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.