OSP: Teen Vogue - Audience and Representation

OSP: Teen Vogue - Audience and Representation

Teen Vogue offers a huge amount to discuss and write about for the concepts of audience and representation.

The exam could focus on anything from the changing nature of digital audiences to how certain groups or issues are represented in Teen Vogue online.

Notes from the lesson

Audience

Although the brand name suggests a teenage audience, the typical Teen Vogue reader has evolved in recent years. The move to more political content has broadened the appeal and changed the genre – young women now expect more from their media.

The ‘Campus Life’ section in Lifestyle also suggests an older readership. However, the audience is still interested in celebrity content and beauty – which Teen Vogue addresses by featuring the ‘opinion leaders’ (two-step flow) of social media.

Generations

Generation X: Born between 1965 – 1980
Millennials / Generation Y: Born between 1981 – 1995
Generation Z (or iGen): Born 1996 – 2010

Teen Vogue: political positioning

Teen Vogue generally takes a liberal, left-wing political stance and positions its readers to become active in their support:

• Pro-feminist
• Pro-gender fluidity and gender identity
• Supports LGBT equality
• Pro-multiculturalism
• Supports Black Lives Matter
• Pro-environment (accepting science on climate change)
• Pro-choice (abortion)

Teen Vogue: audience interaction

How does Teen Vogue encourage audience interaction?

• Activism
• Social media
• ‘Clickbait’ and first-person headlines
• Events – Teen Vogue summit

Representation

Changing representations

Feminist bloggers and websites such as Rookie and liberal blogJezebel have been credited with changing the representation of women and feminism in the digital age.


This can be linked to Clay Shirky’s ‘end of audience’ theory with digital influencers changing the media landscape for women – and established mainstream brands like Teen Vogue are following to stay relevant.

Teen Vogue: Audience and Representation blog tasks

Create a new blogpost called 'Teen Vogue Audience and Representation' and work through the following tasks to complete the audience and representation aspects of your Teen Vogue case study:

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?

Teen Vogue is the young person’s guide to saving the world. 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.

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.

63%GEN Z/MILLENNIALS i think there target audience is teens as clearly stated in the name and young adults who would find an interest in the topics discussed.

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

Diversion: people who have hobbies in fashion or are interested in beauty products would find Teen Vogue interesting and entertaining  

Personal identity:  people as though they can find themselves and what they really have an interest in through teen vogue. Teen Vogue aims at many different target audiences.

4) How is the audience positioned to respond to political news stories?
the audience are positioned more towards the left wing of political issue but they try and leave it open for interpretation.
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.

the teen vogue holds summits for young people to come and express themselves and meet new people who they never knew they may of had an interest in they also get to meet celebs.

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?

Females are portrayed very strong and positively in the 'tentpoles and editorial pillars'

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

these issues are represented in a way where they can be spoken about and teen vogue is not against it but instead helps encourage people to come out.

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

They challenge traditional stereotypes  to some extentof appearance and beauty, an example of this is Skai Jackson's clothing in Teen Vogue and she is pictured with her Afro which is not usually shown in mainstream media.

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

Patriarchy is definitely not reinforced in Teen Vogue, instead females are made to seem empowered even if they are'nt empowered by others in society

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

I think that  Teen Vogue subverts typical representations of celebrity. The celebrity news they report seems to always to fit the ideologies of the magazine in some way

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

Read this Quartz feature - The true story of how Teen Vogue got mad, got woke, and began terrifying men like Donald Trump - and answer the following questions:

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

 Generated a lot of attention for the Teen Vogue brand as a whole because it was unexpected for them to be openly negative about the president.

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

Once upon a time, there was news, and there was women’s news. Your local paper—let’s assume you subscribed; this would have been several decades ago—came to you every day packed with meaty, manly sections such as “Business” or “Politics.” Then, perhaps on the weekend, you would get an extra section, containing—oh, happy day—news that even your wife could read.This was the “Lifestyle” section, and it covered all topics deemed feminine: cooking, fashion and beauty, parenting, maybe even a little celebrity news. (“Arts and Literature,” a Very Serious Section, still belonged to the boys.) The magazine world more or less followed the same format, with seriousness invariably reserved for men and masculine topics.

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

In my opinion gender has become much more less frequent as society becomes more progressive.

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

This website inspired many others to add different types of articles to their magazines.

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?

I agree with this statement seeing as this generation seems to have a lot more time to be reading news as it has all become digital and so there for people have more than one topic that they're into.

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

Suggests that females used to be represented as sex objects and having an interest for soft news.

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

Contrast between "fluffy" topics and the serious journalism covering news.

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's end of audience talks about how the audiences are not as passive as they was before and they can even reply or go against wjhat theyve seen or read with the use of the internet that gives everyone a voice.

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?

Teen Vogue do describe themselves as 'woke' which leads me to believe that they will continue to become more hard hitting and serious as they aim to give their readers what they want i dont think they will sit and defend  trump but instead they will go at him.

There is plenty to work on here as this needs to cover two of the key concepts for this in-depth CSP. Complete for homework - due on Wednesday 28 November.