Magazines: Audience Question

'How do Woman and Adbusters construct their audiences?'

Construct = representation --> How do Women/ Adbusters represent their intended consumers of their media product.

Audience construction -> Making a target audience. Use binary opposition to tell the audience what they like and do not like. 

Woman magazine:
-Tells its audience they should follow patriarchal hegemony.
- Dress up, look nice, smile - Front cover
- Be a housewife. (Kitchen dp spread, houseware, tend to kids)
- Indulge in vanity (Creme Puff)

In constructing it's target audience, Woman magazine heavily reinforces female stereotypes.  Buy reinforcing stereotypes, the producers of Woman magazine are therein insuring the same audience of women buy it week after week. 

Trying to construct/ tell the audience exactly what to do. Constructing an audience is far easier than marketing to individuals, and the uniqueness.  (ie. Long Road Magazine sells the stereotype of LR as laidback, easy going lexis, chill.)

The producers of Woman construct a clear, and rigid target audience for their magazine to ensure that the same target audience buy the magazine week after week to avoid missing out, Adbusters on the other hand makes no attempt at constructing a target audience and instead adopts a deliberately confusing mode of address.

Adbusters is counter-cultural, not-for-profit, and independently published. --> Anti-Consumerist. (Though it is a Consumerist product)

Plan/ Notes:

Audience theories;

Reception Theory - Stuart Hall -> Audiences can respond to the ideology of the producer in multiple different ways. (Preferred, Oppositional, Negotiated readings)

Cultivation Theory -  George Gerbner -> perpetuated ideology -> changes the way audiences perceive the world. 

detournement -> culture jacking/ recontextualising with new anchorage.

legal grey area -> deliberately breaks rules, uses advertisements of consumerist brands. ^

Ad Busters; 'Red Soles are always in season' dp spread, consider 2nd example!!!! 

Woman; Creme Puff ad, Front cover

patriarchal hegemonic ideology -> reinforcement of ideology via anchorage. -> encourages audience to do something.

lack of anchorage in Adbusters.

close-up shot of Woman's face front cover -> reinforces the ideology of the target audience of Woman.

pink -> symbolic of femininity

direct mode of address/ friendly -> 

Fandom Theory -> social interaction with friends, about Woman -> staying in the loop.

Adbusters -> Interaction w/ website, discourse over social media. 

Price of Woman -> Appeal of cheap price --> Adbusters is expensive, £10.99 -> Constructs Woman as very much for a working class audience, affordability -> Adbusters, middle-class audience.

Woman conventional - Adbusters unconventional

Adbusters Front cover

threatening mode of address -> Lack of direct address, unfriendly, and uninviting. 
No anchorage -> Doesn't inform the spectator of what an Adbusters reader is like.
Dirty muddy filter -> MES of war through camouflage, grungy tones. 
Unconventional magazine cover -> No copy, taglines, pull quotes, etc. 
'Post-West'  -> coverline -> makes viewer think about war in the east -> assumes viewership to have an education of political west. -> confrontational.
Deliberately confusing 
Proairetic code of clenched fist -> Promotes violence, paired with MES of soldier-like camouflage, and screaming expression of model 
Origin of the image is unclear 
Stereotypical representation of a middle-eastern soldier -> Assumptions made, terrorism?
Lack of coverlines -> You dont know what you're getting at first glance on shelf.
Sparse layout composition -> emptiness.
MES of dirt -> Symbolic connotations of war, death, violence, uncleanliness. -> Reminds the target audience that we live in a world of conflict, this creates an upsetting mode of address. 
Looks to have low-production values -> ideology of producer reflected.
Adbusters (2016) not for profit -> Doesnt /need/ to construct an audience, like Woman magazine (1964 Aug) does. 

Tagline 'all-over feminine ... all-day fresh...' -> reinforces ideological perspective. Clean/ Fresh = clean.

Usage of direct mode of address -> 'because you're a woman.' -> directly tells the viewer what being a woman is, defines it for their audience.

Aspirational image of  hegemonically attractive -> Readership of middle-aged women, should try to look young, attractive, wear make-up, have hair nice.

proairetic code of kissing -> romance, sexual activity.

Throughout Woman magazine, the ideology is cultivated that in order to be attractive, Women should be young and stereotypically good looking. -> Helps to construct an audience.

The magazine sells by using the insecurities of it's middle-aged audience to it's advantage ->  Exploitative of such. 'Are you an a-level beauty?' , 'Darling, you need Breeze.'

Lexis of 'darling' -> reinforces patriarchal hegemony -> Male/ husband -> Arguably polysemic.

Lexis reinforces to Women that they are weak, fragile, deeply feminine -> USP of soap, gentle/soft just like a woman -> Constructing an audience of weak, easily suggestable women. -> Audience manipulation.