18

How does Woman and Adbusters construct their audiences?

• Audiences are consumers of a media product.
• Audience construction is making the target audience, through the producer telling the audience to appeal to men, wear makeup, fix their kitchen.
• In constructing a target audience the producer reinforces female stereotypes.
• By reinforcing stereotypes, the producer ensure the same women buy the magazine.
• The producers of Woman construct a clear and rigid TA for their magazine, to ensure the same TA buy the magazine weekly to avoid missing out. Adbusters however makes no attempt at constructing a target audience and instead adopts a deliberate confusing mode of address.
• Adbusters is counter-cultural.
• Reception theory - audiences can respond to the ideologies of the producer in different ways - negotiated, preferred - agree with the ideologies of wearing makeup and being a housewife, oppositional.
• Identity theory
• MES - Front page of Woman conventional and feminine with a friendly mode of address.
• MES - Front cover of Adbusters unconventional and aggressive with a confusing mode of address.
• Cultivation theory
• Anchorage
• Close-up shot of woman's face on front cover reinforces the hegemonic and conventional type of beauty the audience should aspire to have and the TA being women.
• Colours are pink and feminine 
• Direct mode of address
• Fandom - social interaction with friends, interact with website Adbusters, write a letter
• Adbusters uncomfortable mode of address.
• Price of Woman is cheap - w/c 
• Adbusters is £10.99 - m/c
• Adbusters isn't targeting a clear audience - no coverlines unconventional, has no hint to what is inside the magazine. No barcode, no price unconventional. 'Post-West' - deliberately confusing mode of address, coverline isn't clear, hermenuetic code. Aggressive mode of address - mid shot of main image, no direct eye contact, proairetic code of a fist.
• Deliberately confusing, Adbusters is targeting an educated audience. Origin of image isn't clear, we don't know who he is. Sparse layout.
• Dirt connotation of war, death, violence with camo clothes - war. Conflict symbolic code - reminds the target audience we live in a world filled with conflict, dirt over masthead.
• Niche, not for profit - doesn't need to construct an audience like Woman because the product exists to make a profit.
• Woman Breeze advert - sexualised main image of a woman, the producer's ideologies are reinforced to the TA patriarchal hegemony. 'because you're a woman' lexis, the audience can only be a woman through using the product. Aspirational image for women, secondary audience of heterosexual men - objectifying, the producer is reinforcing and constructing the audience to accept. Young and hegemonically/conventionally attractive. Cultivation. 'You're' direct mode address to directly communicate to the audience. Lexis, 'darling' reinforces patriarchal hegemony - man or husband, polysemy. Exploiting insecurities of women - e.g. soap. Lexis reinforces the hegemonic belief that women are sensitive and gentle. Constructing an audience who are weak through manipulation.
• Throughout Woman magazine the ideology is cultivated that in order to be attractive, women should be young and conventionally attractive, which helps to construct a target audience - makes TA insecure as the TA are middle-aged who want to look young and find a man.

17

• Large masthead at the top of the page, in large and bold.
• Image of model with direct address through direct eye contact - close up of smiling woman.
• Coverlines
• Price - 7d, 80p - w/c women.
• Weekly magazine
• Conventional of women's lifestyle with coverlines with stereotypical topics e.g makeup and kitchen.
• Magazine front cover's purpose is to sell it.
• IPC published Woman and other magazines similar to control the market. 
• Vogue - m/c women, Woman - w/c women.
• Specific brand identity. Conventional and straightforward women who want to live up to the standard of men.
• Selling a lifestyle, aspirational - young model - TA is middle-aged. 'A-Level Beauty' coverline for makeup to look younger.
• Conventional of the 60s.
• Strapline.
• Feminine background colour and colours.
• Friendly mode of address.
• Conventionally/hegemonically attractive.

Explore the extent to which regulatory factors have influenced the magazines that you have studied. Make reference to Woman and Adbusters.

Regulation is the rules and restrictions that media products follow.

Magazines in the UK are largely unregulated.

Regulation has had very little effect on either magazine we have studied. However, there are some elements of Adbusters which have legal grey areas. Woman at the time would have not been controversial at the time but would be considered controversial now. 

• Regulation theory - regulation is impossible due to digitally convergent technology.
• Adbusters is considered controversial because it is atypical.
• Woman magazine is not controversial at the time of circulation as it is conventional but is in the current.
• Self-regulation - Woman magazine targets a conservative audience, the magazine chooses what they want to include.
• Woman reinforces patriarchal ideologies, potentially affecting the body image of the female target audience.
• Society creates its own regulations through hegemony of what is considered acceptable or not. Woman magazine in particular lives up to hegemony.
• Slander/libel, Adbusters criticises brands directly through mockery in placing adverts in a new context - culture jamming.
• Adbusters is a big independent magazine but small enough to go under the radar.
• Being independent allows Adbusters to get away with things larger magazines could not get away with.
• Power in the media industries - Adbusters subverts as it isn't for profit.

16

Woman is conventional and Adbusters is unconventional.

• Woman magazine is a women's lifestyle magazine.
• Woman is published by IPC.
• August 1964. Weekly.
• 3.5 million copies a week is circulated.
• Mass audience. Target audience is heterosexual, white, w/c, middle-aged women housewives.
• Woman magazine presents a simple and straightforward ideology to its mass target audience.
• Woman magazine uses hegemonic ideologies with hegemonic representations of women.
• Layout of the magazine is conventional with a large bold masthead with a main image featuring a model with direct address, coverlines of stereotypical interests of women. Targets its audience - 
• Context - drugs, hippies, second-wave feminism, contraceptive pill. Woman magazine does not reference this because of its target audience are conservative and traditional.
• Reinforcing patriarchal hegemonic ideologies.
• Example of patriarchy in the Max Factor advert - women should wear makeup to look attractive to men and for men. Alfred Hitchcock interview - targets women but the main article features a man talking about the appearance of women.
• Example of hegemony - article - interview, Grace Kelly is hegemonically attractive, article - present for your kitchen hegemonic for women to be housewives.
• Ideologies presents patriarchal hegemonies  - cultivates to the target audience.

How Woman magazine is conventional.

• Max Factor Creme puff.
• It has hegemonic patriarchal representations that reflect the ideologies of the producer which cultivates to the target audience and preferred reading of the magazine:
• The woman is putting make-up on, midshot - MES - skirt and jewelry with nice hair.
• Setting - a lobby in perhaps an office waiting for her husband, she is making herself presentable for him.
• The man is the breadwinner, she is a housewife. The man is expected to work, he is looking at her.
• The woman is the focal point of the advert as the man is in the background, however the advert is targeted towards women but still features a man - the ideology of women needing male approval.
• Conventional of an advert, with imagery of the main model and product that is selling the lifestyle of being the hegemonic woman.
• 'be sure of your beauty always', lexis of guaranteed beauty, patriarchal hegemonic ideology of women having to be attractive and beautiful always.
• 'Beauty at a moment's notice' - objectification of women, Feminist theory and male gaze theory - man is looking at the woman comparative of being a statue, women are to be looked at and women should make themselves attractive for men. Large serif.
• May also target a heterosexual man by featuring a conventionally hegemonically attractive woman, as housewives are dependent of men financially, as men are expected to be the breadwinner.
• Z-line and anchorage with the series of images.

15

Postmodernism - When the media product deliberately break rules and challenge the audience. 

Hyperreality - Representations of reality being more perfect. 

Postmodernism is an impossible theory to define.

Anita is perfect because she doesn't exist. She does whatever you want, she cooks and cleans.

To what extent can the set episodes of Humans and Les Revenants be seen as postmodern?

• Anita is a binary opposition; the Hawkins family are normal with stereotypes such as Joe, their house is messy, nuclear family - stereotypical white m/c British family. The sci-fi genre is presented in Anita being wheeled into the shop (postmodern) switch of genre - sudden shift positions the target audience in a confusing mode of address. Warm tones of the family to cold tones and synth music - use of shopping centre setting is stereotypically consumerist, relatable. Signing a document - reflects Anita to be like a car or phone - exciting mode of address reflecting the culture of consumerism. Sophie - 'What if she's not pretty?' objectifying - Anita is like a doll. Anita is revealed to the audience through a montage of close-up shot, objectifying and sexualising - the audience also wonders this - stereotypically attractive. Symmetrical face, no skin imperfections, perfect hair it is long, perfect figure. Sophie has her mouth open in delight with excitable body language, Joe is eyeing Anita. Anita lives up to the stereotypes of East Asian women being obedient. Anita looks like she doesn't belong with glowing eyes and is standing and staring. Sophie - 'That means she's ours now' - allegory of Anita being a slave. Character of Anita with a hyperreal representation deliberately challenges the audience's perceptions of humanity. 
• Humans is a deeply complex and controversial TV show that targets a niche audience, to maximise profit.

Mise-en-scene

• Dark dim colours, muted and desaturated.
• No focus of faces.
• Binary opposition - girl playing in an abandoned area (horror). People kissing in by a grave of two people - alive and dead. Cross symbolism of death. Show is about sex and death - When Lena has sex, (orgasm - le petite mour (?) little death) Camille dies. Sex is creation, death is end. Complicated relationship of the themes targets a niche audience.
• MES of a dead dear suspended in a lake.
• Opening credits are highly conventional of the horror genre.
• Jumpscare of killer, pops up from the dark tunnel. Horror.
• Opening credits music is both typical with contrapuntal chill music, atypical as it has chill music. Atypical for a rock band, Mogwai, to create a soundtrack for a horror show.
• Repetition and difference.

14

David Gauntlet argues that audiences can use TV shows to reflect their own identity. To what extent does this theory of identity apply to the TV shows you have studied?

Audiences pick and choose their own identities using the media texts' ideologies. A way in which audiences can choose their identity is through the opportunity of identifying with characters that may specifically target a particular audience through that character. Audiences can take a variety of identities and interpretations for the TV shows that I have studied, to allow them to appeal to a range of target audiences. 

• identity theory
• mise-en-scene - costume, lighting
• camera work
• reception theory
• power and profit in the media industry
• audience
• fandom theory
• ideologies
• dramatic and upsetting storylines - narrative
• Les Rev- themes of death
• nuclear normal hegemonic family 
• close up shots of Camille looking awkward, relatability to younger teenagers
• wide angle shot of the family's house appeals to middle class audience
• mes - breakfast scene
• Camille opening the fridge wide angle shot - contrapuntal sound - mogwai - targets an existing audience
• tracking shot of Leo walking through brothel positions audience - allegory - ethics of prostitution - audiences will have different opinions
• post-colonial theory - separation of different characters of costume with controversial perspective on racism in the UK

- establishing shot - block of flats, w/c, 

- slow tracking shot

- small, cluttered - reflects the character of Julie being slightly all over the place

- mes - pile of books - she's intelligent 

- horror - texas chainsaw massacre - generic paradigm diegetic sounds of screams and music

- answering the phone - she is blunt

- lives by herself because no one else is there

- costume - baggy jumper and jeans, 

- Les Rev asks the audience what they would do if someone came back to life

- appeal to horror fans - generic convention - a woman by herself at a bus stop at night, raining - lowkey lighting, non-diegetic music

- the bus - colour is dull and washed out reflects Julie to have depression and is tired

- audience can identify with Julie

- representation of women

- representation of men

- Leo

- non-diegetic bassy music creates an uncomfortable ode of address - audience can identify with Leo's discomfort 

- Leo's mes costume, he is tough with scrappy clothes and body language is aggressive

- Stereotypical heterosexual young man, perhaps atypical representation of his behaviour in a brothel.

- controversial scene - taboo topic of sex work

- audiences may either identify with Leo or going to a brothel

- reception theory - preferred - uncomfortable; oppositional - allured.

- lighting - red symbolising - sex and danger

- Victor - he is silent and creepy

- Murderer, scenes of murder - purposefully pushes the audience away.

13

Humans - Breakfast scene

• Many mid and over-the-shoulder shots, reflects an intimate family scene.
• Close-up shots of Anita cleaning the table - feminist theory.
• Hyperreality - Large hotel-style breakfast, maid.
• Stereotypical middle-class, white British family - targets audience by including this type. of family for relatability with the aspect of hyperreality/escapism.
• Binary opposition of costumes - laid back pjs v professional maid uniform.
• Binary opposition - m/c white human v w/c East Asian synths.
• Lighting - highkey lighting v lowkey lighting where Anita is typically seen.
• American-British co-production Channel 4 and AMC.
• Setting location - near London - South England - appeal to a wider audience.
• Ensemble cast - appeal to a wider range of audience - maximising profit.
• Post-colonial theory - hierarchies of culture - Anita is represented as a slave through the use of a contrasting costume of the Hawkins family - bland and blue, practical.
• Allegory of slavery - Anita being represented differently and as an 'other'. 
• Hawkins family are hegemonic and stereotypically white m/c.
• Mattie - moody, swears, aggressive - stereotypical representation of a teenager. 'Tom Boy' not stereotypical.
• Toby - stereotypical teenage boy, sexually motivated and awkward.
• Joe - stereotypical dad, tells bad jokes.
• Laura - stressed out, stereotypical mum.
• Setting - dining room stereotypical of middle class.
• Use of natural colours connotating everyday life and sophisticated home-life of a middle-class household.
• Luxurious wide-spread of food indicates that the family are well-off.
• MES - artwork on the walls connotes wealth and sophistication.
• Nuclear family - hegemonically and conventionally 'perfect' family. 
• Binary opposition to Anita who cannot have children.
• Star appeal - Gemma Chan, Katherine Parkinson - reinforces a widespread appeal to different audiences.
• Anita wants a mother-daughter relationship especially with Sophie, plays the 'mother' role but without the positives. Anita does stereotypical 'maternal' tasks of cleaning and cooking. She is too perfect and annoys Laura - hyperreal.
• Anita offers the Hawkins family a hyperreal version of life, a perfect world that wouldn't be practical although mundane. 

12

Reception theory

- Preferred reading - Audience understands and agrees with the producer's ideology.

- Negotiated reading - Audience picks parts of the media text and may only agree with some parts of the producer's ideology.

- Oppositional reading - Audience disagrees with ever part of the producer's ideologies.

Fandom theory

- A motivated audience of a particular media text, they actively participate in the construction and circulation of textual meanings. They construct their social and cultural identities through borrowing and utilising the media text.

Humans uses reception theory through the preferred reading of those who enjoy the Sci-fi genre.

Humans uses fandom theory by appealing to a cult audience through the use of their marketing such as the spot advert and being unconventional by advertising 'Synthetics' which is the company who make the synths. 

Target audience 

Audience appeal

11

In what ways can the television industry uniquely convey issues, events and representations? Make reference to Humans in your answer.

• TV is a specialised industry that uses digitally convergent technology for production, distribution and consumption. The industry is globalised and international transnational conglomerates and TV shows are now co-produced by international companies, increase in narrowcasters and the consumption of shows are now diverse with the type of technology they are watching on, either binge-watching or catch-up and the increase in popularity of streaming services such as Netflix. 
• Power and media - profit and power - TV industry is specialised for profit and power by large conglomerates. 
• Target audiences for different things such as representation, genre, soundtrack, issues etc. The more audiences they target through different ways such as marketing or featuring a well-known cast, the more profit that is made. Minimising risk and maximising profit.
• Humans used unconventional marketing to target a cult/niche audience.
• Humans was produced by Channel4 and AMC (British and American) attracts a wider audience apart from only a British audience, to maximise profit.

10

Compare how media language constructs representations in the trailer to series three of Top Boy and the video to Formation by Beyoncé

Make reference to

• How representations make claims about reality
• The role of stereotypes (positive and negative)
• How representations may position audiences

• Representation of black working class people
• Representation theory
• Post colonial theory
• MES
• Setting
• Stereotypes
• Camera work
• Editing
• Sound
• Semiotics
• Binary oppositions
• Ideology
• Hegemony

Representation is the re-presentation of an individual or group that reflects the ideologies of the producer, media language helps construct these ideologies. Producers use representations to help re-construct reality as a formula easy for them to produce and position the audience to easily recognise and as well as target the preferred reading. The music video, Formation, is by Beyoncé which was released in 2016, set in New Orleans that has referential references to the treatment of black people in the New Orleans floods and historical context of racism and slavery in America. Top Boy is set in London and has generic conventions of a crime drama by featuring violence and aspects of running away from other gangs or police.

The music video, Formation by Beyoncé features 

Compare how media language creates meaning in the first two minutes to the video to Everlong by Foo Fighters, and the video to Riptide by Vance Joy.

Make reference to

• How intertextuality constructs meaning
• The use of polysemy
• How media language positions audiences

 

Media Revision 9 - Print Newspaper Analysis

Explore the ways in which representations are encoded through media language in the front page of this edition of The Daily Mail.

• Representation of the royal family
• Representation of women
• Feminist theory
• Postcolonial theory
• Representation theory
• Binary opposition
• Reception theory - Preferred reading - Pick and mix (Identity) theory
• Semiotic codes
• Layout
• Imagery
• Headline
• Masthead
• Skyline

DAC

Representation is the re-presentation of the producer's ideology which is reflected within a media text or product. Producers use representation to help target the target audience and preferred reading by creating re-presentations of individuals and groups which the readers will recognise through the use of recognisable faces as star appeal. The Daily Mail is a British tabloid newspaper, which therefore includes many articles and stories of celebrities and well-recognised people that target the preferred reading by representing these groups as highly respectable.

PEA

On the front cover of the tabloid, Daily Mail, it represents the royal family in a positive light in which reflects the hegemonic ideology of the producer of that the royal family are highly respectable through the use of star appeal. This attracts the preferred reading of those who are patriotic and respect the royal family, the target audience of this newspaper front cover are white British people this also links to the identity theory of the reader to choose to be patriotic and sad about the death of Prince Phillip. There is a large bold serif headline, 'One last moment with her prince', this represents the royal family to be that of a fairytale through the use of lexis, this main headline anchors the skyline, 'Queen's poignant farewell', reflects the hegemonic ideology of the Queen not being able to live without her true love, the feminist theory represents that she cannot live without a man and that she needs to spend every last minute with him. Through representation formed by the use of emotional lexis, it reflects the ideology of the producer to be that the British public should be saddened by the death and targets a reader who are strongly patriotic and like the star appeal of the royal family, this hegemonic ideology reflects the wider British public which links to the post-colonial theory by representing that the royal family are to be respected, despite the long history of colonisation by the British Empire.

Another way in which representation is encoded through media language which again represents the royal family in a positive way which reflects the hegemonic ideology of the producer and of the target reader to be ...