloids
• These tend to focus on the working class audience by being quite informal with their stories.

• Intertextuality
• Where a media product makes sense only through its reference to the other media products.
• Barthes also referred to this process as referential codes. 

• Statue of Liberty symbolises hope, liberty and mainly America.
• The Statue of Liberty also looks like the weeping angels from Dr Who.
• The Daily Mirror's ideological perspective on Trump is that he is going to ruin the world and that it is not good that he has become the USA's prime minister.
• The setting that it is taken in looks like smoke, fire and bombs, this suggests that these are what trump wants to do and the Daily Mirror also expect us to know that these were trumps views.
• The sky also looks like a biblical apocalypse. Also, the background looks like the next world war or Dday.
• The statue has her hands over her face, it is symbolic as she is ashamed in her country.
• '7 killed in speeding tram crash' - Includes the word speeding, to make it seem more disastrous and exciting. Example of 'if it bleeds it leads'.

Opinions on Newspapers

• 'Newspapers are politically biased'
• I agree, that if the newspaper has beliefs they will channel their ideologies through their newspapers.
• Tv is A Political, meaning that they will not have one belief there will always be different beliefs, but they never come to a consensual agreement.
• American TV news is incredibly politically biased.
• English newspapers are politically anti-trump as we are anti-trump as a country, so we have biased news but completely unbiased press.

• 'Newspapers generally appeal to older audiences'
• yes, because we are more modern with technology so we will find the news on our phones rather than finding the news through newspapers.

• 'Newspapers tend to offer a very negative view on the world'
• People are fascinated by the awful and sad stories.
• In films people die as we are drawn and react to negative things like people dying.
• Also, the phrase 'If it bleeds, it leads'. 

Ideology

• The producer will encode their ideologies to a text. 
• A system of ideals and beliefs
• But often used to describe the ways which those in power use their power to distort meaning. 
• And ideology can be used to normalise the dominant ideas of the ruling class.

Left and Right Wing Politics Ideologies

• Left Wing (Labour)

• Generally a more liberal and forward-moving ideology.

• The left on the other hand is more keen to reduce the gaps in society between the rich and the poor. They believe society should work together to help everybody, with schemes like the NHS, Benefits and Free Education. They argue the rich should pay for this through taxes, thus reducing the gap between rich and poor.

• To do this, economically, they need to raise taxes. They also prefer to regulate 'the Market', which means distributing the wealth created on the stock market and in banks so that it does not all end up in the pockets of millionaires but some of it goes to the country's problems.

• Right Wing (Conservatives)

• More conservative and generally traditional. 

• On a social level, the right generally believes that a hierarchy in society is natural and normal. For them, the idea of a class system whereby the richer employ the poorer in a triangle is healthy because everybody benefits and it has historically been the natural order of things.

• Their economic policy (generally speaking) complements this, by promoting a form of capitalism which gives more economic freedom to big businesses. This means fewer regulations and lower taxes. They argue that as big businesses grow they create jobs for the working class and gradually everyone gets richer.