Teen vogue:audience and representation

Audience focus

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?

Aim to educate , enlighten and empower our audiences to create a more inclusive environment by amplifying the voices of the unheard which gives us the idea that the target audience may be women who are silenced in society because they are seen as subordinate. Audience pleasures will be personal relationships because they can relate to the experiences of these women.

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 audience may be women who are silenced in society because they are seen as subordinate. Audience pleasures will be personal relationships because they can relate to the experiences of these women.

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

Personal relationships because they can relate to experiences of women, personal identity because the incorporation of different women may help them fugure out their identity and see themselves in them.

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

Audience have access to their political news stories on scial media through notifications and can respond through a comment section.

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.

They do awards for example back to school awards which allow fans to interact with them.

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?

They incorporate elections to encourage girls to vote and a guide to girls changing the world representing women and strong and confident.

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

They subvert gender sterotypes by incorporating women who take on "masculine' jobs such as engineering which represents women as confident and strong.

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

They challenge stereotypes because they incorporate plus size models instead of a skinny model and give out the message that it is socially acceptable.

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

patraichy is a society where men dominate and it challenges it by making their status quo women who are independent and demand rights to vote, involved in jobs that are seen as "masculine" who are not sexualised because they are not the traditional "skinny" model.

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

It challenges typical representation because Women celebrities are usually seen as subordinate because they are working under management but they incorporate independent women who manage male celebrities.

Teen Vogue: Factsheet Part 2

Read Media Factsheet #205 Teen Vogue Part 2 - Application of theory. You can find the Factsheet in our Factsheet archive on the Media Shared drive in school or download it here using your Greenford Google login. Answer the following questions: 

1) How does the Factsheet apply David Gauntlett's ideas about gender and identity to Teen Vogue? 

Gauntlett argues that we see identity (including gender roles) as

being more fluid and changeable than before and TeenVogue’s

editorial teams will try to offer content that reflects the complex

range of ideas that feed into modern teen identity.

2) David Gauntlett has also written about the importance of role models. How can this be applied to the Teen Vogue CSP?

There are positive female role models featured for young girls who promote independnece and subvert traditional stereotype that girls have to be small sized and models. In a way they promote body confidence and Young girls to oppose the status quo by aiming to 

3) bell hooks suggests that profit-seeking media industries reinforce patriarchal values and power structures. How can these ideas be applied to Teen Vogue? Try and argue both sides - that Teen Vogue both empowers women but also arguably reinforces some hegemonic gender stereotypes.

Teen vogue is primarily owned by men who profit from a female audience who also impose their ideas in the magazines which females blindly accept because they thinks its producd by women.

4) List the key points on van Zoonen's gender theories in the Factsheet. How can we apply some of these ideas to Teen Vogue?

(Propp) reinforces patriarchal values (hooks) that see females

as weak and helpless (Van Zoonen)

5) Read the Greta Thunberg case study on pages 3-4. How does the Factsheet use media theories in the analysis of the special 2019 print edition of Teen Vogue?