Teen Vogue: Audience and Representation blog tasks

Audience

1) Analyse the Conde Nast media pack for Teen Vogue. What is the Teen Vogue mission statement and what does this tell us about the target audience and audience pleasures?

• The Teen Vogue mission statement is: "We aim to educate, enlighten and empower our audience to create a more inclusive environment (both on and offline) by amplifying the voices of the unheard, telling stories that normally go untold, and providing resources for teens looking to make a tangible impact in their communities.
• This suggests that the Teen Vogue target audience is aimed at youthful individuals who want to make a powerful impact on societies but struggle to be heard.
• In terms of audience pleasures, Teen Vogue aims to create surveillance through its informative and progressive content as well as build personal identities and relationships in terms of representation and personal touches in their articles ( Blumler and Katz)

2) What is the target audience for Teen Vogue? Use the media pack to pick out key aspects of the audience demographics. Also, consider the psychographic groups that would be attracted to Teen Vogue: make specific reference to the website design or certain articles to support your points regarding this.

• The target demographics for the audience of teen vogue is that of ABC1, however many young women now expect more from their media- this is due to their socio-political awareness
•  Psychographic groups amongst the teen vogue audience could be those of  an aspirer, explorer and a reformer

3) What audience pleasures or gratifications can be found in Teen Vogue? Do these differ from the gratifications of traditional print-based magazines?

• As said before Teen Vogues audiences pleasures/ gratifications are that of  surveillance, personal identities and relationships 
• I think the difference in media outlet doesn't affect the gratifications of the magazine but I think, in the digital age, the easier access to Teen Vogue makes the diversion a lot more effective 

4) How is the audience positioned to respond to political news stories?

• the main outlet for audiences is to respond through "@" and hash tagging politicians and teen vogue through social media and twitter is a massive platform for these responses 

5) How does Teen Vogue encourage audiences to interact with the brand – and each other – on social media? The ‘tentpoles and editorial pillars’ section of the media pack may help with this question.

• Teen Vogue takes advantage of the digital platforms in which many people have access to such as Instagram, Twitter, Youtube, and snapchat channels 
• These platforms allow teen vogue to reach out to their readers and interact with them on a more personal level  

Representations

1) Look again at the Conde Nast media pack for Teen Vogue. What do the ‘tentpoles and editorial pillars’ (key events and features throughout the year) suggest about the representation of women and teenage girls on teenvogue.com?

• the representation of women and teen girls is a significantly large theme in Teen Vogue as femininity and females are heavily praised and its as if its an "anthem"

2) How are issues of gender identity and sexuality represented in Teen Vogue?

• The fact that Teen Vogue is pro-LGBTQ+ and a strong advocate for gender and sexuality fluidity means that issues regarding gender and sexuality are heavily and seriously debated and addressed 

3) Do representations of appearance or beauty in Teen Vogue reinforce or challenge traditional stereotypes?

• Both. Teen Vogue has succeeded in challenging a patriarchal society with enforcing styles such as androgyny and women not conforming to general expectations of  traditional society, however, due to their original brand identity of being a fashion magazine there still are women reinforcing the typical eurocentric beauty standards 

4) What is the patriarchy and how does Teen Vogue challenge it? Does it succeed?

• The Patriarchy: a system of society or government in which men hold the power and women are largely excluded from it.
• Teen Vogue does challenge and succeeds patriarchy by showcasing women who wear, what is considered, male-type clothing such as pantsuits and female tailored suits 

5) Does Teen Vogue reinforce or challenge typical representations of celebrity?

• Teen Vogue does reinforce typical representations of celebrity through it having to connect to its brand identity of it being a celebrity and fashion 

Feature: how Teen Vogue represents the changing nature of media aimed at women

1) How was the Teen Vogue op-ed on Donald Trump received on social media?

• Teen Vogue received extremely positive praise on Donald Trump on twitter especially considering its being a left wing supporting website 

2) How have newspapers and magazines generally categorised and targeted news by gender?

• Generally, the traditional binary segregation  of gender has always been enforced in traditional print media with males having to read about politics and sport and women about cooking and superficial things 

3) How is this gender bias still present in the modern media landscape?

• the gender bias is slowly fading in the modern media landscape with more and more outlets becoming progressive and diverse 

4) What impact did the alternative women’s website Jezebel have on the women’s magazine market?

• jezebel had an impact on the women magazine market through its combining of politics and traditional feminism with fashion and beauty which many magazines have taken on brand 

5) Do you agree with the writer that female audiences can enjoy celebrity news and beauty tips alongside hard-hitting political coverage? Does this explain the recent success of Teen Vogue?

• yes I do agree as women should be able to fit both spectrums in their media consumption without having to switch media platforms
• this links to women and the youth being more "woke" and being more interested in these kinds of hard-hitting topics 

6) How does the writer suggest feminists used to be represented in the media?

• feminists used to be presented as " sexless, grim bra-burners, uninterested in pleasure or aesthetics"  

7) What is the more modern representation of feminism? Do you agree that this makes feminism ‘stereotyped as fluffy’?

• the modern representation is seen as a more gender-equal and less demonized however this doesn't make feminism  fluffy,it turns it into a more empowering movement 

8) What contrasting audience pleasures for Teen Vogue are suggested by the writer in the article as a whole?

• Personal relationships
• surveillance 
• personal identity.

9) The writer suggests that this change in representation and audience pleasures for media products aimed at women has emerged from the feminist-blog movement. How can this be linked to Clay Shirky’s ‘end of audience’ theory?

• clay shirky has suggested that "the audience are the producers" and the female blog movement proves Shirky's suggestion very effectively as its regular women creating their own empowering content 

10) Is Teen Vogue simply a product of the Trump presidency or will websites and magazines aimed at women continue to become more hard-hitting and serious in their offering to audiences?

•  I think more websites and magazines will become more hard-hitting and serious as they can see the significant success in Teen Vogue