Media Studies Questions 1 – 4

By Jak Butler

Question I – Part I – XXL

For my media product I carried out a lot of research into different kinds of magazine. I looked into many rap magazines as that is what I wanted my magazine to be. XXL was the rap magazine that inspired me the most as it instantly caught my eye and had a good house style.

From what I had learnt through the research, I wanted my magazine to be like the XXL magazine and seem professional.

On the right is an edition of the XXL magazine and my magazine; there are some similarities.

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

My Magazine XXL Magazine

Question I – Part II – Logo

My masthead is more of the logo than anything. The logo has the letters ICC within it. This stands for ‘Inner city culturals’.

Through research I wanted to find out what to call it so I made a survey for my classmates to do. On the right is the results.

The letters ICC are a large font coloured white contained in a large red box at the top left side of the magazine.

I also threw a strapline in there, however I didn’t give a survey out to ask my classmates. The strapline is ‘Where rap lives’ and you can locate this where the logo is. For the layout of the magazine, it definitely follows conventions.

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Popularity out of 16 people asked

ICC - Inner city culturals

Rap Central

Media Rap

Rap In Peace

10

1

2

3

Question I – Part III – Layout

On the right is my finished front cover and my main image is there. Overlaying the image it says ‘Exclusive story’, through research I looked at a lot of rap magazines and took this convention and applied it to my own magazine.

After deciding I wanted an ‘Exclusive Story’ I molded it to be a part of the ICC magazine and placed it in the top right of the magazine.

Most ideas on the magazine such as the stories down the left and the main story at the bottom in large are from the XXL magazine. I used the XXL layout and moved conventions to make it fit my audiences tastes.

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Question I – Part IV – Colour

Rap is usually associated with dark things and in a lot of the rap magazines that I researched seemed to be also extremely dark within their house style. On the right are the colours that I used, red and light grey.

Guns, sex and violence are also some things associated with rap. In my magazine, I wanted to change that.

ICC as a magazine goes through no controversial or dark topics. ICC is centered around non-violent stories, I can say that I challenged an original from and did it differently.

The reason I did this was to challenge perception of the rap culture and try and gain a wider audience overall to show people that rap isn’t controversial.

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Red

White

Grey

Question II – Part I – Stereotypes

It is most likely that my magazine would be thought of as uninteresting and vulgar by the older generations. This is because of what the rappers wear; tracksuits and hats. This links to the ‘chavs’ that hang around at night time and that is where the bad image is from.

The ICC magazine tries to represent the ‘chavs’ and ‘vandals’ in a good light to make the older generations rethink their opinion about rappers and teenagers.

On the right is someone in a hoodie and a hat on the left page of my double page spread. (Next slide is the story)

How does your Media product represent particular social groups?

Question II – Part II – Represent

In the ICC’s main/exclusive story is about an upcoming rapper who was born into an extremely poor family. He then turned his life around.

The story goes on to tell that he raps because it’s the only income he could get before he got big. The only income was from gigs in the city of Nottingham (Where he lives).

People could be inspired by this because the rapper in question is doing what he loves to earn money. This story represents the ‘vandals’ in a good light to try and get people to relate to this to do what they love and pursue their dream.

How does your Media product represent particular social groups?

Question III – Part I – Apps

Through doing a lot of research on different institutions that might distribute the ICC magazine, I came to the conclusion of ‘Development Hell Ltd’.

The reasoning behind choosing this company was because through the research I was doing I noticed that they had another magazine on the go.

This magazine had a website and an app for android and IOS.

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Question III – Part II – Targets

My target audience of my rap magazine is males in-between the ages of 16 and 30. These are the ages that would most likely use the internet and their phones all the time.

As nowadays everyone is connected to the internet in one way or another they can interact with my magazine if development hell did distribute my magazine as there would be a website to read the magazines on.

This would be a worldwide based magazine therefore meaning a lot more people to be able to read it in-between the ages of 16 and 30. Being a worldwide magazine, it would allow the magazine to become established as a brand and people might notice it a lot more to pick it up and read it.

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Question IV – Part I – Rap years

The audience of my magazine would be predominantly males between the ages of 16 and 30. This would be because rap in the last 20 or so years has become an extremely large part of the music industry. Being within this age range could mean that you have been bought up with rap and hip hop.

The audience’s background/financial state could be anything in-between rich and poor because in my opinion there should be a nice low – priced product to read for anyone.

Who would be an audience for your media product?

Question IV – Part II – Talentless

I believe that my target audience for the magazine would like to know about recent news regarding the big time rappers that they might want to be like or they might want to know about a new rapper that has blown up recently.

I wouldn’t really aim my audience to be anyone over 40+ because from a lot of the research that I have gone through and what I see and hear from them is that they hate rap and they consider it to be ‘talentless’.

Who would be an audience for your media product?

Question IV – Part III – Secondary

The age range that I missed that would appropriately listen to rap was 31 – 39, this is because this is my ‘secondary’ target audience but not an intended one, I feel this way because I DO want rappers to be seen in a positive light by other generations but I don’t believe they will read it.

From my questionnaire I asked quite a few questions such as, what are your ages? I got a response of all under the age of 40. Another question would be what are your favorites genres of music? I got a response of pop, rap then rock. In that order. This goes to show that younger people like rap more than the older generations.

Who would be an audience for your media product?