OSP: Teen Vogue - Audience and Representation

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?

"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 their target audience is educated and interested in hard news such as politics rather then celebrity, soft news.

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.

Their target audience is people aged between 16-24. 63% are Generation Z and Millennials.

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

Surveillance - Provides useful information on different topics (news and politics)
Personal Identity - They see other like minded individuals
Personal Relationship - Can create relationships between celebrities and editors.

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

Although Teen Vogue say they're neither left or right wing, they are quite critical on current American politics and therefore give off a left wing perspective. The audience are positioned to challenge these ideologies and potentially have a liberal perspective.

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 have multiple digital and video series which the audience can interact with on different platforms such as Twitter and Instagram which are featured in articles.

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?

Teen Vogue encourages activists to come together at conventions such as the 'Teen Vogue Summit' where they can meet other like minded people as well as learn 'tools to change the world'. Teen Vogue encourages it's audience to challenge the tradition views of women.

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

Teen Vogue represents an ideology of accepting all genders and reinforces the idea of 'gender fluidity'.

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

Articles featuring transgender and disabled models challenge traditional stereotypes  however articles such as the Sky Jackson article would reinforce traditional stereotypes due to the amount of photoshop and make-up used in order to make the model seem older then she is.

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

Teen Vogue attempts to challenge patriarchy as they encourage their female audience to make a change in the world. They attempt to get their female audience involved in politics and current affairs, linking back to their mission statement of empowering young women.

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

Teen Vogue reinforce typical representations of celebrity however use them in a way as influential figures which their audience should look up to. Celebrities who have been considered to make a change are used a lot in Teen Vogue articles in order to attempt to persuade their audience to do the same.

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?

They received a lot of positive comments as well a lot of backlash telling them to "stick to acne treatments". Other positive comments such as "Who would've guessed Teen Vogue might be the future of political news.

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

Women's news was targeted at topics such as: fashion, lifestyle, parenting. Whereas male news was targeted at topics such as: politics, business (hard news).

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

"Women have been attending and graduating journalism school more often than men since the 1970s; by 2010, 64% of J-school graduates were female."

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

In 2008, Anna Holmes’ Jezebel made the then-risky move of combining politics coverage and traditionally feminist op-eds with fashion and celebrity gossip, betting that the same woman could plausibly enjoy reading both.

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 agree with the writer as Teen Vogue is an example of this happening successfully. Teen Vogue have been able to feature hard news on their website alongside, celebrity and entertainment news. More and more women are being involved in politics and can still enjoy celebrity content at the same time.

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

Women used to be sexualised and seen as sex objects and were often focused on soft news.

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

I don't agree that it makes feminism stereotyped as fluffy but it makes women feel more open to discuss different topics and still be heard.

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

The audience can still be engaged with politics and other hard news as well as interested in fashion and celebrity news (soft 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?

The feminist-blog movement hightlights the fact that consumers can add to the content circulated in the media by projecting their own opinions. Audiences no longer turn to the media for facts and opinions and instead produce their own.

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 that Teen Vogue has been able to create a strong loyal fan base of Trumps presidency by challenging most of his ideologies however I also believe that websites and magazines aimed at women are an increasing trend along side the topic of feminism which is also increasingly popular.