OSP: Teen Vogue audience and representation

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?
Teen Vogue's mission statement is to 'aim,educate, enlighten and empower our audience to create a more inclusive environment by amplifying the voice of the unheard, telling stories that normally go untold, and providing resources for teens to make a tangible impact in their community'. This tells us that their target audience is a more younger audience and an audience that is willing to learn and create change.

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.
The target audience for Teen Vogue is more of a teen based audience as it is based around Generation Z and they could be aspires and reformers.

3) What audience pleasures or gratifications can be found in Teen Vogue? Do these differ from the gratifications of traditional print-based magazines?
There can be an element of personal identity as audience can relate to the articles for example the articles on lifestyle or more serious topics like gender fluidity.

4) How is the audience positioned to respond to political news stories?
The audience is able to voice their own opinions however Teen Vogue is clearly shown to have a negative view on Donald Trump 

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 does this through having connectivity through social media for example on twitter, Teen Vogue is seen to be retweeting many of their audiences tweets about their opinions on certain things.

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 suggest that they focus about the identities of individuals and them finding a place in this world providing comfort and also encouragement to become confident.

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

They suggest that they have a sense of awareness of things such as LGBTQ, gender fluidity etc.

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

I feel as if they challenge stereotypes because nowadays Teen Vogue is a more diverse Magazine as they have articles on multi cultural individuals instead of the typical norm of having a white model all the time.

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

Patriarchy is a system in which is shown to have men as being more powerful and having control over women. Teen Vogue challenges this as it helps empower women as it supports things such as feminism and the articles help encourage women to stand up and be who they want to be as they are in control of themselves.

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

I think that Teen Vogue reinforces representations of celebrities as Teen Vogue is a global fashion magazine and there are always celebrity endorsement and influence and it would never differ from a brand like Teen Vogue.

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?

Their article gained a lot of attention from both audiences and the media as Teen Vogue is typically presented to be a fashion magazine rather than one that has political views.

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

They do this by having articles that appeal to different demographics for example fashion and beauty would interest females more whereas an article about sport or money may interest a male more.

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

This is still present as there are still articles that appeal to both men and women however it has become more neutral now due to the acceptance of gender fluidity etc.

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

It broke general stereotypes about women and focused more on feminism breaking the barrier between women and journalism.

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 agree with this point as female audiences may be interested on political coverage, they may have an interest in the government and hard news it does not just appeal to men. It is the same with men as they may enjoy political coverage but they may also like celebrity news just as women do. This explains the success of Teen Vogue as they are now publishing more political and hard news on top of the soft beauty and fashion articles.

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

The writer suggest that women were idealised as being interested in only soft news and also argued that they were sexualised in the media.

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

A more modern representation of feminism is that they are completely against men and masculinity thinking that they are better than men however I do not agree with this point and I also do not agree that this makes feminism seem fluffy as feminism is about women wanting to create a voice and standing up for their own rights.

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

There are contrasts between news such as beauty and political hard 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?

It is similar to Clay Shirkys end of audience as it is based on mass communication and how women can now voice their opinions.

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?

Teen Vogues political aspect has sprung from Trumps presidency however I also feel as if it intended to become more hard hitting due to feminism and the idea of equality. Women do not just want to read about fashion or celebrities, they also want to be enlightened on what is going on in the world.