QUESTION 2: HOW DOES YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT REPRESENT PARTICULAR SOCIAL GROUPS

Question 2: How does your media product represent particular social groups?

My media product targets the particular genre of punk rock. My magazine includes typical associated features of punk rock fans, but it also challenges ideas about what they include as I'm going to discuss.

When selecting my images for my front cover of my media product I knew it was key to use appropriate images that match my selected genre. I considered mise-en-scene selecting my front cover, as my media product shows, I used a medium shot with my front cover. On the image I used very casual clothing as I feel this was an association with my punk rock target audience, they aren't considered upper class so I felt a calmed tone of clothing was appropriate. Facially I wanted my image to come across as very loud and rock passionate, that's why on my image the model (known as Randy Stitch on my product) has his tongue out along with his fingers presenting a 'rock on' motion to help present my group for this product. I also included rings, bracelets and a hat to help keep this overall idea of my social group for this product. I felt that these were important as they defined who my audience was for this particular media product, my use of mise-en-scene allowed my punk rock target audience to be easily recogniseable.

My product represents my target audience for a number of reasons, firstly because I used a minimalistic amount of colurs when designing my magazine. Black and white are two consistent colours on my front cover, contents page and double page spread. Also my product includes an electric guitar in some of the images, this reinforces this rock type magazine which is associated with my audience. Furthermore my product also has quite a basic layout, for example there isn't a highly upper class sense of reading to it. Instead it's more descriptive and basic to suit particular social groups of my magazine, my double page spread for example highlights the quote ''my life changed forever'', it's a basic use of language to engage my group to further read my prouduct.

As well as including dominant ideas about my social group for my magazine (student age punk rock supporters), I also incorporated to challenge commonly associated ideas about them. An example being would be my front cover, how a tagline reads ''Turning green day green'', the overall idea of this was to suggest that a successful musician/designer invented recycled instruments for the commonly known band 'Green Day'. I felt this was good to challenge this idea of punk rock fans being loud and noisy, I felt that the suggestion of recycling (going green) highlighted a slight calm and relaxed tone to the social group. In comparison on my double page spread I used juxtaposition on my image. On the image features an electric guitar and newspaper. These were to present this idea of recycled instruments, which suggested a sense of help to the enviroment. I felt this helped challenge a further idea of punk rockers being messy and careless. The incorporation of these two revealed a different yet challenging side to my social group that my magazine represents.

To conclude my magazine product has many typical features of a punk rock magazine through its use of colour and minimalistic language. Also through its use of ranging images. However, my magazine also challenges ideology's of my social group, this is through taglines and an image I included on my double page spread. Therefore I feel that my product presents my social group of student punk rock fans to be passionate about what they listen to, but also that they're at an age with a sense of maturity.