Teen Vogue: Audience and Representation

Teen Vogue: Audience and Representation blog tasks

Create a new blogpost called 'Teen Vogue Audience and Representation' and work through the following tasks to complete the audience and representation aspects of your Teen Vogue case study:

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?

"Teen Vogue is the young person’s guide to saving the world. We aim to educate, enlighten, and empower our audience to create a more inclusive environment (both on- and offline) by amplifying the voices of the unheard, telling stories that normally go untold, and providing resources for teens looking to make a tangible impact in their communities."

Target audience is young ages 16-24 and are well educated. They are intelligent and like to keep aware of what is going around in the world. 

Although the brand name suggests a teenage audience, the typical Teen Vogue reader has evolved in recent years. The move to more political content has broadened the appeal and changed the genre – young women now expect more from their media.

The ‘Campus Life’ section in Lifestyle also suggests an older readership. However, the audience is still interested in celebrity content and beauty – which Teen Vogue addresses by featuring the ‘opinion leaders’ (two-step flow) of social media.

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.

Generations

 63%-Generation X: Born between 1965 – 1980
Millennials / Generation Y: Born between 1981 – 1995
Generation Z (or iGen): Born 1996 – 2010

Other key details:

• 18.5m total audience reach
• Readers of Teen Vogue tend to spend $11b on fashion & beauty products
• #1 reaching influential activists

Platform information

• Digital - 5.4m
• Social - 13.1m
• Video - 24.4m

Pyschographic groups may include aspirers. This is because Teen Vogue typically has an audience that are very focused on impacting the world and making a difference in the future.

May also include succeeders - Teen Vogue is a movement that encourages influential people to represent their views through Teen Vogue (e.g. Hilary Clinton is a succeeder).

Reformers-  wanting to make a change in society, for example students wanting to spread awareness on gun violence

3) What audience pleasures or gratifications can be found in Teen Vogue? Do these differ from the gratifications of traditional print-based magazines?

• Surveillance - learning about a range of opinions and perspectives so that the audience can be made aware of the issues present in their society. This highlights Teen Vogue as a "woke" brand

• Personal relationships - the ability to make connections with those who have similar views/issues to them - i.e. LGBTQ+ people being able to connect and discuss things with people who will be able to relate to them on a deeper level. This does however reiterate the concept of Echo Chambers - only their views will be expressed and then relayed back to them.

• Personal identification - being able to see themselves and their ideologies reflected in the magazine. This is conventional of typical magazines aimed at teenagers; however, Teen Vogue attempt to reflect the less superficial aspects of teenagers/young people - i.e. allowing them to relate with things such as preparing for Campus life, rather than general fashion advice.
• Diversion as Teen Vogue features celeb gossip and entertainment stories 

4) How is the audience positioned to respond to political news stories?

Audience are positioned in a positive neutral way, they are encouraged to engage with the news and act upon it. The brand is consistent across all of the Teen Vogue platforms - creates synergy and ensures that there are no contradictions between the content of Teen Vogue and their ideologies. Teen Vogue also use first person as if they are speaking directly to the readers. 

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 Summit: 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.

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

• Activism
• Social media
• ‘Clickbait’ and first-person headlines
• Events – Teen Vogue summit

- Young Hollywood

- 21 under 21 

- Digital Series: pop feminist, OG History, Thigh-High politics

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?

- Women are powerful and influential leaders

- they are influential leaders

- encouraging women 

- well educated 

- inspiring 

- strong feminists

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

They are addressed in a progressive way, underrepresented groups are made known to readers and that nothing is represented as an issue.

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

They challenge traditional stereotypes, Teen Vogue highlights the difference in beauty rather the idea of fitting in and making yourself looking perfect. However, it can be seen as reinforcing traditional stereotypes as the models wear makeup and are photo shopped. 

Teen Vogue feature a range of diverse covers for example the cover with Aya, Imaan and Lineisy. And the cover/campaign with Skai Jackson with her embracing her afro. 

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

Patriarchy is the idea that men dominate society and that females are subordinate. Teen Vogue, they represent the exact opposite. and  do not view power as equal to gender, but inspire young people everywhere to have the confidence to campaign against something that they believe deserves attention.

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

I think teen vogue still relies on some clickbait, but they do reinforce traditional representations of celebrity. Most celeb news is clickbait and generates a buzz for 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?

When Lauren Duca’s excellent Teen Vogue op-ed on Donald Trump’s psychological manipulation of America went viral last Saturday, 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. 

Teen Vogue deserves credit not just for Duca’s op-ed but for the entirety of its political coverage, which has provided sharp, impassioned coverage of everything from gun control to Black Lives Matter in 2016. Much of this is due to Teen Vogue’s editor, Elaine Welteroth, who graduated to the position last May, and Phil Picardi, the magazine’s digital editorial director.

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

Men received news about politics where as women received news about lifestyles, which covered all topics deemed feminine: cooking, fashion, beauty, parenting and maybe even some celebrity news. Arts and literature was a very serious section aimed at men. Magazines followed similarly with newspapers with seriousness reserved for men and masculine topics. 

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

This bias is still reflected in how journalists are assigned stories. Women have been attending and graduating journalism school more often than men since the 1970s; by 2010, 64% of J-school graduates were female. Yet as of 2015, 65% of political journalists, 67% of criminal justice reporters, and 62% of reporters covering “business and economics” were male. Even in the lifestyle section, women can only pull even; the gender split there is precisely 50-50.

Some traditional media would still include stereotypes however, in the modern media landscape I think that slowly the gender bias is being eleminated.

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

In 2008, Anna Holmes’ Jezebel made the then-risky move of combining politics coverage and traditionally feminist op-eds with fashion and celebrity gossip, betting that the same woman could plausibly enjoy reading both Megan Carpentier on Hillary Clinton and Sadie Stein on bandage dresses. 

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 the writer and the statement As Teen Vogue is an example of this. Teen Vogue covers fashion and beauty but also political issues fro example Trumps 'Gaslighting America' 

Teen Vogue contains both skincare tips and Native American history lessons? Of course it does. Teen Vogue, unlike Time or Newsweek, 

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

- women represented as sex objects

- more focused on soft news 

 For decades, feminists struggled to overcome the perception that they were sexless, grim bra-burners, uninterested in pleasure or aesthetics. Now that feminists are finally willing to talk about makeup and Beyonce, we get stereotyped as fluffy.

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

I dont think it makes feminism 'fluffy' just because women discuss topic that they were originally limited to. A more modern stereotype of feminists is that they are seen as extreme and wanting to feel empowered and dominant. 

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

The contrast between "fluffy" topics like beauty etc, and the "serious journalism" covering politics and news. The audience pleasures are surveillance and diversion, this is because teen vogue offers beauty and fashion tips as well as politics, economics and university life.

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?

End of audience relates to the idea of mass communication and the concept of audiences no longer solely consuming the media as passive vessels, but also producing it as well. The feminist-blog movement highlights the fact that consumers can add to the content circulated in the media by projecting their own opinions.= feminist blogs were responsible for the change in women's media proves Shirky's theory. Women were not happy with the way they were treated so they decided to change it themselves.

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 think that Teen Vogue is both. Trump's presidency has definitely given them more content to cover and it led to their iconic news story which got them a lot more recognition. For example Duca's gaslighting america article. I think more women oriented magazines will become like teen vogue where more topics are covered.