Teen Vogue

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

https://youtu.be/2US5nRNq-sU

Representation

Changing representations

Feminist bloggers and websites such as Rookie and liberal blogJezebel 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 changing the media landscape for women – and established mainstream brands like Teen Vogue are 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?

MS: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.

This tells us about their target audience and how it is mainly teenagers. One of the audience pleasures is that it empowers its audience by giving them a voice on the website etc.

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.

Teen Vogues Target Audience is:16-24 year olds with an 18.5mn total audience reach. Meaning it mainly targets Generation Z.

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

Personal Identity, as the readers will be reading about people the same age, give or take a year or two.

Surveillance as there may be important articles about current affairs, giving the audience awareness about that topic.

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

The audience are positioned in a largely left wing standpoint, meaning they are quite anti-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 will display people in the industry who are relevant to the Teen Vogue brand who are nominated for awards in order to empower their audience

In addition to this, they will hire professionals in order to give the best skincare tips to their audience.

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?

This suggests that there is a strongly positive view of women in Teen Vogue. It is also heavily implied that the women of the current generation have the power to change the world.

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

Gender identity is displayed as something that you should have in some way, e.g. with the Maybelline "That Boss Life," they would have presented it in a largely positive light, with the idea that you can chose who you want to be, the same way MannyMUA has.

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

Yes and No, yes as Teen Vogue is all about empowerment, meaning that it is only natural that they would try to present beauty in all shapes and sizes.

Although, the Skai Jackson campaign which they are associated with would suggest something different as that image is airbrushed and photoshopped, meaning that TV are suggesting that you have to look a certain way to be beautiful.

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

Patriarchy is the belief that modern society is driven and controlled by men. Teen Vogue challenges a patriarchal society in the way that they give more of a voice to females. Teen Vogue generally takes a liberal, left-wing political stance.

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

Teen Vogue reinforces Celebrity stereotypes due to the fact that they are shown compliments and insults, but it shows them receiving both of which in a happy and entertaining way, when in reality that may not be the actual way they react to such comments.

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?

There was a mixed reaction of republicans saying negative things about Teen Vogue, but on the other hand it also had a positive reception.

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

The lifestyle portion is mainly aimed at women, and the news sections are aimed at men.

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

64% of J-school graduates were female. 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.

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

It made it more believable that women want a feminist magazine with politics, as before, it was believed that politics was never an interest.

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 statement as there is no reason that people can't enjoy two different genres of entertainment, if you consider politics a form of entertainment.

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

 Feminists were represented as  "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’?

No, i believe that you just like what you like. Having a preference of a specific type of music does not make you "fluffy" in any sense of the word.

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

There is a sense of empowerment as you are reading of the limited titles for women that talk about typically male oriented topics, e.g. politics. Also, there is the idea of retaining your femininity as it also talks about the stereotypically feminine things like beauty, fashion etc.

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?

This can be linked to Shirky's end of audience theory as feminists have decided that something wasn't right and acted upon it, meaning that they are being more than an audience, who would simply receive a media text and not react to it in some capacity.

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 over time there will be more and more women oriented websites that talk about the serious and hard hitting topics. However it can be argued that Teen Vogue was a product of Trump's presidency as without him, it can be said that Teen Vogue wouldn't be in the position it is in today.