How does your media productrepresent particular social groups?

Using casual language to appeal to the younger generations

In my media product young people have been represented in the use of language I have chosen:

A lot has changed since David McCaffrey first began singing, and today I have come to the city of York to visit David in the place where it all began. His new album Stars has been a major success since it's release earlier this month, giving his career a huge kick-start. And here at Indisputable we have managed to score the first interview with David to find out more about it.

The word “score” can be taken on two levels. The first is referring to a sporting term, appealing to the sports lovers, and the second is a slang term for receiving drugs, which represents the young and rebellious teenage social group that I am writing for.

No adjectives used to get straight to the point, meeting the needs of the target audience

The phrase “kick-start” began as a motorcycle term, which creates associations with rebellion and energy, appealing to young and rebellious generations

The general language that I have used in my article is typically what you would find in a music magazine. It uses casual language, used to connect to a young generation.

The purple I have chosen, although slightly more female

oriented, is a shade that would appeal to both genders.

The off-white colour I have used is a good gender neutral colour, keeping to the target audience of both males and females.

I chose to use black as one of the main colours in my colour scheme as

it is commonly used in Indie music magazines as a base colour.

In my media product both males and females have been represented in the use of colours I have chosen:

Class and EthnicityBy using the rough edges on the boxes it appeals to my middle class target audience, who like the rough and ready look, and have pride in being from poorer, laborious backgrounds.

I have used photographs of white, Indie people because this is the stereotype of the people who fall into the social group of the Indie genre. Although the genre does not only appeal to white people, the area I live in (York), has very few ethnic minorities, making it harder for me to include photographs of Indie teenagers of all ethnic backgrounds.

The photographs used show a selection of middle-class boys, dressing in a way that is meant to showcase them to look like working class people. They are meant to look as if they do not care what they look like and just throw on their clothes. However because they dress this way we know that they do fall into this image based indie genre of people who have the money to be able to afford to spend time carefully selecting their outfits.

The males in the top photograph look like “Lads”, the way they are looking into the camera and look as if they are having good “banter” shows them forming to the stereotype of the classic male image. However the photograph of the boy playing his guitar is wearing a Christmas jumper, and playing an acoustic guitar, showing a much softer version of the male character, not the classic thuggish image. By using these two photographs together my media product demonstrates the many types of male characters are found within the indie genre, and so the image is not about conforming to stereotypes, but stepping out of the box and embracing the person that you are, becoming your own individual. The irony in this is that there are a whole social group of people everywhere who play to the fact that they are individuals, however in reality they all share the same cultural beliefs and wear the same clothes, as they try to fit in with the “individual” image.