OSP assessment learner response

1) Type up your feedback in full (you don't need to write the mark and grade if you want to keep this confidential).


WWW: Good grasp and discussion of theory.

EBI: Under-developed answer for Q2 - needs more detail.


2) Read the whole mark scheme for this assessment carefully. Identify three potential points that you could have made in your essay for Question 1 (Shirky, audiences and producers).

• Teen Vogue’s shift to a more explicitly liberal promotion of feminist and identity politics reflects the movement feminist bloggers began in the mid-2000s. This is a great example of the influence some of the “billion new participants” Shirky talks of can influence the news agenda or change the direction of major, established media brands. Teen Vogue’s online presence still contains fashion and beauty but is a far cry from the vacuous teenage content that the first print edition contained in 2003.

• The Voice is a very typical newspaper website. In terms of conventions, it is dated – it has the feel of a 2010 news website (for example, the old BBC website). In many ways, it doesn’t reflect the changing landscape in the way one might expect – and this perhaps explains its relative lack of success in recent years. At a time digital media has been used powerfully to spotlight minority issues (such as the Black Lives Matter movement in the USA), The Voice in the UK seems to have been largely silenced. The refusal to publish website or circulation statistics suggests a brand that has failed to adapt to the “contemporary media ecosystem” Shirky describes.

• Teen Vogue’s success in recent years (unique website users shot up from 2m a month to 10m+ a month thanks to digital director Phillip Picardi) is down to reinvention of the brand to take into account the changes in the media landscape that Shirky’s ‘End of Audience’ theories suggest.

3) Now use the mark scheme to identify three potential points that you could have made in your essay for Question 2 (values and ideologies).

• The ‘End of Audience’ that Clay Shirky writes of means that a wider, more diverse range of values and ideologies are now available to consumers. Teen Vogue illustrates this with a liberal agenda that promotes perspectives championed by digital feminists in the late 2000s (sometimes considered the fourth wave of feminism). Promoting Judith Butler’s view on gender as performance, Teen Vogue is positive on gender fluidity and an increasingly non-binary approach gender identity. This is illustrated by features such as the October 2018 article ‘How to Break Away From the Gender Binary’. Similarly, Teen Vogue has encouraged activism and played a partisan role in the gun violence debate and Black Lives Matter movement (‘Black Teens Have Been Fighting for Gun Reform for Years’ – February 2018). These are values and ideologies that have been present in mainstream media previously but not from a teenage magazine brand like Teen Vogue. Indeed, it is a huge change from the content of the first print edition of Teen Vogue in 2003.

• The Voice should be successful due to the opportunities that are offered by digital media and the new media landscape in creating a platform for values and ideologies such as a strong black British voice. However, the poor construction of the website and social media presence (dead links, cluttered design, low-quality photography, lack of fresh content, poor video production values) means it is not the powerful voice in British media it should be.

• Teen Vogue’s promotion of issues such as gender fluidity chimes with the Maybelline ‘That Boss Life’ advert featuring notable YouTube influencers MannyMua and Shayla. The YouTube campaign suggests that the internet has led to a more diverse set of views and values and perhaps challenges Hesmondhalgh’s theory.

4) Use your exam response, the mark scheme and any other resource you wish to use to write a detailed essay plan for Question 1. Make sure you are planning at least five well-developed paragraphs in addition to a brief introduction and conclusion.

Intro: 

According to Clay Shirky, he conveys through the end of audience theory the change in the connection between audiences and producers as the demographic are beginning to consume information and distribute it themselves. They also interact with producers to promote their opinion and voices on significant, relevant topics that they wan't to converse on.

Teen vogue:

• Launched in 2003 as aprint magazine -  coventional magzine that focused mostlt on fashion - developed through online growth and was directed by Picardi
• Owned by Conde Nas and maximised it's profit
• Construction and consumption reflects a change in the relationship between audiences and producers - through directing their main focus on politics, activism and feminism - develops reputation towards high quality journalism

The Voice:

• Founded in 1982 - Only British national black weekly newspaper within the UK
• Aimed at British African Caribbean community - emerged within it's time period due to riots as their was a need to offer a voice and representation to Black Britain's
• Paul Gilroy's black diasporic identity theory - defined as the 'scattering of people'
• Conveyed how black people didn't posses identities and how they were forced across seas as they didn't feel at home within the country they are placed in - in other words 'liquidity of culture' 
• Gilroy - identity is irreversible due to the origin always reminding them of slavery and displacement

5) Finally, do the same for Question 2. Remember, Question 2 is a synoptic question so your answer must refer to aspects from the whole A Level Media course. Therefore, make sure you are bringing in CSPs, theories or debates from across the whole course of study.


- The 'End of Audience' that Clay Shirky composes of implies that a more extensive, increasingly differing scope of qualities and belief systems are presently accessible to purchasers. Adolescent Vogue represents this with a liberal plan that advances points of view supported by digital women's activists in the late 2000s. 

- Features, for example, the primary dark photographic artist to shoot the cover picture of Vogue magazine (December 2018) and a proposal to 'Purchase dark on Black Friday' (November 2018) both mirror this plan. 

- Role of Cultural Studies and their effect on ongoing promoting, for example, Maybelline advertisement. 

- Teen Vogue is sure on sexual orientation smoothness and an inexorably non-parallel way to deal with sex personality. This is outlined by highlights, for example, the October 2018 article 'How to Break Away From the Gender Binary'. 

- Teen Vogue, indeed, strengthens the desires put on ladies concerning excellence and appearance. This is backward and advances an entrepreneur perfect that supports individuals – especially ladies – to burn through cash to illuminate 'issues' with their life and appearance. 


- Men's Health magazine – which while seeming to advance dynamic causes, (for example, psychological wellness - #SlayWinterBlues), truth be told, strengthens the possibility that men ought to burn through cash on changing their appearance.