NME Institution Research

• New Musical Express, has been publishing since 1952 and started in the UK.
• During the 1960s the paper focused on upcoming British bands of the time.
• In the 1970s it became the best-selling British music newspaper. During the period 1972 to 1976 it was particularly associated with gonzo journalism, then became closely associated with punk rock.
• By the early 1970s NME had lost ground to the Melody Maker as its coverage of music had failed to keep pace with the development of rock music, particularly during the early years of psychedelia and progressive rock. It almost faced closure in 1972 due to owners IPC.
• By the mid 1980s NME had hit a rough patch and was in danger of closure again. This was due to the riding popularity of hip-hop in the UK where the magazine still wanted to write about British rock.

• The start of 1990 saw the paper in the thick of the Madchester scene, and covering the new British indie bands and shoegazers.
• By the end of 1990, the Madchester scene was dying off, it was from here that they began to write about US bands. These bands would form a new movement called Grunge and by far the most popular bands were Nirvana and Pearl Jam.
• 2000 saw the closure of the Melody Maker (which officially merged with the NME) and many speculated the NME be the next to go - the monthly magazine Select, which had thrived especially during Britpop, was closed down within a week of Melody Maker.

College Magazine Analysis

St Edward's College Magazine

The magazine cover shown is from a local college in Liverpool.

Who is the target audience? 
The target audience of the magazine is the pupils that attend the college. As shown on the front there is a heading for an article about "Most Generous Young Person". By mentioning young people in the heading shows what the audience of the magazine is. The audience is both male and female as it is a mixed school. The front image is therefore suitable as it contains a male and a female subject. 

How does it engage the target audience?
I do not think that this magazine cover would attract a lot of attention from its target audience because it has a lack of colour and there is a lot of text that people would most likely not want to read through. Overall, the cover looks very plain and nothing really stands out as striking from the cover, this would mean that the audience are less likely to want to read the magazine.

Ideology
The magazine is designed as an informative text for the pupils for updates on what is going on throughout the college. The ideology of the magazine is highly appropriate and fits in with the audience well because this means that the articles in the magazine will involve the students in various ways as the front cover advertises an award for young people. The magazine also features upcoming events throughout the school which the students could find interesting to them. It is also a good way to get the students more involved in what happens around the school.

What images are used? Camera angles?
The main image used on the cover of the magazine shows a male and female subject accepting an award for most generous young person. This again is very suited to the target audience and therefore fits in well with the magazine. However, again the image is not very colourful so therefore isn't very striking towards the audience. A medium shot has been used on the main image to show a lot of the surroundings of the subjects and on the smaller image, a close up has been used because it is a picture of what appears to be a member of the college.

What text is used? Why?
The main title of the text is the title of the magazine is big and bold so it stands out from the rest of the magazine, however, this is the only text on the page that stands out significantly from the page. On a first glance, the audience is met with what appears to just be a big wall of text which is likely to turn people away. There are no interesting subheadings advertising articles of interest on the front to entice the audience to read through the magazine.

Price
This is obviously a free magazine because there is no barcode on the front, nor is a price displayed. This suggests that it is a small budgeted magazine that will not have any extra items included. This could also mean that it is not a frequently published magazine, perhaps every 2 or 3 months.

Cohen's Moral Panic

Moral panic is basically the rising question against the media of various artists throughout the music industry that are glorified, regardless of the terrible examples that they are setting to the young audiences that they are predominantly loved by. A good example of this is Chris Brown, he was in the news because of what happened between him and Rihanna regarding domestic violence. This is a massive issue for many people worldwide, yet magazines still decide to use an image of him for the cover of their magazine. Although he is still popular for his music, should he really be shown as someone amazing after doing something like that? This is the main question raised by the media. Other examples of this are the likes of Amy Winehouse and Pete Doherty. These are also featured on the covers of various magazines even though they are well known drug takers and alcoholics.
The reason people question the magazines' choices of covers is because they will attract a lot of young audiences, the younger audiences are likely to look up to the celebrities featured on magazine covers and there is a huge likelihood that younger people will begin to drink and to take drugs, because they want to be like the people in the magazines.

Audience Research

In NME magazine, they featured articles about the Reading Leeds festival. They have featured this festival for the past few years. Therefore this is a quick video that sums up the festival from 2012. This shows the sort of artists to expect from the genre and also how the audience behave at the festivals in response to the music.

Questionnaire Results

The feedback that I received from my questionnaire shows that I am mostly going to focus on a male audience aged 14-16. A majority of responses also showed that NME magazine was the most popular among the responses. This suggests that a majority are into indie music. In order to make my magazine popular with the target audience, it is a good idea for me to read NME magazine to see what content they deliver in order to get an idea of what the audience want from a music magazine. The feedback also showed me that the magazine was mostly popular for the articles inside, however responses also said that they would like more articles and more free items with the magazines such as posters and CDs. Therefore, in order to produce a magazine that people will enjoy, I will have to offer more than the current popular magazines.

Lesson Topics

From the lesson today

In lesson today, we reviewed our previous posts for our questionnaires and looked at where we went wrong as a class. It was obvious after looking at our posts that we were asking the wrong questions for what we were hoping to get out of it. In order to solve this problem, we have looked at a range of music magazines to see what is featured throughout. By doing this, I am now going to edit my questionnaire so that I can get answers from possible audiences so that I know exactly what people are looking for when they buy a music magazine.

Feminism in media.

Feminism.

Feminism is the response to society's assumption that women are inferior to men. It is the advocacy of women's rights being equal to men's in terms of politics, society and economics.

Laura Mulvey says that patriarchy is a form of society that is ruled by men through the father figure to whom all others are subordinate. Therefore this is a society where men dominate and all medias are constructed for them as an audience. Men are often subject to scopophilia which is finding pleasure from looking at other people as objects. Scopophilia is represented well by the image to the left which shows actress Megan Fox on the cover of Rolling Stone. This is a good example of scopophilia because in the image, she is wearing very revealing clothing and her body language represents a sexual nature. This magazine is mostly aimed at men, this is obvious because she is shown in a way that will be appealing towards male members of the magazine's audience.

This could be said to go against feminism because it does not represent women in a way that feminists believe they should be seen. The fact that she is shown in a way to completely appeal to men puts women under scopophilic view, meaning that the magazine knows that men see women as objects but take advantage of this in order to increase sales.

This image shows the cover of NME magazine where Beth Ditto is on the cover. This cover is different from that used by Rolling Stone. This is because Beth Ditto from first appearances, is obviously a bigger woman than Megan Fox and is not exactly an attractive figure towards the majority of male audiences. However she is still positioned in a provocative position. The magazine will have taken hits from members of the audience, however, from a feminist point of view, this cover does more for them. This is because NME have shown a less attractive woman in the same way as the likes of Megan Fox are shown, representing equality amongst all women. It also goes against the whole idea of scopophilic views because men will not look at Beth Ditto in the same way that they would towards women shown on other magazines. The fact that she is also showing signs of armpit hair gives the impression that she is also not as feminine as other women.

Looking at music magazines is a good way of explaining how women are seen by various audiences within society. However they all seem to follow the same patterns and trends with their cover girls.Women are often shown to be in revealing clothing and their body language is often provocative. This would prove that scopophilia is a genuine thing and the best way of defining it would be to show the different representations of women across the media. More often than not, magazines with women on the cover are designed to produce sales from male audiences.

http://images.fineartamerica.com/images-medium-large/rolling-stone-cover-volume-1088-10-1-2009-megan-fox.jpg

Questionnaire

Please click here to view my questionnaire.