How does your media product represent particular social groups?

The Insurgence music magazine relates to NME.

• The target audience intended for my theme of music magazine is aged between 16-24 years old, and they are avid fans of indie and rock music.
• As the title "Insurgence" suggests, the majority are listeners of up and coming bands, rising up to the musical ranks.

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Lexicon of words

• The lexicon of words I composed was specifically targeted to my niche audience, given that terms used (hardcore, punk) heavily related to the main theme of Insurgence.
• This creates brand loyalty as the lexicon creates a symbiotic relationship between magazine and reader which they can relate to easily.

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Style of clothing and genre

• My music publication "Insurgence" contains content which reflects the social group of people who listen to rock music.
• This applies to the contents page and DPS, which include strong fonts to reflect the same genre of rock, appealing to rock music readers.

To make my magazine sound more convincing I made sure that most of the terms in the lexicon were used to appeal audiences.

The main artist, Shereen, is wearing casual clothing and sports a natural hairstyle, which represents the indie rock genre.

The other artists from the band Chasing Dragonflies (Gabe and Joe) all seem to wear different casual clothing, which makes them fit into the indie rock group of teenagers.

Such musical fans may listen to softer rock and less hardcore music, which is connoted by the obvious meaning of the masthead "Insurgence", which means to rise up into the musical ranks.

One example of a band fitting into the alternative rock genre would be Arctic Monkeys because their style of music is mainly rock but it is not that popular to mainstream audiences.

However, the target demographic of alt/indie music fans may be negatively represented as 'loners' and having no participation in mainstream gigs. They may also be referred to as 'too indie' due to the style of clothing they wear - usually skinny jeans, casual hairstyles and thin jackets.

In order to counter this negative representation, I represented the featured band as energetic and ambitious, judging by their ability to stick together as a musical group. Each of them wear similar clothing which counters the representation of them being 'loners'.

SOCIAL GROUP

• My target audience is a niche group of teenagers aged 16-24 who are into indie and alternative rock music. As they are both male and female, they fit into the ABC1 category.

However, rather than being the common stereotype of this music sub-genre, they are more passionate with finding out what music means to them by enjoying it as much as they can in various ways.

About rock music clichés

• Typical teens who are into rock music are considered "rebellious" with "attitude". They tend to partake in deviant activities such as throwing the TV out of windows and holding raves in "groupies".
• This is not the case in my music product as there is absolutely no portrayal of such activities anywhere. Instead, the artists shown all try to achieve aspiration.

Many rock bands and artists tend to write songs that rebel against the norm, or society, using expletives in their lyrics, which again I try to challenge in my publication.

Content of my music magazine

• In order to not represent the stereotypical behaviour of teenage groups, I thought very hard about the artists to include in the publication. By choosing more made-up artists over mainstream rock bands such as Enter Shikari, I felt like the publication would be just right if I included artists that would be aspiring to become famous in the right way.

The featured artist (Shereen) who has just started in the music industry and enjoying her passion for singing exhibited a positive vibe for the cover story. This showed dedication towards the alt rock genre, contradicting typical purposes of mainstream rock artists.

The story of a 16-year-old teen finding her ambition in songwriting and being in a band creates a sense of aspiration, thus challenging the stereotype of not taking the rock genre seriously.

Lastly, the main images I used in the DPS article were carefully chosen to depict the alternative rock genre in a positive and ambitious light, thus giving a real meaning to the music scene.

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