Teen Vogue Audience and Representation

Audience

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 tells us that Ten Vogue are trying to aim for a young target audience and that they want to focus on shedding a bigger light on under-represented griups, giving them a larger voice.

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.
Their target audience is 63% Generation Z/Millennials. Their total audience reach is 18.5million as week as $11B being spend on fashion & beauty and they are #1 in reaching influential activists. Across all platforms- digital is 5.4M, social is 13.1M and Video is 24.4M. I think the psychographic group that perfectly links to Teen Vogue is reformers as they want to change society into a better place as well as improve themselves.

3) What audience pleasures or gratifications can be found in Teen Vogue? Do these differ from the gratifications of traditional print-based magazines?
One of the audience pleasures that can be found in Teen Vogue would be personal relationships as the audience recognise people who are going through the same problems as them, therefore they can connect with one another. The second one would be Surveillance as Teen Vogue offer a lot of information and news on what is going on around the world, ranging from fashion to current world affairs.

4) How is the audience positioned to respond to political news stories?
They are positioned to have their own personal opinions on current political stories as it is what Teen Vogue promote, being able to have your own voice and speak on matters for what you believe in.

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.

The Teen Vogue Summit : June 1-3, New York City / Nov. 30 - Dec. 1, Los Angeles

The Summit inspires, encourages, and connects a new generation of activists, creators and innovators,

providing them with the insights and tools to change the world.

Young Hollywood: Q1

Leading up to the Oscar’s. Teen Vogue’s Young Hollywood portfolio will feature the new faces who are

shaking up the industry.

Acne Awards: Q2

A dream team of aestheticians and dermatologists give their best skincare tips and picks for best products.

Back to School Awards: Q3

The products our editors choose as the official winners of Teen Vogue’s 2018 Back to School Awards —

covering everything from head to toe.

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?

It suggests that instead of having the stereotypical representation of girls only being into fashion they instead are highly immersed with the world of politics. This shows how women will have an active role in the way society is in the future.

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

Teen Vogue believe these are very important as they understand that these issues aren't represented as much/well as they should be, as by doing so we can have confirmation of a more positive future.

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

Teen Vogue challenge these stereotypes as they don't criticise or bring down peoples appearances even if they are different, instead they celebrate peoples uniqueness. We see this in their work as they use a variety of models as they want to be seen as a brand that represents all types of people.

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

Patriarchy means that a society is dominated by men who hold all the power over women, belittling women. Teen Vogue challenges this by giving women a larger platform and a bigger voice to spread awareness and make people recognise they are just as equal as men. 

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

Teen Vogue not only reinforces these typical representations, they also challenge them, this is due to the fact that they show them off in a positive light but also criticises them.

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?

 social media exploded with praise—and with baffled reactions. The piece, one Twitter user noted, had “big words for a magazine about hairstyles and celebrity gossip.” Another user expressed pure astonishment: “Who would have guessed @TeenVogue might be the future of political news. Unreal coverage of the election.” Others were less kind, and a lot less subtle: “Go back to acne treatments,” one man snapped.

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

Newspapers and Magazines have limited all the news delivered to women to topics that are deemed to be feminine such as fashion, cooking and beauty. On the other hand news deemed to be masculine included politics, business arts and literature.

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

The bias is reflected and presented in how journalists are assigned stories, e.g. Magazines like Cosmopolitan are very unlikely to feature news that involves economics over parenting advice, but it is being eliminated from modern media. 

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

Jezebel's had a huge impact as it pushed establishment magazines to change the way they operate. There was also evidence that women enjoyed being spoken to like 'intelligent human beings', instead of 'clothing-obsessed toddlers'.

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 wholeheartedly agree with this statement as those are the main reasons why Teen Vogue has become so much more popular. Instead of just focusing on the fashion aspect they decide to mix it with politics so that they can bring in their own type of audience.

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

The writer suggests feminists used to be represented as being stupid and that they 'struggled to overcome the perception that they were sexless, grim bra-burners, uninterested in pleasure or aesthetics'.

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

The modern representation of feminism is that women are constantly objectified in many magazines which men read (female gaze). However women have become more independent in recent times, having more of a voice for themselves. I don't agree that this makes feminism stereotyped as fluffy as feminism has changed over the years, becoming something much more independent.

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

The audience are able to enjoy and immerse themselves with the world of fashion and politics while still being able to enjoy themselves.

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?

Considering the fact that feminist blogs are responsible for the change in the way female media is represented, proves Clay Shirky's theory of how people are no longer passive vessels when consuming types of media as they are now able to create and share their own ideas.

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 believe that websites and magazines aimed at women will continue to become more hard-hitting and serious in their offering to audiences as it is evidently very successful in this day and age. Because of this women will continue to gain more of a voice and raise a larger spectacle as there will be competition in the media industries for who can promote these feminist ideas better than the other.