Q2) How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Before I began my product I started out by doing some research into who reads similar magazines, such as the NME. By doing so I had found out what social groups I needed to represent in my final product, and I was able to know how both men and women are represented in this genre of music. After doing research into this I discovered that the majority of artist featured in a magazine such as the NME are independent, and with that style the artists like to make things in their videos on the cheap side and simple.

This is the NME's reader profile. The key things to pick up on are:

• 69% of readers are male
• 31% of readers are female
• 52% work full time
• 29% are still studying
• 7% are working part time
• 65% of readers are in ABC1
• Average age is 24

from these facts I can learn the types of people who are interested in this sort of magazine, so I could in turn aim my magazine towards the same group of people, however I wanted to aim my magazine at a slightly lower age group, and taking into consideration the fact that they will likely be students reading my magazine I have lowered the demographics to the D/E section which is for students and the unemployed . The reader profile of the NME shows the social class to be upper class as the brands which are shown on it can be rather expensive. However the style is sort of vintage so things may not be as expensive as they seem.

To make my magazine fit the same group I had to make the cover look like the sort of thing that similar people would wear.

I had to do a bit of stereotyping to get this image for my double page spread, as I had to fit the theme of Indie rock, which is why I decided to go for the vintage denim jacket to attract the audience, as it is the in thing at the moment and the research tells me that it will comply with the majority of the target audience, as you can see with the image of an NME front cover with the artist 'Mia' on the cover with a vintage denim jacket on. Also the fact that the clothing worn is denim the audience expands beyond my target audience as denim is not necessarily that expensive so it opens up the doors to the D/E section of the demographics (which is mainly filled with students)

As you can see from my own reader profile I have aimed my magazine at students which fall into the D/E section.

I have also stereotyped my audience to be students because of some of the prizes on offer, such as the chance to win tickets to Leeds and Reading 2014 which students are the more likely to attend. The artists themselves have been aimed at the students as they are the in thing at the moment, so younger people are going to pay more attention than someone who is older and looking for some old artists.