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”. This part of the mission statement attempts to show the target market as more inclusive, rather than being primarily female focused. When talking about the audience they actually attract, it would be safe to say it is primarily young female audience; but with their recent political revolution, I would say they are not attracting a more diverse audience, looking at both age and gender. The pleasures are mainly surveillance and identity, this is seen with the articles and sections within teen vogue that highlight that, but it can be argued that there are instances of diversion and personal relationships as well, with celebrity interviews/articles, with audiences either really liking the celebrity or wanting to be them.
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.
Main target audience: Gen Z/Millennials. Can be seen through the internet celebs they have featured on their website.
Heavy focus on online audiences too as their print is dead. Their biggest medium being video (through YouTube) at 24.4 Million.
3) What audience pleasures or gratifications can be found in Teen Vogue? Do these differ from the gratifications of traditional print-based magazines?
As mentioned before in the previous question, all 4 can be argued due to their content. Due to their content being the determining factor, I can’t see how it has changed. Even with the content being far more political, the pleasures remain the same.
4) How is the audience positioned to respond to political news stories?
It’s positioned to view it from a left wing manner
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.
It expects audiences to be quite responsive and interact with them, this can be seen with the amount of event that Teen Vogue puts out, expecting viewers to buy tickets and attend
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 all seemed relatively superficial, except for the back to school one. There is a clear focus on beauty and celebrities; and while a Teen Vogue editor would say that you can like both beauty and politics (which is very true) but they way they go about this seems wrong. Can’t change stereotypes if you enforce them.
2) How are issues of gender identity and sexuality represented in Teen Vogue?
Very left wing around the board, open acceptance of the LGTBQ community and does talk about gender fluidity
3) Do representations of appearance or beauty in Teen Vogue reinforce or challenge traditional stereotypes?
They do both, while they do enforce stereotypes that girls will be interested in beauty etc, they represent more than a white view of beauty. And clearly show an attempt to diversify the beauty world.
4) What is patriarchy and how does Teen Vogue challenge it? Does it succeed?
Patriarchy is a view of male dominance, particularly within society. Teen Vogue challenges this by showing that women can make their own voice be heard and dominant within society.
5) Does Teen Vogue reinforce or challenge typical representations of celebrity?
I believe they represent a very typical view of celebrity, but they are branching out with what determines celebrity, with the likes of Liza Koshy (Internet star) making an appearance in one of their magazines
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?
It was received very well by the left wing, and was received badly by the right, as is to be expected
2) How have newspapers and magazines generally categorised and targeted news by gender?
They typically tend to be dominated by men, with the female voice being snuffed out more often than not, whether or not this is due to a lack of a female voice or an active attempt by men to not give them a voice is often up for debate.
3) How is this gender bias still present in the modern media landscape?
The most blatant show of this bias would be sexualisation of women constantly seen within the media landscape. (Yes men are sexualised quite often, but still not to the same extent as women)
4) What impact did the alternative women’s website Jezebel have on the women’s magazine market?
Jezebel has the credit of being the magazine that may have started the wave of political females having a voice, this new voice came with popularity, which equated to readership and then money; bigger magazines with a major female demographic may have dedicated aspects of their magazine to cater for this new wave for increased readerships and profit, although this argument relies on how cynical you are as an individual.
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 believe no one should be judged for their interests, and should not be looked as if their inadequate if the like something too. I do think that they can have an interest in both and the resurgence enjoyed by Teen Vogue is due to this idea, that you can like both.
6) How does the writer suggest feminists used to be represented in the media?
The writer suggests that feminists used to be viewed as a trivial endeavour done by women,to quote Samuel Johnson "A woman’s preaching is like a dog’s walking on his hind legs, It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.” While the comment is obviously derogatory, it may also be a commentary on the idea that women tend to not take it very seriously hence the "surprised to find it done at all" but that has very much changed in the modern world.
7) What is the more modern representation of feminism? Do you agree that this makes feminism ‘stereotyped as fluffy’?
Feminism like most ideologies or movements has been fragmented into different sub versions of the belief. The most popularised form of feminism would be the extreme "white" feminism that quite honestly tends to be high profile nonsensical movements for relatively no true cause; only being popularised for the absurd things they get up to. But the traditional view of feminism that revolves around true equality for women and men whether it be for work, social rights or rights in general, that view has been solidified in society and in the media
8) What contrasting audience pleasures for Teen Vogue are suggested by the writer in the article as a whole?
The article highlights the idea that while Teen Vogues articles and op-eds can be praised for their journalism, they still remain to be quite beauty centred with light celebrity news still being their most viewed articles.
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?
Blogs such as Jezebel formed the basis and the basic structure of which Teen Vogue has now popularised to a global scale, so much so that we're even studying the it in a formal setting; but as touched upon in the beginning of this answer, can only be credited to the hard work of writers and bloggers that are not apart of some huge pyramid scheme like business, they were everyday people who utilised the internet to their advantage and began to raise their voice for issues they were passionate about. This is an almost definable example of the end of audience, but as with most revelations, conglomerates have once again capitalised this revolution. This shows that while clay shirkys theory of the end of audience is definitely evident in the modern world, it's not perfect and is still susceptible to the power of the media elite.
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 feel that politicised woman magazine are a gold mine that everyone wants a piece of, but the social steam of it will run out eventually, and will once again be a dead trend. But then again I'm no soothsayer, there very well could be a revolution at our doorstep, but as of right now I remain quite cynical (something that could be at my detriment)
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