OSP: Teen Vogue - Audience and Representation

Teen Vogue offers a huge amount to discuss and write about for the concepts of audience and representation.

The exam could focus on anything from the changing nature of digital audiences to how certain groups or issues are represented in Teen Vogue online.

Notes from the lesson

Audience

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.

Generations

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

Teen Vogue: political positioning

Teen Vogue generally takes a liberal, left-wing political stance and positions its readers to become active in their support:

• Pro-feminist
• Pro-gender fluidity and gender identity
• Supports LGBT equality
• Pro-multiculturalism
• Supports Black Lives Matter
• Pro-environment (accepting science on climate change)
• Pro-choice (abortion)

Teen Vogue: audience interaction

How does Teen Vogue encourage audience interaction?

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

Representation

Changing representations

Feminist bloggers and websites such as Rookie and liberal blog Jezebel have been credited with changing the representation of women and feminism in the digital age.

This can be linked to Clay Shirky’s ‘end of audience’ theory with digital influencers, blogs and online movements changing the media landscape and creating opportunities to connect and campaign – with established mainstream brands like Teen Vogue then following to stay relevant. 

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?

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.

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

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

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.

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?

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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?

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?

There is plenty to work on here as this needs to cover two of the key concepts for this in-depth CSP. Complete for homework - due date on Google Classroom.